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Continuous Integration to Improve Software Quality The practice of continuous integration facilitates early visibility into the development process by regularly incorporating new modules into the build much earlier than the classic "big bang" integration approach. Continuous integration helps reduce the time between when a defect is coded and when it is discovered, thereby making it faster and easier to repair. Software teams see their build process as much more than a simple compile and link process because the build exposes new bugs immediately. In addition, builds can be augmented with a set of "software inspectors" that report on aspects of software quality including code complexity, duplication, dependences, and adherence to standards. Andrew Glover describes the practice of continuous integration and the tools available for both Java and .NET platforms. Learn how to interpret the data provided by software inspectors and how to make improvement actions based on that data.
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Andrew Glover, Stelligent
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First to Market or First to Fail: A General Systems View Marketers often emphasize the enormous advantage of being first-to-market, but is being first really an advantage? Looking at some of the spectacular successes of products, brands, and technologies, you will see that, contrary to popular belief, so-called first-to-market products like Netscape Navigator, PalmPilot, and iPod were actually later arrivals that became more successful than the originals. Why did they succeed when their predecessors didn't, and why were they so widely perceived as revolutionary? Michael Bolton shows how general systems thinking can help us identify factors that govern the success or failure of an innovative product, service, or strategy. By taking a general systems view, you will understand that the notion of "first" depends on the features or attributes that we choose to observe or ignore.
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Michael Bolton, DevelopSense
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Building Better Teams through Better Interviewing As manager of a software team, you often rely on your staff for assistance when conducting technical interviews to fill positions in your organization. However, even the most technically competent people may not necessarily be good interviewers. Some reasons include lack of interest, thinking that they "can just tell" if a candidate is a good fit, or simply not knowing the fundamentals of interviewing. All these issues must be addressed to improve the interviewing skills of your staff. Michael Kahn discusses the direct and indirect costs of a bad hire and why your staff should take interviewing seriously. He focuses on pre-interview planning-what should be done beforehand to achieve a successful interview. Learn to design effective questions for assessing not only the technical skills of software professionals but also their ability to fit socially within your team.
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Michael Kahn, MK
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ITIL and You: The Perfect Match ITIL (IT Infrastructure Library) is a flexible framework for implementing IT Service Management within an organization. Since its introduction in the 1990s, ITIL has mostly been applied within IT operations and excluded from software development; however, more and more IT departments are now asking development to join in. ITIL offers an extensive set of management procedures that are intended to support businesses in achieving higher value for their money and improving quality across the breadth of the IT infrastructure. Join Michael Giacometti to learn what ITIL is and why it is gaining in popularity. Find out how implementing ITIL processes can significantly improve both your time to market and the quality of your software. Michael explains what to do to gain better information about your development and new ways to control investments and quality.
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Michael Giacometti, Sungard
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Coaching: The New Leadership Imperative The days of plan-driven command-and-control technical management are gone. Flexible software development and the adoption of agile methods are driving factors. Add to this the fact that the I-decide-You-obey paradigm never worked very well anyway. Today, a coaching model is replacing command-and-control within more self-directed teams. This shift drastically changes the skills required of today's leaders, many of whom are struggling with questions such as: If I don't make the decisions, what is my job? Is my position really needed? Am I needed? How can I adapt? Robert Galen explores the key changes required to improve the coaching abilities of managers and project leaders. Taking lessons from agile methods, proven coaching models, and a few gratuitous sports analogies, Robert offers valuable advice for any leader looking to become a better coach who can enable the team to perform at the highest possible level.
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Robert Galen, RGCG, LLC
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Using Lean Thinking to Align People, Process, and Practices The operational structure of many organizations fails to support their software development teams. Continuously creating and reforming teams, isolating development from the organization, lack of participation by customers, and rapid task switching cause huge amounts of waste in development. Although agile development practices have made great strides in the last ten years, they have largely ignored the issue of the structure of the organization. "Lean Thinking" is the shorthand phrase for the paradigm, thought processes, and principles that Toyota follows in producing high quality cars at low cost-with a faster development cycle than their competitors. Software development is not exactly like manufacturing, but the principles of Lean Thinking-optimizing the whole, eliminating waste, and respecting people-apply equally well to software development.
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Alan Shalloway, Net Objectives
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Risk Management--It's Not Just For Gamblers Any More The difference between gamblers and many software managers is that gamblers know there is a good chance they will lose a bet. An intelligent blackjack player can expect to win 45-49 percent of the time; software project success rates have only recently passed the 33 percent mark. Payson Hall argues that a key to project success is improving our ability to identify and manage risks-technology risks, project risks, business risks, and more. Although risk management is an increasingly popular topic in the executive suite, talk alone does not mitigate software risks. Is risk management a fad or a discipline? How does risk affect real project outcomes? Is it worth the investment? What does effective risk management look like? Join Payson Hall as he presents practical strategies for identifying and managing real-world software risks. Learn to identify threats to your projects' success and practical strategies to mitigate those risks.
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Payson Hall, Catalysis Group, Inc.
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What Better Software Means to the CEO Today's organizations depend on software applications for their business success-and survival. When applications fail, businesses are severely damaged-revenue losses in the millions, key data stolen, brands and reputations damaged. Security vulnerabilities impact consumer trust and result in violations of customer privacy or customer lawsuits. Often the root cause of these dire consequences is an information and communication gap between development and corporate management. Simply stated, business executives often do not know the first thing about how software is built, tested, or maintained. They often refuse to approve the time and resources necessary to ship a product with acceptable quality and security. Likewise, development teams often do not know the first thing about business and cannot adequately justify their needs to business.
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Jeffery Payne, Cigital, Inc.
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An Outsource Model for Quality Assurance and Automated Testing Efficiency and effectiveness are the cornerstones of successful quality assurance and test automation effort. Jeff Beange describes how RBC Financial Group successfully implemented a quality assurance and automation outsourcing engagement, using a blended onshore/offshore approach. He describes the details of the engagement model and outlines the risks they encountered. Jeff describes their mitigation strategy, governance structure, and the metrics used to evaluate their implementation. Learn a communication strategy and automation framework you can use to implement automation using an outsourcing partnership. Find out what setup is required before any outsourcing model can be successful: detailed requirements, a complete set of test data, and a test lab that is accessible to all. Jeff describes the common pitfalls of offshore engagements and the three categories of outsourcing problems-people, process, and governance.
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Jeff Somerville, RBC Financial Group
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Mistakes Outsourcing Customers Make Ten years of experience with test outsourcing at Polteq Lucent Technologies has shown that it can be successful. However, on the way to success, many-and sometimes painful-lessons were learned. Kees Blokland shares the most common test outsourcing mistakes others have made with the hope that you will not repeat them. One key mistake is the expectation of large and rapid cost savings-many that have been seduced by this temptation have not been successful. Another mistake is to believe that the outsourcing vendor actually knows how to test your applications-just because they are far away doesn't mean they know your business. Kees presents a full list of outsourcing mistakes and discusses how you can prevent them from happening-or repair the damage if mistakes have already occurred. If you're planning to outsource testing or are in the middle of an outsourced project, you will find Kees' insight very useful.
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Kees Blokland, POLTEQ IT Services BV
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