Articles

Distributed Agile Day to Day

"Distributed" isn't a word that always has appeared favorably in works about agile methodology. After all, the proximity of agile team members while working is highly regarded. In this article, an excerpt of which originally appeared in the May 2009 Iterations eNewsletter, Chris McMahon takes a look at how "agile" and "distributed" can work together successfully.

Chris McMahon's picture Chris McMahon
A Word with the Wise: Configuration Management Tips from Steve Berczuk

In this short interview with editor Joey McAllister, Steve Berczuk offers some tips to organizations dealing with configuration management (CM) issues.

Joey McAllister's picture Joey McAllister
Transitioning from Analysis to Design

The step between specifying requirements to working on a system design can be tricky. Fortunately, the basis on which the step is made can be calculated. Paul Reed thoroughly explains how the transition should progress and offers some instructions on how to move properly through this phase.

Paul R. Reed, Jr.'s picture Paul R. Reed, Jr.
Multitasking Is Evil

Multitasking is often seen as a desirable skill—you can buy books or pay to attend courses that will teach you how to do it—but it is a surprisingly debilitating idea.

Clarke Ching's picture Clarke Ching
Receptiveness to Change

Everyone responds to change differently, whether managers know this or not. A good leader knows this, and doesn't hurt the morale of a team by expecting them to act a way that their incapable of, or that feels unnatural to them. Naomi Karten brings this all to light in this article.

Naomi Karten's picture Naomi Karten
Agile Strategies for Geographically Distributed Quality Management

Geographically Distributed Development (GDD) is a common strategy in the software world today. Organizations are gaining experience in developing software globally and are discovering that the competitive demand for best-in-class, high quality applications requires greater agility in quality management. Unfortunately, IT budgets are not keeping up with the staff required for quality management and the response is to accelerate quality management by leveraging global teams. This article compares and contrasts agile GDD testing strategies for affecting quality management.

Scott W. Ambler's picture Scott W. Ambler
Lightweight Code Reviews: Team Building for the Rest of Us

The author explores the people side of peer code reviews. Besides the technical and quality benefits, peer code reviews help build better teams. Believe it!

Jason Cohen
Interface or Interfere?

One of the Holy Grails of automated quality toolsets is a fully integrated suite that seamlessly tracks the process all the way from requirements to test cases and on through to defect tracking. This fully integrated suite makes for a great marketing pitch and sexy slideware, but in Linda Hayes' experience its functionality usually stops there. The leap from theory to practice seems to fall short, and it makes her wonder whether the concept of a fully integrated suite is fundamentally flawed or if it's just the implementation that needs attention. In this column, she begins her investigation by studying two test cases to decide whether these experiences are anomalies or the rule.

Linda Hayes's picture Linda Hayes
Anti-Patterns of a Private Workspace

There are key advantages of having a private workspace for development. With this in mind, it is critical that the private workspace is used in the context of the project and the forces influencing the project and programmer are understood. Understanding the concepts of anti-patterns and how they can disrupt the adoption of good practice will lead to establishing practices that fit within a group.

Mario  Moreira's picture Mario Moreira
Problem Resolution Optimization

No matter how well we plan and execute software development, defects are generated and can escape to the customers. Failure to quickly resolve software problems leads to negative consequences for our customers and increases internal business costs. A quick deterministic
method to prioritize problems and implement their solution helps to reduce cycle time and costs. Achieving this goal requires several steps. The first is to determine a model that links problem resolution performance to institutional variables and problem characteristics. Statistical Design of
Experiments (DOE) is a tool that provides data requirements for estimating the impacts of these variables on problem resolution. Once data has been gathered, the results of statistical analysis can be input into a mathematical optimization model to guide the organization.
This paper describes such an analysis.

Don Porter

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