Articles
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Software Project Planning and Processes: 5 Steps to Success Too often, software teams come up with a lofty goal for a project, then immediately launch into development in an effort to get to market faster. But skipping the planning process for how to actually achieve your goal can be dangerous. John Basso gives five steps to drive front-end planning and set your project up for success. |
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Are You Ready for Go-Live? Eight Essential Questions As real and daunting as scheduling pressures can be, they have to be balanced with the consequences of a potentially disastrous premature go-live. Don’t let all the reasons a system simply "must" be implemented by a target date overwhelm compelling evidence that it is not ready. Consider these eight questions honestly first. |
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Using Project Management to Orchestrate Collaboration in ALM The biggest challenges of current application lifecycle management processes are dispersion of teams, muddied transitions, and the constant movement of information and artifacts. Project management tools compensate for this constant exchange by providing artifact repositories, streamlined task management, and visibility across the board. |
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Visualize Your Problems to Manage Good Solutions Visualizing your workflow is a key component of agile methods. But if we want to solve problems, we have to do a bit more than just visualize them with sticky notes. We have to perform some actual problem management. And to manage problems, a good start would be to measure them. |
Better Software Magazine Articles
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The Secrets of High-Performance Software Teams Of all issues that impact getting quality products out on time, the team should never focus on simply managing costs. To minimize the risk of perpetual product delivery delays, define what “done” really means. |
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You Get What You Tolerate We’ve all worked with a talented developer who can be a frustrating challenge to manage. First-time managers may unknowingly encourage bad behavior. There are several innovative ways to resolve the situation. |
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Achieving Continuous Improvement and Innovation in Software There is tremendous pressure on software development teams to deliver software faster, better, and cheaper. Quality engineering with a focus on innovation is the answer |
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10 Things You Must Do to Become Truly Agile Agile is not a state of doing; it’s a state of being. Adopting business models on value and learning how to make teams autonomous are both necessary steps to reap the benefit of agility. |
Interviews
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From Proposal to Project: An Interview with Larry Putnam Jr.
Video
Larry Putnam Jr., co-chief executive officer at QSM, sits down to talk about the importance of the proposal when executing a successful project, five key questions that should be answered before any project starts, and how software estimation ties into the proposal process. |
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Collaborating with ALM and Agile: An Interview with Karthik Ravindran
Video
Karthik Ravindran, Microsoft Senior Director - Visual Studio Product Management, discusses the evolution of ALM and agile and how each can reach its full potential when they are working together in an organization. |
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Traceability's Priceless Role in Agile: An Interview with William Gens William Gens sits down with Noel Wurst to describe "the art and science of traceability" ahead of his STAREAST session of the same name. Learn what makes traceability meaningful and such a valuable asset to projects, no matter how bad the requirements may seem to be. |
Conference Presentations
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Tear It Down to Build It Up: Using Agile in Construction Project Management
Slideshow
Operating on the philosophy that one must thoroughly know the rules before one can break them, a global company developed its own delivery model that is still as true to the agile mindset as is possible. Join Arjay Hinek in this lively session as he deconstructs his company's experiment in melding agile with construction project management to create a hybrid delivery model. At first, the teams were struggling with clear ownership, timely communication, and clear follow-through on work in progress. From modifying the user story mapping model in order to improve project initiation to dissecting and rewriting the values and principles of the Agile Manifesto, Arjay stretched agile practices to the limit to help his teams strive and grow through iterative and incremental delivery. Arjay will share the struggles, failures, and successes of this innovative experiment. |
Arjay Hinek
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Test Management in Agile—What Happened to All My Testers?
Slideshow
Substantial confusion exists about the roles and responsibilities of test management when using an agile software development process. Agile seeks to streamline project management and leadership under the role of a ScrumMaster, but what does this mean for test managers? How do they stay... |
Jeffery Payne
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Testing at 43,000 Feet: Reporting Risk That Matters
Slideshow
Testing dashboards can give stakeholders the false impression that projects are under control. But are they really? As a tester, you can see a counter indicating a high percentage of passing tests but know that you may still have critical failures in the product. Alexandre Bauduin will... |
Alexandre Bauduin
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Behavior-Driven Development: Real-World Mind Reading
Slideshow
Imagine this scenario: Business users are excited to finally get their hands on an implementation delivery that is on schedule, (mostly) on budget, and passed rigorous testing with flying colors. Unfortunately, when working with the new app or feature, the users realize that the way they described their needs didn’t translate into what they actually needed. Sound familiar? While she may not be able to offer telekinetic mind-reading tools, Kim Tatum is convinced that leveraging a behavior-driven development (BDD) approach helps bridge the gap between domain experts and technical teams. Join Kim to discuss how natural, human-readable language ultimately creates shared accountability and reduces misunderstandings. Review how this framework is implemented on a variety of delivery projects and walk through an implementation approach and leading practices. |
Kim Tatum
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