Better Software Magazine

Better Software Magazine Articles

From Curmudgeon to Kanban

It didn't take long for Stacia Viscardi to realize that as effective as agile can be, a plan-driven mindset may not be the best approach for every project or every team. Breaking the rules and embracing whatever it takes to motivate the team to get a project to doneness—and delighting the customer along the way—is a much better approach, even if it means breaking away from fixed iterations.

Stacia Viscardi's picture Stacia Viscardi
Scaling DevOps at the Enterprise Level

DevOps for the enterprise is the set of activities that support development and testing being managed within a framework for delivering the software into a stable production environment. Kim Megahee believes that DevOps can be successfully deployed with the adoption of Akaizen.

Kim Megahee's picture Kim Megahee
Stop Making Lists, Start Making Products

Like any great process methodology, agile (and Scrum specifically) can lose sight of the best way to facilitate a development lifecycle from concept to delivery. David Hussman frequently encounters teams that are going through the motions. If your sprint planning meetings have disintegrated into quick listmaking exercises, David will show you how to reinvigorate your team.

David Hussman's picture David Hussman
Adopting ALM Will Enhance the Value of Your Test Team

Modern ALM emphasizes total team involvement and a comprehensive set of tools so that the development lifecycle runs smoothly. Joe Farah shows you how test case management is a vital component to a successful ALM strategy.

Joe Farah's picture Joe Farah
How to Prepare for ISTQB Exam

In this FAQ column, Michael Sowers provides advice on preparing for the ISTQB Advanced Level Test Manager Certification Exam.

Michael Sowers's picture Michael Sowers
Painful Lessons I Learned from Bootstrapping a Startup

If you are considering leaving the nest to self-fund your own endeavor, you may want to read about Mike Botsko's experience creating a cloud-based, bug-tracking app called Snowy Evening. What started out as a lot of fun quickly turned into a tough journey. Don't worry—it has a happy ending!

Mike Botsko's picture Mike Botsko
The Lean Test Canvas

Taking lessons from the lean business model, Matt Heusser explains how a tester can present different values and properly set expectations with the team using the lean test canvas. His approach starts with defining who  the customer is and ends with key qualitative measures that will be used to ensure success.

Matthew Heusser's picture Matthew Heusser
Is Agile Breaking Product Management?

It can be a challenge for a product manager to know how to lead an agile software team. As product managers take on many different roles throughout a project lifecycle, there can be confusion, resulting in the product manager doing what nobody else wants to do. Steve Johnson offers a perspective of the agile product manager that every software developer should know.

Steve Johnson's picture Steve Johnson
Motivating Teams In a Self-Organizing Environment

A key characteristic of agile is that a team self-organizes to best fit the workload. This, according to Maria Matarelli, can be more difficult than the more traditional approach of a project manager simply telling the team what to do.

Maria Matarelli's picture Maria Matarelli
Quality Assurance Is a Process, Not a Department

QA is often considered that lonely department of testers whose job is to find defects before the customer does. It's not always glamorous, but QA deserves to be recognized as a key cog in the testing  machine. To achieve business goals, it is Susan Bradley's view that the QA process needs to be embraced throughout the entire software development lifecycle.

Susan Bradley's picture Susan Bradley

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