Software Quality Engineering: Testing, Quality Assurance, and Quantifiable Improvement [Hardcover]

I made the mistake of assigning this book for CSE 5321 Software Testing (a graduate course) at the University of Texas at Arlington during the fall of 2008. I abandoned it 2/3 of the way into the semester. I replaced it with "Introduction to Software Testing" by Ammann & Offutt.

The title of my review pretty much says it all.

This is not a useless book, just nearly so. This was the textbook for a graduate class I just completed in software quality engineering. As I started reading the book, I was eager to learn about the topic and absorb what good insights and information the author had to share. In the first half of the book the author blathered on, saying nothing particularly interesting, useful or memorable. I got the impression as I read it that he was attempting to make a gentle introduction. What he achieved instead was to take what might have been a good supper, ground it up into bland and tedious mash, and fed it to you in a meal that you that you wished would just come to an end. It wasn't until I reached page 204 that I found something worth marking with a highlighter. I thought to myself that I had gotten through the tedium, the last half of the book would be better, and that I didn't need to leave the book unmarked for resale. That feeling came to an end 40 pages later, when the author returned to dull tedium. So the book wasn't all bad. Chapters 12 through 14 were interesting and well written. The remaining 90% of the book was not.

Takes a while to get used to the book. Not the easiest to understand
Lots of good information and concepts. Strongly recommended if you are willing to do the brain work