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Throughput or Productivity?[article] I’m tech-editing an article for the Agile Journal. I’m having a discussion with the author about the words “productivity” and “throughput.” I believe that what we measure in agile teams is throughput, the number of features through the team over time. I don’t think we measure productivity, the number of features per person or per team over time. In kanban, it’s quite clear. We measure throughput. To me, it’s clear in iterations, too. We measure throughput. |
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Software Configuration Management for Cloud, Mobile, and Database Development[article] Supporting cloud, mobile, and database development sounds like a remarkably technical endeavor. In practice, personality issues between team members can impact just how effectively you handle these complex technical efforts. |
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Patterns and The Storytelling Animal[article] I had the good fortune to be involved in the early days of the Software Patterns. In brief, patterns are about capturing solutions that people have developed organically over time, which have proven to be the best ones for the context at hand. What's interesting about patterns to those who are used to more academic approaches to learning about software, is that a good pattern isn't novel. If you've been working in a domain for a time you are likely to recognize solutions you have used before. |
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Heard and Valued: Three Short and Useful Bits of Advice for Improving Your Leadership Skills[article] Yogi Berra famously said, “You can observe a lot just by watching.” In this article, Payson shares some of what he’s learned about leadership just by listening. Learn how transparency and iterative improvement can maximize the results of great leadership. |
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No One Left Behind: Make Time for Accessibility Testing[magazine] Ten percent of the world's population lives with some sort of disability. So, is your software product optimized accessible to these people? Rajini Padmanaban takes a look at the different types of disabilities out there and the ways to ensure your product works well with as many of these needs as possible. |
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Have the Orders Changed?[article] One of the great things about being a parent is that you have an excuse to re-read some classic books. My five year old and I have been reading The Little Prince |
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A Conversation with Rajini Padmanaban[article] Rajini Padmanaban is the director of engagement at QA InfoTech. She will be speaking about crowdsourced software testing at the STAREAST conference in April, so I took this opportunity to learn a bit more about crowdsourced testing and find out why it is better than traditional testing in some projects. |
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How Database Change Management Helps Drive Operational Excellence[article] In this article, Yaniv Yehuda examines how Database Change Management (DCM) must be embraced by everyone on board when creating a successful deployment strategy. Learn how deadlines are more easily met and releases become more reliable with this strategy. |
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On Beauty, Quality, and Relativity[article] The saying “beauty is in the eye of the beholder” rings true whether you’re staring at a centuries-old painting, listening to a busker’s music reflect off the tiles in a subway station, or testing software. It’s one thing to evaluate quality, but how do we evaluate how we evaluate quality? |
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Executive Interview: Mughees Minhas, Oracle[magazine] Mughees Minhas is the senior director of product management for Redwood Shores-based Oracle Corporation where he specializes in application testing, database performance diagnostics, and data center monitoring and optimization. We recently had the opportunity to talk to Mughees about the rise of the cloud, market consolidation, and risk management. |
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Is There a Quality Spectrum?[magazine] A letter from the Better Software magazine editor. |
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Does Agile Change the Way a Tester Works?[magazine] In this installment of FAQ, SQE Trainer Jeffery Payne answers one of the questions students ask him most often. |
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Agile Code for Agile Teams[magazine] What makes a team agile? Is it in the way it plans projects or how it engineers its products? In this article, Steve Berczuk explains how agile code and technical practices can help a team stay agile across the product lifecycle. |
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Is There a Place in the Agile World for Tools?[article] When folks started moving to agile development around the turn of the century, they first moved away from using certain automated tools. They did this mostly in order to get rid of project management tools and focus on face-to-face communications. This was a reasonable reaction to what had turned into a world of silos and automated workflow management. We developers were ridding ourselves of the mechanisms that produce all of that ceremony and reams of design documents. We would only use index cards and hand-drawn charts on a whiteboard. We didn’t want any tools to get in the way of the real work we were doing. |
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We're Not "Special"[article] Often, when I comment on someone's blog post or respond to a tweet with a story about how my team succeeded with some practice, someone replies, "Yeah, but your team is special." I interpret this as meaning, "You're a presenter and book author. You must be an expert, so of course your team can do anything." This frustrates the heck out of me. |
, and the story of the Lamp Lighter reminded of a common problem teams have with organizational inertia when trying to transition to agile software development.
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