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Small software teams rarely follow best practices, nor do they use their tools to the full extent. Implementing some of the practices listed in this article can help your software configuration management strategy increase its value to your organization.

It used to be that SCM was a complex and effort-intensive process that small projects and businesses could not affort to invest in. Tools were expensive, automation was a daunting task, and the imposition of process on the small development team would take away the small business advantage of moving quickly. Today, and certainly in the next generation of CM, quite the opposite is true. How can that be?

In this keynote presentation from the Better Software Conference & EXPO, Jean Tabaka proposes three pivotal practices that we must embrace to aggressively attack waste in software delivery—software-as-a-service, community, and fast-feature throughput.

The Towers of Hanoi puzzle consists of a small board with three pegs on it. On the left most peg a stack of discs is arranged in descending order of size: the largest disc is on the bottom.

Because tests are commonly viewed in terms of offering quantitative feedback on the presence or absence of defects in specific situations, Good Unit Tests need to both illustrate and define the behavioral contract of the unit in question. Do you have GUTs?

What if you had a picnic and no one brought potato salad? Find out what picnic planning and steam engines have to do with project success and not just satisfying your customers but delighting them.

Is it really so hard to produce software that works? When was the last time you read a software license agreement? Most are one-sided statements that limit the product developer's liability. It's time to move away from "Use at your own risk" software and be upfront with customers about the true cost of quality.