In his CM: The Next Generation Series, Joe Farah writes that there are many reasons that organizations or government agencies use distributed development. Whatever the reason, a software development team, and indeed the entire product team, needs to do all it can to ensure that development proceeds smoothly.

DevOps puts the focus on automated application lifecycle management supporting development, test, integration, quality assurance (QA), user acceptance testing (UAT), and production. But how do you develop DevOps, and how do you know when you have achieved success?

Great tools and process are not the best formula for software configuration management excellence. Leslie Sachs writes that the most important resources for configuration management excellence are people—the technology professionals and the leaders who guide the team toward CM excellence. This article will help you understand what psychologists have learned regarding some of the essential qualities found among top leaders and others who consistently achieve excellence.

Listening to your customers is absolutely mandatory to ensure their satisfaction and making sure they know you listened to them is just as important. Wayne Goldstein takes a look at how simply resolving an issue a customer brings up isn't always enough. Take a look with him at continuous process improvement from the help desk to releasing the software update to fix a problem.