The Latest
Taking Stock of Your Career[magazine] Assess the state of your career by making a list of the positives and negatives. By creating your dream job on paper you can form a plan to help you get there. Elisabeth Hendrickson encourages you to make the time to take stock of your current career situation. |
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A Look at Application Prototyping with easyPilot[magazine] This application tool allows non-programmers to produce working prototypes of Windows, or Web-based, database-driven applications. Read on to find out how this new tool makes protoyping a viable part of the IT software development process. |
Bill Walton
March 5, 2003 |
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The Upside of Downsizing[magazine] This article gives some pointers on surviving downsizing and will introduce you to the Scrum process. Scrum empowers teams by allowing requirements to be fluid while work is progressing. Learn what steps to follow to simplify and streamline your project by adopting this process. |
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Usability and Privacy[magazine] While most bugs that make headline news are due to careless software implementations exploited by skilled hackers, the problems in KaZaA center around its user interface. This article details KaZaA's application flaws and then suggests ways to prevent such flaws. |
Nathaniel Good
March 5, 2003 |
Software Configuration Management Resources[magazine] It is essential that team members embrace SCM practices because coordination is necessary to achieve a reliable, productive product. After you determine which practices are appropriate, you can choose the right tool based on your needs and budget. |
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Are You Listening?[magazine] Chances are you won't be able to deliver on everything your customer wants. Asking good questions at the beginning of a project can help you determine where your customer wants to go. Although you may not be able to give them everything they want, if you are able to deliver the top ten things on a list of fifty items you've still delivered value. Keeping the lines of communication open is essential to helping you achieve your project goal. |
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The Productivity Factor[magazine] How effectively and efficiently your team functions can make the difference between project success and project failure. Once a decision-making process is established, it is up to the project manager to hold the team accountable to the process. Over time, processes can stagnate and lose their relevance. The project manager should continually monitor the process for applicability and make adjustments where necessary. Learn how to leverage your team's performance through process, structure, and team leadership. |
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Metrics That Matter: Making Measurements Meaningful for Everyone[magazine] Metrics are only worthwhile if you review and use them. Do your quality reports go directly from the inbox to the trash can? A quality metrics program can be a great asset to your organization. Engineering, sales, and the company overall can benefit from having such a program. This article will help you explore ways to make measurements meaningful outside of QA. |
Marsha Holliday
March 5, 2003 |
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Deconstructing GUI Test Automation[magazine] Window mapping gives elements specific names so tests are easier to update and understand. Task libraries group sequences of steps that make up part of user tasks when those sequences show up in multiple tests. Data-driven test automation separates the parameters of a test case from the test script so that the test script can be reused for many related tasks. Keyword-driven test automation formats tests as tables or spreadsheets and creates parsers to read and execute the test descriptions. Take advantage of these four techniques to help you test a graphical user interface, and see how developers can make your life easier. |
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A Calculated Gamble[magazine] Starting a project without considering the risks is quite a gamble. Learn how to increase your odds through the practice of good risk management. Effective organizations recognize that bad stuff may happen during a project. Risk management is about anticipating what might happen, examining and prioritizing those possible bad events, and figuring out what to do about them. In this article, review the Risk Management Glossary and discover remedies to risks that may help you prevent many common problems. |
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Will the Real Professional Testers Please Step Forward?[article] In this week's column, James Whittaker's message to testers is loud and clear: Respect your discipline and you will gain the respect that your discipline deserves. Read on for some ways that testers can earn respect, and for some common elements present in organizations that recognize the importance of testing. |
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Measuring and Improving Process Capabilities[article] This paper discusses how software projects following different processes, which display disparate characteristics, have been categorized and analyzed using statistical techniques to measure and improve process capability. The analysis shows that language type, size of the application and complexity (represented by ratio of Total Project Effort to Build Phase Effort) are the predominant discriminating factors affecting quality and process parameters. Categorization done based on this stratification scheme results in minimum variation within the group concerned. Such logical grouping also facilitates meaningful comparison of a project performance with almost similar historical data. |
Anoop Kumar
January 28, 2003 |
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Advanced SQL Injection in SQL Server Applications[article] This document discusses in detail the common "SQL injection" technique, as it applies to the popular Microsoft Internet Information Server/Active Server Pages/SQL Server platform. It discusses the various ways in which SQL can be "injected" into the application and addresses some of the data validation and database lockdown issues that are related to this class of attack. |
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Making Virtual Teams a Reality[magazine] What all virtual teams have in common is that they are working on a project, but may not be located in close physical proximity, and they must find ways to communicate, track progress, and manage tasks without being able to physically meet regularly. The prerequisites for success with virtual teams are 1) clear, manageable objectives; 2) management's commitment to necessary resources; and 3) mature management and technical personnel. Learn how to lead a workgroup you cannot see. |
Linda McInnis
January 3, 2003 |
Mastering the Discipline of Testing[magazine] Becoming a master software tester requires training. We are not artists whose brains are wired at birth to excel in quality assurance. Uncomfortable with labeling software testing as either an "art" or a "craft," Dr. James Whittaker makes his case for testing as a discipline to be mastered. |