The Latest

This month's theme, "Implementation Methodologies", focuses on many different opinions and viewpoints. During the initial discussions among the Crossroads News writers and our editor, Patrick Egan, there was both confusion and clarification. The confusion was largely semantic, and the clarifications, well they came from many authors' perspectives. In the end, our editor said he wanted to see papers that, "...differentiate between our SCM implementation at the organization level, application level, and project level -(aka, the "Target Level/Audience Method"), and implementation approach." He also indicated that he was interested in subjects that ranged in variety from analysis, to tool selection, to design, to installation, to testing, to training and deployment". I liked that primarily because this directive gives rise to a wide range of perspectives of what implementation methodology means to the practitioners of the software engineering community. Therefore, here is my own viewpoint of what Implementation Methodologies mean to me.

If your daughter ever comes home with a friendly, outgoing guy named Norbert, shoot first and ask questions later.

Some years ago, a salesman named Norbert at the SCM vendor where I worked got a call in late December from a prospect that had decided to buy from a different vendor. He asked to keep an appointment he had made for a wrapping up session. He went to the meeting with a sales proposal in hand, and after reengineering the vision of the customer, actually left with a sales agreement. Now that's a short sales cycle! 

The activity of managing change is known as Change Management.  Managing change is typically very challenging and may occur at many levels within a workplace.  A key when implementing a change management process is truly understanding what should be managed and by whom.  For the sake of argument, I will refer to the group that manages the change as the Change Control Board (CCB).  However, there are other names used to represent this group (e.g., Configuration Control Board, Governance Board, etc.).  It is important to understand that while I use the phrase "manage or control the change", a CCB may not really control the change as much as acknowledge the change and apply impact analysis for the change in order to determine the best deployment guidance for the change.

Is the Record/Script/Play method of automated testing ready to take its final bow? What will the next generation hold? Linda Hayes reflects on the past changes in automation, inspects the current situation, and offers her vision of the future.

Check your iterations at the door—it’s time for Waterfall 2006. With a wink and a finger pointed squarely at the April 1 square on his calendar, Mike Cohn offers some hints about what to look for at the much anticipated Waterfall 2006 conference.

Automated code analysis tools are becoming more powerful and more necessary than ever before. Alberto Savoia takes a look at the evolution of static and dynamic code analysis tools, from their humble beginnings to their present status as indispensable technology, and tells us what he predicts for the future.

Patterns and pattern languages are tools that can be used to help a team be more effective and agile. They can lead to robust, effective solutions, because the solutions that patterns can lead you to take the environment into account. They also solve problems in a way that makes the system work better. This article will show you how you can use existing patterns to improve your SCM process. It will also help you to understand where existing patterns and pattern languages have gaps.