Book Description

Cross-platform development is a kind of holy grail, and Trolltech’s Qt toolkit may well be the most promising solution yet to this development challenge. Qt is widely used for the development of GUI applications as well as console tools and servers, and it’s especially appealing to programmers who need to write cross-platform applications to run on Linux/Unix, Mac, and Windows machines without having to rewrite for each platform.

The Book of Qt 4 offers an in-depth explanation of Qt 4 that goes beyond the common focus on C++ programming. Author Daniel Molkentin uses practical examples to explain features like the signal/slot concept and the event system, as he guides you through developing applications with and without Qt’s graphical GUI builder, Qt Designer. And as a core KDE developer, Molkentin’s head is full of real-world problems and solutions that he peppers liberally throughout The Book of Qt 4, making it a resource that you’ll consult time and again. You’ll find coverage of:

• Tools for creating dialogs
• GUI design with the Qt Designer
• Widget layout and dialog construction
• Data visualization using Qt’s model/view concept
• The QtSql module and the graphics library Arthur
• File handling, XML, processes, and network connections
• Databases and threading
• Event handling and using drag and drop Download Now »

Book Description

Microsoft® Dynamics CRM 2011 Unleashed presents start-to-finish guidance for planning, customizing, deploying, integrating, managing, and securing the newest version of Dynamics CRM. Authored by three leading Microsoft Dynamics implementers, it illuminates new opportunities to deploy CRM as a hosted service (SaaS), integrate with Azure cloud services, and extend CRM through Microsoft’s new online service marketplace. The authors systematically explain how Dynamics CRM 2011 works, illuminating why it works that way, and how to drive maximum business value from it. Drawing on insider knowledge of Microsoft’s new product, they present clear examples, proven best practices, and pitfalls to avoid in using every significant Dynamics CRM capability. Their far-reaching coverage ranges from Dynamics CRM’s sales, marketing, and customer service features to its automated workflows; Outlook and Office integration to reporting and security. This edition’s extensive new coverage includes new chapters on Mobility, the Outlook Client, and Office 2010 integration, as well as greatly expanded coverage of CRM Online. It also contains new or expanded discussions of data visualization, SharePoint Foundation integration, user interface changes, inbuild charts, dashboards, IM and SMS communication support, auditing, no-code workflows, connections, queues, the new WCF-based programming model, UI scripting, and security.

Table of Contents
Chapter 1. New Features of Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011
Chapter 2. Why Business Needs a CRM System Download Now »

Book Description

Using agile methods and the tools of Visual Studio 2010, development teams can deliver higher-value software faster, systematically eliminate waste, and increase transparency throughout the entire development lifecycle. Now, Microsoft Visual Studio product owner Sam Guckenheimer and leading Visual Studio implementation consultant Neno Loje show how to make the most of Microsoft’s new Visual Studio 2010 Application Lifecycle Management (ALM) tools in your environment.

This book is the definitive guide to the application of agile development with Scrum and modern software engineering practices using Visual Studio 2010. You’ll learn how to use Visual Studio 2010 to empower and engage multidisciplinary, self-managing teams and provide the transparency they need to maximize productivity. Along the way, Guckenheimer and Loje help you overcome every major impediment that leads to stakeholder dissatisfaction—from mismatched schedules to poor quality, blocked builds to irreproducible bugs, and technology “silos” to geographic “silos.”

Coverage includes

• Accelerating the “flow of value” to customers in any software project, no matter how large or complex
• Empowering high-performance software teams and removing overhead in software delivery
• Automating “burndowns” and using dashboards to gain a real-time, multidimensional view of quality and progress Download Now »

Book Description

Master C++ “The Qt Way” with Modern Design Patterns and Efficient Reuse

This fully updated, classroom-tested book teaches C++ “The Qt Way,” emphasizing design patterns and efficient reuse. Readers will master both the C++ language and Qt libraries, as they learn to develop maintainable software with well-defined code layers and simple, reusable classes and functions.

Every chapter of this edition has been improved with new content, better organization, or both. Readers will find extensively revised coverage of QObjects, Reflection, Widgets, Main Windows, Models and Views, Databases, Multi-Threaded Programming, and Reflection. This edition introduces the powerful new Qt Creator IDE; presents new multimedia APIs; and offers extended coverage of Qt Designer and C++ Integration. It has been restructured to help readers start writing software immediately and write robust, effective software sooner.

The authors introduce several new design patterns, add many quiz questions and labs, and present more efficient solutions relying on new Qt features and best practices. They also provide an up-to-date C++ reference section and a complete application case study.

• Master C++ keywords, literals, identifiers, declarations, types, and type conversions.
• Understand classes and objects, organize them, and describe their interrelationships.
• Learn consistent programming style and naming rules.
• Use lists, functions, and other essential techniques. Download Now »

Book Description

Master the Crucial Non-Technical Skills Every Software Architect Needs!

Thousands of software professionals have the necessary technical qualifications to become architects, but far fewer have the crucial non-technical skills needed to get hired and succeed in this role. In today’s agile environments, these “soft” skills have grown even more crucial to success as an architect. For many developers, however, these skills don’t come naturally–and they’re rarely addressed in formal training. Now, long-time software architect Dave Hendricksen helps you fill this gap, supercharge your organizational impact, and quickly move to the next level in your career.

In 12 Essential Skills for Software Architects, Hendricksen begins by pinpointing the specific relationship, personal, and business skills that successful architects rely upon. Next, he presents proven methods for systematically developing and sharpening every one of these skills, from negotiation and leadership to pragmatism and vision.

From start to finish, this book’s practical insights can help you get the architect position you want–and thrive once you have it!

The soft skills you need…
…and a coherent framework and practical methodology for mastering them!

Relationship skills Download Now »

Book Description

Find out how the Swedish police combined XP, Scrum, and Kanban in a 60-person project. From start to finish, you’ll see how to deliver a successful product using Lean principles.

We start with an organization in desperate need of a new way of doing things and finish with a group of sixty, all working in sync to develop a scalable, complex system. You’ll walk through the project step by step, from customer engagement, to the daily “cocktail party,” version control, bug tracking, and release. In this honest look at what works–and what doesn’t–you’ll find out how to:

• Make quality everyone’s business, not just the testers.
• Keep everyone moving in the same direction without micromanagement.
• Use simple and powerful metrics to aid in planning and process improvement.
• Balance between low-level feature focus and high-level system focus.

Find out how the Swedish police combined XP, Scrum, and Kanban in a 60-person project. From start to finish, you’ll see how to deliver a successful product using Lean principles.

About the Author
Henrik Kniberg is a coach and consultant at Crisp. Henrik’s background is a mix of development and management, and his passion is applying Lean and Agile principles to help debug, optimize, and refactor companies. Henrik is the author of Scrum and XP from the Trenches and Kanban & Scrum, making the most of both and a popular keynote speaker at conferences worldwide. Henrik lives in Stockholm with his wife and four kids Download Now »