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Open Source, and other Dumb Ideas It was way back when I was in school, walking uphill through the snow both ways, mind. That's when I first encountered Emacs and the Free Software Foundation. Because I was young and naïve and enthusiastic, I jumped in with both feet. Free software was going to revolutionize the world, and I was going to write most of it! I was naïve, like I said. I think most FOSS (free/open-source software) people get started in school, the same as me. A lot of the ideas come from the young and idealistic. Face it: young people have dumb ideas.
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Affordable Peer Reviews Many people know that peer reviews can help them to produce better-quality products, but most organizations do not use this potent tool. Why? Because, although they would like to experience the quality benefits, they can't justify the costs they would incur.
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A Look Ahead to the Third Generation of CM Tools Every year we like to take a look at where the CM industry is going. There are always two sides to the story. Where is technology moving, and where is the market moving? Technology is moving ahead at a good clip, from some vendors, while stagnant with others. The same can be said of the market. There are those looking at a full ALM solution or an Enterprise CM solution, while there are others who are looking primarily for a version control/build tool, possibly with some change management.
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Don't Wait, Innovate! Our test teams often struggle for so long ... to do so much ... with so little, and they usually manage to just squeak by. In the next cycle when asked to do even more with even less, they are likely to fail. Working harder and smarter isn't enough-the rules of the game must change. Innovation is the currency of success. Using his experiences from several years of success (and a few months of failure) in driving innovation, Heath Newburn will show you how-through innovation-you can drastically increase your team's value and your contributions to your organization. Uncover the secrets to managing change and learn: how to systematically create innovation and foster creativity, how to generate ideas and use your whole team to identify and build on the best of those ideas, how to implement a plan for success, and how to overcome the inevitable obstacles with the six secrets "they" don't want you to know.
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Heath Newburn, IBM Global Services
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Who's in Control of Process and Tools in your Organisation / Project? There is an age old debate about who's responsible for quality in software. Some people have quality teams, others dedicate quality to testing.
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Version Control Is a Collaboration Tool Why do version control? I remember the first time I learned about version control. It was for a SunOS based project, and my manager told me to learn SCCS, and put all of our sources in it. Its been years since I've used SCCS, and I am not always sure if it had features I also remember in RCS and PVCS. They are all similar tools. Since those younger years, I've learned that version control is much more than a glorified file repository, and has more to do with people working toghether, collaborating on their project code base.
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Persuading Management to Invest in a Formal Team Development Process A vendor left me a phone message. He began by thanking me for visiting his booth at a conference at which I was a speaker. He told me that his product was just what I needed and would solve some of my biggest problems. He also assured me that I would benefit in many ways. Finally, he then asked if I would call him back so we could continue the conversation
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ABCs of BPD (Build, Package, and Deploy) Many in the software engineering world consider build, package, and deploy the core areas of configuration management (CM). To highlight this, many CM jobs are titled “build engineer” or “release engineer” with responsibilities that focus on the tasks of building, packaging, and deploying releases.
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Is It Upward Compatible? I want to touch on one of the most basic and fundamental issues of configuration management that developers have to deal with. A common question addressed early on in a project is: Do I need to branch this software and maintain a parallel version? A common answer is: Well, if it's not upward compatible.
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Making Incremental Integration Work for You Recent CM Crossroads posts have suggested that a branch-per-change branching strategy is good because it gives you the ability to maintain a stable "main" trunk, while integrating a change at a time if you want. As Joseph Reedick put it in one of his responses:
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