Steve McConnell is president and chief software engineer at Construx Software, where he divides his time between leading custom software projects, teaching classes, and writing books and articles. He is the author of the Microsoft Press books Code Complete (1993), Rapid Development (1996), and Software Project Survival Guide (1998). His books have twice won Software Development magazine's Jolt Excellence Award for outstanding software development book of the year. In 1998, readers of Software Development named Steve one of the three most influential people in the software industry along with Bill Gates and Linus Torvalds. In his spare time, Steve serves as editor in chief of IEEE Software magazine. He is on the panel of experts that provides advice to the Software Engineering Body of Knowledge (SWEBOK) project, and is a member of IEEE and ACM. Steve earned a bachelor's degree from Whitman College and a master's degree in software engineering from Seattle University. He lives in Bellevue, Washington with his wife, Tammy; daughter, Haley; and dog, Daisy. If you have any comments or questions about this book, please contact Steve via e-mail at [email protected] or via his web site at http://www.construx.com/stevemcc/.