The Latest
When Large Teams Shrink[article] Ben Weatherall addresses what happens when large teams shrink to the extent that they are considered small. There are several situations where this commonly happens—for example, when a team has been raided by other teams, when the majority of the work has been accomplished and a large team is no longer needed, or when the corporate situation is such that downsizing occurs. |
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End-of-Release Branching Strategies[article] This two-part article explores branching strategies—development tactics that allow teams to work concurrently on different features and maintain the relationship between them. In part one, Steve Berczuk explains what branches are, common types of them, and the tradeoffs between branching styles. |
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An Introduction to Scala[magazine] Scala is a programming language that blends functional and object-oriented language features. Scala programs run on the Java Virtual Machine and can easily interact with Java code. Learn how Scala can yield concise, safe, and compatible code and how you can start learning Scala on your own. |
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Agile Light Bulb Moments[magazine] Many of us have our personal identities wrapped up in our jobs, which can make change hard, particularly in agile environments. Recognizing the power of storytelling, Michele Sliger started collecting first-person stories about how adopting agile affected individuals and what their "light bulb moment" was like. Find out how agile adoptions have changed individuals—their perceptions of agile, their leadership styles, and even their personal lives. |
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Busted: 5 Myths of Testing Regulated Software[magazine] Testing regulated software is often seen as a tedious job that generates stacks of documentation and is subject to crippling rules. See five of these assumptions exposed as mere myths, and learn how regulated testers can use the same approaches, techniques, and tools at any other tester's disposal while still passing a process audit. |
John McConda
November 1, 2010 |
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The Optimists Don't Make It Out[magazine] Optimism is normally viewed as a positive trait, but not when it comes to goals and estimates. Project managers who don their rose-colored glasses when faced with the harsh light of reality are setting themselves up for disappointment. |
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Software Is Art[article] We can measure, study, and understand the interactions between software and individual users, but what tools exist to understand the interaction among software creators, the software itself, and millions of users? Chris McMahon says we can't look to computer science, engineering, or manufacturing for tools to understand the experience of a large audience. Instead we should look to the performing arts for help understanding the audience experience. |
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Agility Throughout the LifeCycle: The Rise of DevOps[article] DevOps is steadily gaining traction and currency, particularly in the world of web apps. Below you will find an introduction and some pointers to resources and further reading. Many DevOps principles have been around for a long time. This is similar to agile methods and, in some ways, a repackaging of existing principles. |
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Welcome to the NEW CMCrossroads[article] Welcome! We have been working behind the scenes to build a new Drupal-based framework for CMCrossroads.com. We've migrated the most valuable articles and converted the forum style discussions to a new Q&A format. Please give us your feedback and suggestions. |
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Cloud-Driven Development[article] Agile methodologies aren't the only way to empower your team; utilizing cloud-driven development is another great way to improve processes throughout the development lifecycle. Testing can be done earlier, and costs can be saved, by turing toward the cloud on your next project. |
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Beyond Configuration Management into Application Lifecycle Management—Just a Change of Focus?[article] CM is an important driver for development productivity, yet remains often overlooked when discussing how the development lifecycle could be optimized. Often, this happens because of the perceived complexity of parallel strategies and additional overhead. However, today’s CM tools offer powerful capabilities that allow users to tap into that potential. |
Mike Shepard
October 19, 2010 |
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Personality Challenges Inherent in Shifting from CM into ALM[article] This month’s topic is a paradigm shift that requires that we move from focusing narrowly on the CM function to the much broader Application Lifecycle Management (ALM) view. I know people who cannot make this shift. From a personality perspective, these folks have great difficulty seeing the big picture and the more comprehensive lifecycle view required by ALM. There are good reasons for these problems, and in this article we’ll examine the personality challenges inherent in shifting from CM into ALM. |
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The Beauty of Agile in the Cloud[article] As compared to other development methods, agile is clear, straightforward, and rewarding for all of those who are involved in the process. Most of you know this already—that’s why you’re here! Clearly, a successful transition to agile requires a strong organizational commitment and a number of management and development changes. With that in mind, the white-hot movement to this trend over the past year continues to amaze me. In striking parallel, the industry has seen this same sort of resonance around the trend to the “cloud”—secure anywhere access by distributed teams to a centralized set of services and compute resources that span the complete lifecycle of the development and deployment process. |
Bill Portelli
October 18, 2010 |
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Moving Beyond Configuration Management to Application Lifecycle Management[article] Perhaps when there was less market pressure, or fewer applications and products with far fewer computers, it was fine to focus on software design and implementation. Joe Farah writes that in those days of old, managing the new flexibility and capabilities afforded by software was the big challenge, but we've come a long way since then. |
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Lightweight Application Lifecycle Management Using State-Cards[article] It is a well known fact that all applications are different; all application development teams are different. So, why should we expect application lifecycle management to be fixed? There is no such thing as “one size fits all.” Yet, it is also common sense that there must be something in common, as otherwise there is absolutely no way to learn from experience and mistakes. The challenge is then to find a middle ground that is easy to communicate to the development team and stakeholders. |