Not many years ago, there seemed to be an increased demand that software development tools become better integrated. Now, it is expected that all software process tools from a single software house are tightly integrated. I started evaluating software process suites, and started promoting them to our development teams.

I think everyone in our industry has heard at one time or another "It costs 3x more to fix software after deployment to production than it does fixing it right the first time." My question is; How do we prove that statement?

This month's article is about a little GNU Make Gotcha: an easy way to get tripped up by two pieces of GNU Make syntax that do similar things, yet one has a deceptive name. ifndef isn't really ifndef at all, it would better if it were called ifempty, while ?= does make its decision based on whether the variable is defined or not.

Software, we know, can be outsourced like sneakers, rubber balls, and helpdesks. That will put a damper on us in the career field of software configuration management. In the immortal words of the governor in Blazing Saddles, “We need to save our phony baloney jobs!” But what if we weren’t just managing software? What if we could apply the same principles to other products? Could we evolve into something more? Something bigger? Dare I say profitable?