Introduction

WHAT YOU LL MISS IF YOU DON T READ THIS INTRODUCTION

Do most people read a book s foreword, prologue, or introduction? I haven t always, but I do now because I found out what I was missing. This introduction will give you some very specific and useful instructions which will enable you to make the most use of the book. Unlike other tomes, you do not have to read this book cover to cover to learn something and benefit. In fact, you may benefit more quickly from the information if you skip around and just read the chapters or sections that contain information you need right now.

Those of you who are savvy in the ways of project management will get this analogy: When I began writing this book in earnest, I viewed it as a project. So the first thing I needed to do was to scope out the project. I needed to define ” at least at a high level ” what goals the book needed to accomplish or what problems it needed to solve. I also needed to figure out the approach the book would take to accomplish its goals. In other words, I needed a project charter.

This introduction is that project charter. It describes the project s background and how and why this book has come into existence. It tells you what you can expect to get out of reading the book and it points you to the specific chapters or sections that give you information you need to apply in your particular environment. It also gives you an overview of some of the book s more critical design structures, so you can use the book more effectively and efficiently . It will be nice when people read this book, but it will be far more rewarding when they use it.