Book excerpt: In Improving Software Development Productivity, legendary software engineering expert Dr. Randall Jensen introduces a proven quantitative approach to achieving high productivity through management support, the ability to communicate, and technology. Jensen demonstrates how to measure organizational capacity and productivity, and use that information to build more accurate estimates and schedules -- and, more broadly, to improve many facets of developer and team performance. Students will learn to quantitatively predict the productivity impact of management decisions related to personnel and management style, development environment, product constraints, technology, development systems, and more.