The Latest
A Recap of the Last Decade of Configuration Management[article] Joe Farah looks back at the last ten years to see where CM and ALM has come from and then forward another ten to see where it's going. In some ways, a lot has happened in the past decade, but in other ways, the progress has been painfully slow. |
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Flickering Test Failures and End-to-End Tests[article] In "Growing Object Oriented Software Guided By Tests", Steve Freeman and Nat Pryce talk about the dangers of tests that occasionally fail, otherwise known as flickering tests. These failures can cause teams to start seeing these failures as false positives, and distrust their build results. I know - it's happened to me, especially with end-to-end Selenium tests. |
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Small Teams in a Large Organization[article] Ben Weatherall writes that the need to tailor existing SCM tools should be kept to a minimum and the solutions be implemented is such a way as to be reused in the future. Additional SCM requirements for these teams over and above those already in place are generally modest. |
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What HR Doesn't Know about Scrum[magazine] Scrum's relentless "inspect-and-adapt" cycle leads to change beyond software development practices. Scrum teams have reported changes in the way they think about human resources management. This article outlines ways Scrum teams may want to modify HR's beliefs and practices. |
Michael James
January 13, 2010 |
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Oh, When Will They Ever Learn?[magazine] After reading the book The Day the Phones Stopped, which was published in 1991, Lee began wondering why the poor software quality and complaints about development and testing documented in this book are the same complaints we hear today. |
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Crowdsourced Software Testing[magazine] In response to shrinking budgets and tight launch deadlines, crowdsourced software testing is a growing trend. Here are six ways an on-demand testing team can complement your in-house QA efforts. |
Doron Reuveni
January 13, 2010 |
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Offer Appreciations[magazine] We don't always appreciate the power of taking a moment to reflect on past performance. Find out how real change can happen when a team invests in time together. |
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Virtual Labs in the Cloud[magazine] Learn how to overcome infrastructure management challenges using virtual lab automation, and discover which cloud—private, public, or hybrid—best meets your organization's needs. |
Ravi Gururaj
January 13, 2010 |
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Finding Nuggets in the IT Gold Mine[magazine] Development teams often are unaware of the commercial impacts of the software improvements they deliver. Often, the prioritization of work is done based on technical, rather than commercial, considerations. Based on a real-world example, this story explores the commercial benefits enabled by delivering in short release cycles and prioritizing according to bottom-line benefits. |
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The Right Business Analysis Tool[magazine] The continued rise of the business analysis profession has led to a surge in software tools specifically designed for the business analyst. Find out what types of tools are in the marketplace today and how to select the right business analysis software tool for your organization. |
Matthew Leach
January 13, 2010 |
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Swan Song: How Testers Can Find Improbable and Unexpected Errors[magazine] Black Swans, in the book by Nassim Nicholas Taleb, are improbable and unexpected events with a severe impact. One of the most important goals of testing is to find problems in the product. What can testers do to help reduce the likelihood that we'll encounter a Black Swan? |
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Volunteering to Help and Learn[article] At the Agile 2009 Conference, the LiveAid lab created an iPhone application to enable people to donate to the Mano a Mano charitable organization. This lab was an opportunity for participants to learn something new, practice their craft, donate their time to a worthy cause, and meet other folks. By the end of the conference, the application was working and had collected over $10,000 in donations.
Let's take a deeper look at these opportunities: |
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Agile Teamwork - A Stumbling Block or a Stepping Stone to High Performance?[article] Back in the 90’s self-managed teams were all the rage but they had a high rate of failure mainly because team members lacked people skills. These ideas of self-managed teams were borrowed by the Agile movement when in 2001 they formulated a ‘new’ way of working, based on Agile principles. However, self-managed teams only work well when team members understand a lot about human behavior and why people do the things they do!
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Embracing Kanban: An Experience Report[presentation] Early in 2004, Chris Shinkle's company began adopting agile practices. Unfortunately, agile did not have the desired cultural impact within their organization-and the adoption floundered. |
Chris Shinkle, SEP INC
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Agile Architecture: Patterns and Technology[presentation] Despite our wishing it were so, software architecture is not static throughout a project, especially within an agile development environment. |
Kirk Knoernschild, Burton Group
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