The Latest
Building a Meaningful Metric Mousetrap[article] Metrics provide data points that can both benefit and endanger and organization. Metrics can be used positively to build a better organization and can be used negatively to punish organizations and people therein. Many times, those that use the metrics negatively do it purposefully, but other times, they are not aware of the way they are using them. This is why it is important to have a metrics culture that apply metrics in a positive manner, provides an understanding of the metric, and then actually utilize metrics to manage an organization.
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Finding the Right Mix of ALM Processes and Tools for Design and Implementation[article] Configuration management is complex. As a product evolves, CM gets even more complex, as complexity breeds problems. So how do we continually march our product configurations toward higher and higher quality? You need good people, process, tools, and automation. People define and put the processes in place. Tools are used to automate the processes and to bury the complexity of CM below the user level. Development is a process that takes ideas and turns them into products. There are many techniques and tools to do design and implementation. The right mix is required to effectively develop a competitive product. On the management side of things, the same is true. Application lifecycle management requires the right set of processes and tools to allow the design efforts to be properly leveraged and to yield the best quality. |
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Longacre Deployment Management for Enterprise Configuration Management[article] Longacre Deployment Management (LDM ) is an enterprise-level CM technique that provides robust, accurate CM functions in broadly diverse development environments. LDM solves many of the problems associated with database systems; and with organizations composed of teams using different technologies, in different places, or formed from different organizations. It is an existing technique-LDM has already been deployed in a complex development environment. This article is not a case study: it provides the technical details of the LDM technique. If you are not a CM specialist, your eyes are going to glaze over. |
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Managing Change: Churn and Complexity[article] This article takes a look at how change is more complex within SOA environments, especially when the architecture must deal with the modernization of legacy applications. Then, the author discusses the ways good release management practices help organizations deal with the constant change churn, complexity, and change volume. |
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Preventative Medicine Is Hard to Sell[article] Implementing a great idea takes common sense and good marketing. It also requires knowing who to motivate to implement change. In this article, Clarke Ching writes about a time when he figured out a simple solution to a complex problem that would save his employer millions, but no one seemed to care. Clarke discovered that it is far easier to sell aspirin if your customer already has a headache. |
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GNU Make meets file names with spaces in them[article] Suppose you are faced with creating a Makefile that needs to deal with two files named foo bar and bar baz, with foo bar built from bar ba'. I've used italics to make clear that these are file names that include spaces. |
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Case Study: Enterprise & Database Configuration Management[article]
A perennial question in the configuration management field is how to control databases. Databases are too big and too complex to be managed as simple objects. They have a very expressive language: SQL. This is used to describe their structure, content, and changes. A newer issue is how to do enterprise CM. Although some tool vendors have attempted to provide support for large-scale systems, full support for complex enterprise systems is still lacking.
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Austin Hastings
April 1, 2007 |
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Rising Above the 7 Percent Rule[magazine] Afraid of what you're missing by testing only 7 percent of your code? Forget your formal code inspections; Jason Cohen enlightens us on the merits of bringing lightweight code inspection to your organization. |
Jason Cohen
March 27, 2007 |
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Evidence for Evolution[magazine] What important lessons can we learn from the evolution of the programming language Lisp? Brian Marick recounts the environment that enabled its creation and recommends we incorporate some of the Lisper practices into our own projects. |
Brian Marick
March 27, 2007 |
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Know What's at Stake[magazine] Everyone knows the importance of well-defined functional requirements. We want our products to work, don't we? But how many of us are paying as much attention to defining our non-functional requirements? In this historically focused feature, we learn from past mistakes the potentially disastrous results of inadequately tested NFRs. |
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PMBOK to Agile[magazine] Extreme Programming has increased in popularity in recent years, but shifting your organization away from the Project Management Body of Knowledge to agile methodologies can be a real challenge. David Christiansen has outlined three common obstacles to incorporating agile and offers ways to overcome them. |
David Christiansen
March 27, 2007 |
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The Right Stuff: Four Small Steps for Testers One Giant Leap for Risk Mitigation[magazine] In the countdown to a product release, leaving load testing for last is a risky maneuver. In this month's cover story, Rex Black and Barton Layne present a case study of a project on which they adhered to a four-step strategy. By following these four steps, they were able to alleviate those nasty, end-of-project performance surprises. |
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Seasons of Software Development[magazine] In this installment of Management Chronicles, Peter Clark introduces us to a programmer who is trying unsuccessfully to complete a project mired in underestimation. Find out what you can do to keep your estimates in the free and clear. |
Peter Clark
March 27, 2007 |
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The Roof Is Going to Go[magazine] As one poor German tourist can attest, idioms don't translate. But Chuck Allison thinks programmers should become "native speakers" of the programming languages they use. This includes using and understanding them, idioms and all. |
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The Magic 8 Ball of Testing[magazine] Have you ever wished for a tool to help you define and refine requirements and make your programs more testable? OClear could be the tool you've been waiting for. |