There are a million-and-one potholes that can trip up a business, even when buying from an otherwise effective and reputable seller, and this book looks to make it far more likely that the reader will buy the right system, at the right price.

Chapter 1: Going shopping Chapter 2: Functional Specification Chapter 3: The Shape of the Solution Chapter 4: Finding the Supplier Chapter 5: Commissioning Chapter 6: Project Management Chapter 7: Resourcing Chapter 8: Special Considerations for Bespoke Software Chapter 9: Dealing with Variations Chapter 10: Testing Chapter 11: Dealing with Failure Chapter 12: Lessons from Fred Brooks

Matthew Reynolds is the CEO of "It's What's Next IT", a consultancy and IT support business. He's a 30-year professional within the UK software industry. He has helped scores of SMEs over his career to build and implement better IT systems. He works as a combined "technical project mediator" and expert witness. It's his job to either rescue failed or failing project so that they can deliver the value that was intended in the first place, or to help the business to effectively litigate against suppliers.
Matthew wrote his first book on software engineering, Beginning E-commerce in 1999 for Wrox Press. Since, he has authored or co-authored a half-dozen more books for Wrox Press in addition to publishing with O'Reilly and Kogan Page. He was also a columnist for the Guardian and general consumer and business computing, and was also a columnist for ZDNet.