This practical, hands-on guide captures, categorizes, and builds a process of best practices to help avoid creating defects during the development process--rather than fixing them after extensive analysis. While there are various proprietary and competing standards for reducing software defects, these methods suffer from issues involving timeliness, effectiveness, and cost. What's more, many other books focus on fixing errors after they've been introduced or promote idealized academic theories. This guide, however, presents practical methods for reducing defect introduction through prevention and immediate detection and by moving the detection of defects closer to their introduction. Written by experts with over a century of software development experience among them, this book distills hard-won lessons into a single, workable lifecycle process that will help deliver better-quality software. Visit the Defect Prevention Web site at http: //www.defectprevention.org