Articles

Signs Build or Buy? 5 Reasons Why Your Application Needs an Error Monitoring System Versus Building Your Own

The best way to ensure users have a positive customer experience is to use error monitoring to catch errors in real time so you can respond immediately. Error monitoring provides hope for avoiding poor app store ratings and for keeping customers satisfied.

James Smith's picture James Smith
Examining code The Risks of Measuring Technical Debt

If your organization measures technical debt, have you really considered why you're doing this, and what you will do with that information once it has been gathered? Just because you can measure technical debt doesn't mean you should. Before you start (or continue) measuring technical debt, it's important to recognize that there are consequences.

Wayne Ariola's picture Wayne Ariola Cynthia Dunlop
Blender: Blended IT analytics Smashing the Silos with Blended Analytics

While significant progress has been made in leveraging analytics for better operational insights, today’s IT operations analytics solutions still operate in silos. To really reap the benefits and promise of analytics, IT decision-makers need to break these silos and apply an approach that combines many different major sources of information: blended analytics.

Sasha Gilenson's picture Sasha Gilenson
Agile ALM for Delivering Customer Value: Getting Started

In this first part of a two-part series, Mario Moreira writes that a reasonable application lifecycle management (ALM) product will have a common user interface for utilizing the ALM functionality. It will also include a meta-model and process engine to parse and share information across and amongst the various functions within the ALM framework. These technical needs must be accompanied by a strong business case for delivering higher customer value and new approaches for seamless integration.

Mario  Moreira's picture Mario Moreira

Better Software Magazine Articles

Pitfalls of Developing for the IoT

The Internet of Things (IoT) enables amazing software-powered devices designed to make our business and personal lives easier. Lev Lesokhin discusses four fundamental practices you'll need when developing sophisticated software for the IoT.

Lev Lesokhin's picture Lev Lesokhin
Does Your Code Suffer from Broken Windows?

Common practice suggests that lower severity defects shouldn't hold up a product release. Jennifer Gosden believes that, just as broken windows in a home can invite crime, letting lower severity defects linger results in poor
overall product quality.

Jennifer Gosden's picture Jennifer Gosden
Why Do Defects Escape?

What happens when defects go unnoticed until it is too late? Mayank provides an insightful view of the true cost of not providing enough test coverage during a software development lifecycle. He also suggests some techniques to ensure that defects are identified and mitigated early.

Mayank Sharma's picture Mayank Sharma
Feeling Lost in the Woods? Mind Maps Can Help

Claire takes us on a nontraditional journey where designing and implementing testing approaches can be rapidly organized into a hierarchy of connected elements. Mind maps, used primarily for visual and conceptual thinking, may be just the answer for quality assurance professionals.

Claire Moss's picture Claire Moss

Interviews

Mining a Data Lake to Improve Analysis of Your Test Automation Data: An Interview with Greg Paskal
Video

In this interview, Greg Paskal, a technology innovator in quality assurance, discusses a new open source tool from Elastic Stack that creates a “data lake” that can be mined to analyze the data coming from test automation on a more effective level than pass/fail. 

Jennifer Bonine's picture Jennifer Bonine
David Oddis talks about defect analysis and test management Defect Analysis and Managing Testing in Multiple SDLCs: An Interview with David Oddis
Video

David Oddis talks about the importance of having an effective defect analysis process, as well as insight on how to manage testing across various SDLCs and the challenges it could present for teams. He also shares his opinions on today's hot topics.

Conference Presentations

Collocated East Logo Detection Theory Applied to Finding and Fixing Defects
Slideshow

Detection theory says: When trying to detect a certain event, a person can correctly report that it happened, miss it, report a false alarm, or correctly report that nothing happened. Under conditions of uncertainty, the decision to report an event is strongly influenced by how likely it...

Ru Cindrea, Altom Consulting
What Do Defects Really Cost? Much More Than You Think
Slideshow

As software increasingly becomes the face of the business, defects can lead to embarrassment, financial loss, and even business failure. Nevertheless, in response to today's demand for speed and “continuous everything,” the software delivery conveyer belt keeps moving faster and faster...

Wayne Ariola, Parasoft
Orthogonal Defect Classification: An Agile Test/QA Primer
Slideshow

Can defect root cause analysis be made agile? Can we transform a multi-hour task from the classical world of software engineering into one that takes minutes and yields greater insights? Learn how Orthogonal Defect Classification (ODC) extracts semantics from defects and turns them into insights on the development process using analytics. After a quick overview of ODC, Ram Chillarege presents a case study to illustrate the method using real-world data on an agile project. They used ODC Triggers to measure test effectiveness at the end of every sprint to evaluate the effectiveness of testing compared to earlier sprints. This ODC process takes just minutes and brings its insight into the realm of the agile development practices. Put a powerful analytical technique in your agile toolbox to increase the velocity of your agile project and find new ways to reduce defects while measuring the quality of testing.

Ram Chillarege, Chillarege Inc.
Massive Continuous Integration and Light-speed Iterations
Slideshow

Continuous integration (CI) has become a buzzword, with most engineering organizations claiming they've adopted the practice. However, the sad truth is that unreliable tests, long feedback loops, and poor configuration management block their efforts and minimize CI's potential benefits. Jesse Dowdle shares how AtTask radically redesigned its engineering pipeline and, through massive CI scaling, drove three days of testing to just minutes. Learn the pros and cons of different CI systems and how to integrate them with the cloud. Watch a live demo of AtTask's internal test and CI systems, which they’ve designed to make "Every commit a potential release candidate"-meaning that every commit is an iteration. Arm yourself with the talking points to sell massive CI to executives.

Jesse Dowdle, AtTask, Inc.

CMCrossroads is a TechWell community.

Through conferences, training, consulting, and online resources, TechWell helps you develop and deliver great software every day.