October 1996 € Volume 23 € Number 5

New Books

The Coming Shape of Organization

This book skillfully navigates through an analysis of how downsizing, delayering, and rightsizing actually affect the people within flat organizations, demonstrating how increased emphasis on teamwork in flat organizations results in a corresponding increase in power concentrated in fewer hands.

The worlds of the ant and the bee provide vivid analogies to explain the emerging organizational structures, and the author discusses ways in which new ideas of concurrent decision-making and team empowerment can replace traditional hierarchies. Looking at alternative methods of arranging work, the author outlines ways in which continuous deployment and career development can result in more effective use of peoples' talents.

Published by Butterworth-Heinemann.

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Design Science

This book presents a framework for the design of technical systems. This can be achieved through a general design science &emdash; a knowledge system in which products are seen as objects to be developed within engineering design processes. The authors have developed this design science from a division of the knowledge system along two axes. One deals with knowledge about technical systems and design processes, while the other presents descriptive statements. Well-known insights into engineering design, the process, its management and its products are placed into new contexts. Particular attention is given to various areas of applicability. Diagrams and models are used throughout the text.

Published by Springer-Verlag.

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Pattern Languages of Program Design 2

This volume is the second in a series documenting patterns for professional software developers. These patterns capture solutions to a plethora of recurring problems in software design and development, including language-specific patterns and idioms; general- and special-purpose patterns; architectural patterns; process and organizational patterns; expositional patterns; and patterns for concurrent programming, distributed systems, and reactive systems.

Published by Addison-Wesley.

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