Articles

Clock: ready for go-live Are You Ready for Go-Live? 8 Essential Questions

As real and daunting as scheduling pressures can be, they have to be balanced with the consequences of a potentially disastrous premature go-live. Don’t let all the reasons a system simply "must" be implemented by a target date overwhelm compelling evidence that it is not ready. Consider these eight questions honestly first.

Payson Hall's picture Payson Hall
Flowers blooming: growing configuration management Seven Lessons You Learn When Growing Your Configuration Management

When the number of employees, products, and releases you’re managing grows rapidly, that transformation introduces several challenges—and opportunities—in almost every aspect of configuration management. This article presents the major issues a company may face and the improvements you can make to processes and tools as a result.

Yossi Zinger's picture Yossi Zinger
DevOps Maturity Model Defining What’s Really Important in a DevOps Maturity Model

There is a lot more to DevOps than just single push-button deploys. While a DevOps maturity model can help measure where you are now and indicate where you need to get to as part of the DevOps transformation, it can be more useful to focus on the capabilities you need to measure: timely deployment and secure, reliable systems.

Bob Aiello's picture Bob Aiello
Benefits of DevOps Survey Results: Businesses Reap the Benefits of DevOps Practices

According to a global DevOps survey conducted by Rackspace, DevOps adoption is becoming more widespread and companies are beginning to see real and measurable business benefits from doing DevOps. However, resistance to establishing a new practice is to be expected. This article examines how to get companywide buy-in and get started on the road to DevOps.

Prashanth Chandrasekar's picture Prashanth Chandrasekar

Better Software Magazine Articles

Making the Move to Product-Driven Process

Just because you follow the rules of your software development process doesn't necessarily guarantee project success. According to David Hussman, there are four product-centered principles that everyone should practice.

David Hussman's picture David Hussman
Planning to Performance Test Your App? Think Again!

To complement functional validation, software teams are expected to validate performance. But, according to Jun Zhuang, you must be prepared to invest time, personnel, and resources to benefit from performance testing.

Jun Zhuang's picture Jun Zhuang
Is Agile Breaking Product Management?

It can be a challenge for a product manager to know how to lead an agile software team. As product managers take on many different roles throughout a project lifecycle, there can be confusion, resulting in the product manager doing what nobody else wants to do. Steve Johnson offers a perspective of the agile product manager that every software developer should know.

Steve Johnson's picture Steve Johnson
Monetization 2.0: The Evolution of Software Licensing

The cloud and the rapid migration to mobile devices and the Internet of Things have made traditional software licensing schemes obsolete. Omkar describes new software monetization based on business, pricing models, and usage.

Omkarnath Munipalle's picture Omkarnath Munipalle

Conference Presentations

Making the Marriage of Product and Engineering Thrive
Slideshow

y now you have probably heard that there should be a healthy tension between the product and engineering teams. The key word there is "healthy"—when this relationship is unhealthy, silos tend to form, ideas may be thrown over the wall, and a lack of ownership can develop. 

Vidya Dinamani
Agile Dev West 2018, Better Software West 2018, DevOps West 2018 Beating the Feature Factory Mindset
Slideshow

On a human level, we crave outcomes and impact. But in software product development, there is something addictive about the "build more and more features" approach that often leaves people frustrated and unsatisfied. Developers understand the challenges of working in output-focused environments and the adverse effects this has on productivity, morale, and business impact. Join John Cutler as he discusses these "feature factories," why they exist, how they impact your business, and how you can shift the focus to outcomes and impact. John thoroughly makes the case that churning out features is no longer a competitive advantage and can in fact harm your business and disengage your team. Instead, he will show you how to move your organization beyond the feature factory and toward an outcome-based way of working that increases employee engagement and customer satisfaction.

John Cutler
Agile DevOps Impact Maps: Let Your Goals Drive Your Product Features
Slideshow

Wouldn’t it be great if there were a way to combine quantified business goals, direct traceability from goals to features, surfacing of value assumptions, cause-and-effect analysis, design thinking, and visual facilitation in a single approach? Mathias Eifert says there is! Impact maps...

Mathias Eifert
Project Management Tips to Improve Test Planning
Slideshow

When done right, testing is more than test plans, test scripts, and executing tests. In fact a test leader should consider testing a sub-project of the larger development project. By applying the same techniques project managers use to plan and manage the overall project, test leaders can...

Ricki Henry, Clark County Nevada

CMCrossroads is a TechWell community.

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