INSIDE the Rise of Tech

This book tells two, intertwined stories. Both stories begin in the 1980's, during the golden age of computer mainframes, and take the reader through time to the current era of iPhones and Alexa. One story takes you behind the scenes of how business software was made during the author's 25-year career as a Tech Consultant. The author is not a computer programmer,and the reader doesn't need to be tech savvy to understand and appreciate this book. During the author's career, she...
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This book tells two, intertwined stories. Both stories begin in the 1980's, during the golden age of computer mainframes, and take the reader through time to the current era of iPhones and Alexa. One story takes you behind the scenes of how business software was made during the author's 25-year career as a Tech Consultant. The author is not a computer programmer,and the reader doesn't need to be tech savvy to understand and appreciate this book. During the author's career, she participated in software teams as a Technical Writer, a Business Analyst, a Project Manager, and a User Interface Designer. She tells us why these roles are part of what she calls the "Cleanup Crew." In her time on the Cleanup Crew, she had responsibility for making the software understandable and pleasing to its target users. She explains why the Cleanup Crew almost always failed at this task, leaving users, over and over, with software that was hard to use. She takes us inside the Tech software teams and introduces us to the Lords of Tech. That's when she reveals the details of what went so wrong with the software development process that gave business users software they struggled to use. She explains why the inside workings of Tech teams always put users last, and why no one on the project team suffered for it. Interwoven with this account is her personal story. She tells us how she fell into the Tech world by chance, after starting her professional life as a university professor. We learn how she became a committed technophile, yet abandoned her success as a Technical Writer to build a new career in User Experience (UX) Design. Through it all, she shows us why Tech will always be an exciting field of endeavor whose potential is unlimited.