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Understanding Variation and Stability: The Key to Managing Your Software Process The control chart is a form of instrumentation that acts like a pressure gauge in the world of software development. It provides critical data to help guide the decisions made by software engineers and managers. This presentation shares the results of studies using statistical process control analysis to monitor and adjust software process improvement activities. It also highlights the correlation between the use of control charts and improved processes.
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Anita Carleton and William Florac, Software Engineering Institute
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IS and IT Benchmarking: Current Status Are you having trouble making a business case for benchmarking at your organization? Mark Czarnecki delivers his benchmarking expertise in a presentation designed to help participants impact their corporate culture as well as their benchmarking abilities. He reviews the current status of information systems and technology benchmarking, and he explains current benchmarking theory. The presentation also covers generalized database sources for benchmarking.
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Mark Czarnecki, The Benchmarking Network, Inc.
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Requirements Are Requirements Are Requirements - Not! "This isn't what I need," states Customer Bob. "But it's what you said you wanted," replies Engineer Joe. "It's not right. I need something else." We've all encountered this classic users-don't-know-what-they-want scenario. The fact that software professionals continue to have this same experience over and over again suggests that we're overlooking the real reasons for the user/engineer disconnect. This presentation contrasts the different uses of the term "requirements" as it explores the possible solutions to improving understanding between business people and technical people.
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Robin Goldsmith, GoPro Management, Inc.
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Get Real! Creating Realistic, Actionable Project Schedules The preparation of a realistic, practical project schedule is an essential management function for obtaining stakeholder commitment, setting expectations, and communicating within the team and organization what is achievable. Doing this preparation well is another challenge-one that must be conquered. Rex Black helps participants see the bigger project scheduling picture by focusing on issues such as constituent tasks, the underlying dependencies between them, and the risks attached to the completion of those tasks.
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Rex Black, Rex Black Consulting Services, Inc.
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Measurement and the CMM: How Measurement Practices Evolve People who use the Capability Maturity Model (CMM) for software often struggle with the apparent paradigm shift as they move from level to level, particularly when they reach Level four in the CMM one to five level scheme. This presentation illustrates the characteristics of a measurement program at the different CMM maturity levels. It particularly seeks to demystify the Level four concepts of process capability and process performance baselines, and how these concepts are applicable to all CMM levels. The presenter uses real-world examples from a variety of mid- to high-maturity organizations to show participants how to make the transitions across CMM levels without losing momentum.
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Charlie Weber and Beth Layman, TeraQuest Metrics
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Refocusing Software Development in the New Economy A changing economy and fiercely competitive market have raised the bar on what we expect from software development efficiency. But are we getting the degree of productivity we expect? Quite often these questions are never answered adequately, and we don't have the measurement systems required to gain the needed insight. Ram Chillarege's presentation highlights some key principles and methods to help project teams gain the reporting edge they need. This refocusing of software development can make the difference between failed execution and success.
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Ram Chillarege, Chillarege Corp.
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Building a Learning QA Organization As managers, we're stewards of our company's assets. Each team's capacity to learn-and rate of learning-should be treated as something to be developed, just like coding skills and other intangible corporate assets. Like many software teams, the QA team needs to be able to ramp up fast. However, due to the diversity of projects and customers, they need to know and grow even faster than most. Bill Goleman shares tricks of the learning trade and shows managers how to enhance team learning skills at little or no cost to the company.
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Bill Goleman, Mangosoft, Inc.
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Using a Process Database for Transition to CMM Level 4 When competition requires better, cheaper, and faster projects, organizations seek a quantitative understanding of productivity and quality. Moving to Capability Maturity Model (CMM) Level four or implementing a Six Sigma program helps provide that understanding. However, a frequently encountered problem is the lack of predictable processes or the lack of consistent data about these processes. Rick Hefner explains how to develop and maintain a corporate repository of historical performance and quality that's driven by business goals. He also shows how this method enabled TRW to better characterize its processes and meet increasing demands for productivity and quality.
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Rick Hefner, TRW Systems
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Did Your Tests Pass or Fail? Answering with Automation Automated tests using self-verifying data (SVD) can help determine if your query-type tests have the right information or if they are showing you the expected views. In this presentation, Noel Nyman provides a brief overview of an SVD testing method followed by a demonstration of automation techniques that allow you to run random tests on SVDs with millions of records or entries. Using applications such as Microsoft Office, learn how to adapt the techniques taught in this presentation to many different types of applications using most of the common automation tools.
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Noel Nyman, Microsoft
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Applying Development Best Practices to Automated Testing Test automation is a specialized form of software development where executable code is produced for the validation and testing process. Many best practices have been identified to allow developers to code more quickly, efficiently, and correctly, but few test automators have adopted these practices. Learn about several of these "best practices"-including code reviews and coding standards-that can be applied to automated test development. Discover how you, as an automated test developer, can capitalize on the benefits provided by these practices.
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Andy Tinkham, Spherion Technology Architects
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