What's In This Book, and Why Should I Read It?

The chapter explores the reasons that make good programming essential for every software designer. Producing products that are not profitable is the surest way to become unemployed. Therefore, while there may not be a direct cash benefit in producing profitable products, the alternative is definitely worse. The chapter explains the relationship between engineering and profitability. This means that if a profitable product produces the necessary surplus of cash required to fund new projects, and if engineers are responsible for the design of the profitable products, then, software and hardware engineers are directly responsible to generate designs that will produce the best product for the least cost. A typical product has multiple phases in its lifetime. The major ones are: product definition, design, initial production, sustained production, and end of life. Typically, the production and end-of-life numbers are estimated based on labor costs from similar recent products and a material cost based on a preliminary design and bill of material (BOM) from engineering.