A study conducted by The Standish Group in 2000 indicated that approximately 75 percent of software projects fell short of their stated goals, or failed altogether. With the myriad of supremely useful Open Source tools and utilities now widely available, and the maturation of successful lightweight software methods, there would seem to no longer be any reason for a project to accept anything short of complete success. However, a majority of software projects still fail. The key to success, as put forth in this new book, lies in a proper healthy balance between useful tools and proven practices. Application development experts Chao and Kaljuvee show Java practitioners how to find the proper balance for their projects. The advice put forth in this book is, above all, extremely practical. The authors show the reader how to conceive, write, test, refactor, and deploy better code. If practitioners adhere to the best practices, proven methods, and overall common sense put forth in this book, less software projects will fail. * Helps programmers and managers alike keep projects on track by illustrating the healthy balance between methodology and tools * Shows how to effectively use Ant, Junit, HTTPUnit, Cactus, JMeter, CruiseControl, Maven, Eclipse and more! Readership: The book is written to optimize the execution of Java-based projects. Therefore a very wide range of software professionals, from architects to programmers to testers to project managers, will gain value from the book. The authors assume a basic understanding of Java.