The Latest
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Agile Distributed Development with Different Time Zones[article] Wipro recently completed a distributed agile transformation of a one-hundred-person team distributed throughout the UK, USA, Germany, and India within a four-month window. The engagement was a managed services model. The experience, recorded in this paper, confers why the agile process was chosen, how the transformation was accomplished, what challenges came up, and how retrospectives were used. |
Gauravdeep Kaberwal
September 3, 2009 |
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Growing Your Career in Tough Times[article] In these tough economic times, many testers can't access formal training. In this column, testing consultant Fiona Charles describes the wealth of low- or no-dollar resources available for professional development and invites readers to share their ideas. |
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A Leader Among Followers[article] We hear that for an effective organization to smoothly evolve and develop there should only be one leader and many followers. The reality is that the majority of most organizations are followers. Since an effective follower is critical to an organization and its ability to accomplish a mission, this article discusses what makes an effective follower. |
Laura Rose
August 31, 2009 |
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Fire Hydrant Lessons in Communication[article] A while ago we got a notice that the town would be installing a fire hydrant near our house. OK, fine. Weeks went by with no information about when it would happen. Then one Wednesday my husband was outside and saw a guy doing some marking and measuring. They started chatting. The guy said they'd be doing the installation two days later, on Friday. And almost as an afterthought, he mentioned that they'd be turning off our water for the duration. |
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Change Management is not Change Control[article] A key part of planning configuration management for our projects is determining how we will manage change. After all, change happens and any good configuration manager is concerned with how it is managed. Unfortunately, more often than not, our processes focus more on controlling change than on managing it. That is, we put a lot of effort into trying to keep change from happening and relatively less effort into ensuring that when (not if, but when) change happens, we manage it effectively. |
Alan S. Koch
August 20, 2009 |
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Avoiding Disaster: Get Your Team to Plan for Configuration Management[article] Poor planning is the root cause of many problems. Planning for configuration management can significantly impact your organization's productivity and effectiveness. Many teams live in a constant treadmill of responding to emergencies that could have easily been avoided with a little bit of planning. Some people just don't have the ability or demeanor to create an adequate plan, while others don't even want to. In technology, many professionals excel at responding to crisis after crisis and become known for their skills in "saving the day." At the other end of the spectrum are professionals who plan and plan but cannot find the right balance between planning and action. Fixating on creating a plan is just as deadly as having no plan at all. Technology managers need to be able to recognize the personality traits that make for good planners in their team and provide leadership to get the job done in an effective way. |
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Lessons for Environmentally Friendly Configuration Management[article] Learn how addressing the future of configuration manager as an environmentalist looks at the future of planet Earth can help you be ready for change, without ignoring what still must be done today. Chayim Kirshen shows you in this article how to both of these tasks in this article. |
Anonymous
August 17, 2009 |
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How to Build a Configuration Management Plan[article] If you're planning a configuration management (CM) project, it's time to build a CM Plan. Joe Farah writes on on a number of areas that need to be addressed in your plan in order to follow software configuration management (SCM) best practices. |
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Leave No Stones Unturned[article] Every test manager's nightmare is finding out that not enough testing has been done. And the paradox lies in the fact that enough testing often comes with a heavy tag in terms of cost and efforts. The real challenge is to get the optimum quality at the lowest cost. |
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Software as a Service: What You Need to Know[presentation] Many familiar products, including email, instant messaging, search, and e-commerce sites, are actually implemented as services rather than PC-installed software. |
Ibrahim El Far, Microsoft Corporation
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How Others See You: Seeking Personal Feedback[presentation] Has this ever happened to you? You've just finished an important presentation. |
Esther Derby, Esther Derby Associates Inc
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Five Test Automation Fallacies that Will Make You Sick[presentation] Five common fallacies about test automation can leave even the most experienced test and development teams severely ill. If allowed to go unchallenged, these beliefs will almost guarantee the death of an automation effort. |
Douglas Hoffman, Software Quality Methods, LLC.
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Communicating the Meaning Inside the Metrics[presentation] Measurement data is supposed to help you make better decisions; yet, the information provided under the term "metrics" is often confusing, obscure, or irrelevant to those who need it most. |
Terry Vogt, Booz Allen Hamilton
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Creating Habitable Code[presentation] A major challenge for software organizations is to create software that can continue to adapt and change over time-a codebase the team can live with "forever." Jeffrey Fredrick and Paul Julius review the concepts and features of CruiseControl |
Jeffrey Fredrick, Independent Consultant
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A Solid Foundation for Quality Improvement[presentation] Many managers look to formal techniques-requirements reviews, code inspection, and testing-to improve the quality of their software. While these techniques are valuable, they only evaluate the state of quality rather than improve it. |
Jason Bryant, Schlumberger Information Solutions
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