Managing expectations and providing useful feedback are incredibly important skills for managers, whether you’re dealing with one employee or many. In this article, Laura Brandenburg takes a closer look at how some of the principles from the book The One Minute Manager apply to project teams.

Over the past decade or so we've seen important new ideas added to the mix of software design practices to help us produce better software. Design Patterns help us capture the design solutions and reveal a rationale for using them. Refactoring allows us to improve system design after the code is written. Agile methods-and in particular, Extreme Programming-provide highly iterative and evolutionary development methods that are particularly well suited to fast changing requirements and rapidly evolving hardware and technology environments. Martin Fowler-a leading voice in understanding, honing, practicing, and promoting these approaches-offers up a suite of short talks on his recent thinking about how these design practices have changed software development. Join Martin to explore what’s new on the horizon to support the design and development of new, more complex, interconnected systems than the world has ever known.

When challenged with designing and developing standards-compliant software using a risk-based approach, it is essential to understand regulatory law, industry best practices, and the consensus standards recognized by regulatory bodies (FDA, ISO, and the EU). Thomas Bento helps you sort through the challenges of regulatory expectations to move confidently and defensibly forward with risk-based development using consensus standards, including IEC 62304 and ISO 14971. Learn valuable ways to augment your existing software lifecycle processes with these standards, how the standards impact industry, how to demonstrate your process for compliance audits, and ultimately how to submit to the FDA with confidence. Apply critical thinking to determine the appropriate amount of rigor for software design and development with a risk-based approach that maps your context to the Processes, Activities, and Tasks required by the standard.

Are you concerned that your project is in trouble? Perhaps the team has missed some deadlines. No one can show a demo. The testers are finding more defects that anyone expected. And, because you are starting to have delays, the stakeholders want more features in this release. You know that things are not hunky-dory with your project. Johanna Rothman first discusses the measurements you can take to evaluate progress-cumulative flow, fault feedback ratio, and defect trends. Next, she describes approaches she's used to rescue projects-time-boxing, working by feature, using demos to demonstrate progress, and managing scope changes that can slow down your project. You'll learn the options you have for getting the project back on track and keeping it there through this release and into the future.