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A Word with the Wise: Configuration Management Tips from Steve Berczuk In this short interview with editor Joey McAllister, Steve Berczuk offers some tips to organizations dealing with configuration management (CM) issues.
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Result-driven Testing: Start Adding Value to Your Organization Within the test scene there is a vivid discussion about the necessity and use of a certification model for the test experts. The population of testers can be roughly divided into two groups: Firstly, a group that states that it will not do a better job when certified, because the current certifications like ISTQB and ISEB focus on methods and terminology, but fail to look at the practical testing skills of the tester [Bolton, 2008]. Secondly, a group who is pro certification and regards the testing industry as a young yet not fully grown profession that lacks certification models that other professions have been using for ages [Windsor 2007]. Meanwhile, voices are heard that the test profession is accepted in the IT industry and that it has actually grown into a mature profession. The website of the last EuroSTAR conference stated that a mature profession has clearly-defined standards, codes of conduct, and a number of levels of professional competence. Having all those, we might conclude that the testing profession has indeed earned its place among the IT-professions.
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CM Planning for a Downturn in the Economy The end of 2008 presents us with a very weak economy. We hear the words economic crisis, gloomy outlook, recession, and economic decline in the news again and again. We are also seeing small to massive layoffs in a number of sectors and IT is certainly not immune. The question for those CM'ers in light of this economic downturn is how do I adjust my configuration management (CM) planning for the coming year when budgets are being slashed and projects are being cancelled?
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Determine How a Vendor's Tool Will Support Your Project CM Plan I've seen countless sets of requirements and RFIs come my way for acquiring new CM/ALM tools. However, it is a very rare occasion when I see a company actually publish (and send out) the project CM Plan to potential tool vendors. In my most recent encounter of this approach, the pitch was: How would you change this plan based on your CM/ALM solution for us? This project has it right—not just a set of requirements, but an actual CM Plan, and not so much, "What does your tool do?" as, "What will our CM Plan look like with your solution?"
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CM Planning in Turbulent Times In Turbulent economic times such as the recent days, it is reasonable to assume that while some things will be reduced or cut, (e.g. human resources and budgets), others (e.g. documentation) will be maintained or even increased. So, what can we do to create effective and accurate CM Plans?
In this article I'd like to show some essential points for effective CM planning, which can offer a solution of reducing costs, based on the IEEE 828 standards. Basically, the goal is to reduce quantity but not quality.
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God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen As a piece of Christmas cheer we bring you a traditional olde English carol. It is believed that this particular carol was sung to programmers by configuration managers to earn additional money during the Christmas season. The lyrics (including mention of Mil-STD-973 and CMM among other themes) are reputed to date back to the 15th century although the author is unknown. We have been lucky enough to track down a recording of this traditional carol—click the start button.
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GIT For Basics Editor's Note: Recently, I asked my colleague, Dilip, to give me an article describing his own experience learning a CM tool that I was not familar with myself. The best part of writing for CM Crossroads is that we get reports from people who actually know and understand how these products work in the real world. Please take a look at Dilip's excellent article and get ready to share your best practices and experience next!
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Tool Choice as a Quality Issue We need to choose an SCM tool. It will mean some work to make the choice and then more work to put it into practice. At least we don’t have to worry about it from a quality perspective, though. After all, the tools we choose to employ don’t affect the quality of the software we produce. Do they? Well, let’s think about this a bit. Hmmmmmm…
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Selecting a CM/ALM Tool That Will Add Value to All Users Selecting a CM/ALM tool is no small task these days. The CM/ALM tool is no longer just another developer tool, such as a compiler or IDE environment. Instead, it forms the backbone of a development organization. It will strongly influence an organization's ability to measure and control quality, meet schedules, comply to requirements and assess development costs. It will also be the central focus for all development processes. It will support a key knowledge base, and will be viewed as the vault for both software and product assets.
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Getting Started with Agile SCM A prerequisite to any of the Agile SCM practices, such as integration build, private build, unit tests, and the like, is being able to set up a developer’s private workspace with the right code and tools so that you can code, build and test. In this article, we discuss the important, and often overlooked process of creating a development workspace, which is to say, getting started.
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