I used this book as my only study material to pass ASQ's Certified Software Quality Engineer last week.
The book is divided in 7 Parts - General Knowledge, Software Quality Management, Systems and Software Engineering Processes, Project Management, Software Metrics and Analysis, Software Verification and Validation and Software Configuration Management.
In all, the book has 28 Chapters and 758 pages.
As someone who comes from Hardware background and does not have a whole lot of end to end process exposure in how mature Software companies handle Software development, all the way from eliciting requirements to software maintenance along with organizational level processes such as CMMI, audits, situational leadership, QMS and Ethical/Legal Compliance etc - this book did a great job of introducing them all to me holistically and tying them all together.
I do have some gibes with this book though
I really thought with such diverse topics covered in the book, the table of content was not deep enough to serve its purpose. The book could be more coherent. At several spots, I saw the same topics repeated in different chapters for eg - V&V Plan, Reliability, etc The book provides a lot of diagrams to explain the texts which is appreciated but more details can be added to the diagram as an improvement - eg. Branching and Merging. It also came with a CD containing 3 Test question sets with solutions. I thought the test questions were quite different from the ones asked in the real exam. I only completed 1 of the question sets, as I didn't have much time to prep.
All and All, the book served the objective I had in mind when I picked it up ie - Introduce me holistically to the Software Development Process and help me pass the exam - so I can't say the book is ineffective.
The author does a great job of covering the ASQ SQE BOK. I also like her "step-by-step" process breakdown in her examples. These expanded tutorials can easily be plugged into any organization with minimal changes.
I recommend this book to anyone preparing for the ASQ exam or just curious about software development. A very good book.