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Real Software QA With the ever-increasing demand for software products, it is imperative for organizations to move away from trying to "test in" software quality and move toward adopting a comprehensive, total-life cycle software quality management approach. Such an approach is the basis of real software quality assurance (QA)-all the planned and systematic actions necessary to provide confidence that a system will perform satisfactorily in production. In contrast to software quality control (QC), which consists of detection activities such as testing that are product focused, software QA is process focused. Software QA includes defining, establishing, and monitoring the control practices that ensure policies, systems, and processes are effective and efficient across the entire software development life cycle. Linda Westfall focuses on defining the elements and techniques of a comprehensive software QA program.
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Linda Westfall, The Westfall Team
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The Leadership Imperative: Creating a Culture of Trust In our personal and business lives, many of us know leaders who successfully foster environments of incredible creativity, innovation, and ideas-while other leaders try but fail. So, how do the top leaders get it right? Going beyond the basics, Pollyanna Pixton explores with you the ways that the best leaders create "safety nets" that allow people to discover and try new possibilities, fail early, and correct faster. Removing fear and engendering trust make the team and organization more creative and productive as they spend less energy protecting themselves and the status quo. Pollyanna shares the tools you, as a leader, need to develop open environments based on trust-the first step in collaboration across the enterprise. Learn to step forward and do the right thing without breaking trust. Find out when and how to acknowledge and reward trust in your team and organization.
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Pollyanna Pixton, Accelinnova
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Beyond the Mission Statement: How Values Drive Behavior Companies often invest a lot of time and money into defining their mission statement, expecting it to drive employee behavior toward the stated purpose. Unfortunately this is a myth. Instead it is values that drive behavior, and corporate values are often not part of the mission statement. We'll look at what other companies have posted as their mission statement and their values and how that has affected their business. We'll walk through a common example of how a mission statement without values can lead to project failures. You'll find out how to determine what your company values and how to compare that to what you value-and what to do if they are different. Most importantly, learn how to apply what you've learned in your own situation. See how to define values at the team level, a must in order to ensure effective working relationships and that the right actions are taken by everyone to achieve project goals.
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Michele Sliger, Sliger Consulting, Inc.
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Your Attention Please: Concentration is a Learnable Skill With the possible exception of the fakir walking barefoot on a bed of nails, no one can focus attention on a single object for more than about fifteen seconds. There's a practice, though, that anyone can learn to accommodate this fact and go on to solve vexing problems quickly and creatively. Lee Devin borrows from the skills that actors develop to direct their attention so their mind and body behave as if the imaginary world they've created is real. Similarly, when you watch a good movie or read a great novel, you direct your attention with single-minded intensity. Using theatre exercises, Lee introduces you to the techniques of warm-up and the skills of concentration. Although simple, they're by no means easy. Learn and practice these mind-bending exercises and take away a powerful tool that can increase your concentration both at work and in your personal life.
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Lee Devin, Swarthmore College
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Fifteen Tips for Speeding up Your Project Faster is better for software projects-if and only if all the right elements are in place and ready to go. Sometimes your organization is in a sweet spot-that period of time when your project should start immediately. Other times, it's better to wait. Join Johanna Rothman to discover how to decide whether your project is ready to go, including how to help your managers define the project portfolio to see where your project fits in and how it supports your organization's goals. Johanna discusses fifteen ways to measure and steer projects to help you get to the end faster. Learn about rolling wave scheduling, continuous integration, time-boxing, and much more. In this interactive session, you'll discuss the meaning of "done" so you can help the team finish a project sooner and avoid having it drag on. Although you don't have to use all of the tips, the more you use, the faster your project will run.
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Johanna Rothman, Rothman Consulting Group, Inc.
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The Psychology of Software Engineers The personality traits of software engineers tend to be quite different from those of the general population. In recent years, psychologists have come to a nearly unanimous consensus on the number and nature of human personality dimensions. A recent large-scale study involving several hundred software engineers and "regular" people (non-engineers) revealed that the personalities of developers, testers, and managers tend to be different from each other and from the personalities of the general population as a whole. So, how can you use this information? Although administering a personality assessment as part of a hiring process may be legal, it is problematic at best. A much better use of a personality assessment is to gauge the profile of your existing team members to maximize their productivity.
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James McCaffrey, Volt Information Sciences, Inc.
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Decision Making Under Extreme Pressure: Lessons Learned from Pilots in Crisis Controlled Flight Into Terrain is an interesting book containing case studies of poor decisions made by pilots under extreme pressure. CFIT is an accident in which an otherwise serviceable aircraft, under the control of the crew, is flown (unintentionally) into terrain, obstacles, or water, with no prior awareness on the part of the crew of the impending collision. Based on three CFIT case studies, Lee examines what mistakes the crew made, why their decisions seemed correct at the time, and the forces operating on the decision making process. Then he takes those discoveries and applies them to our world of software development. Some learnings include consider entering a holding pattern, have a Plan B ready, beware of the loss of situational awareness, trust your co-workers but not too much, be aware of time dilation, and other key ideas.
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Lee Copeland, Software Quality Engineering
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Bandages or Tombstones? Distinguishing Between Minor Setbacks and Impending Doom Are the challenges confronting your project normal and treatable setbacks or signs of something more serious? Can we treat them with a Band-Aid® and a kiss? Should we call the ambulance? The undertaker? Payson Hall shares patterns he’s observed while consulting on dozens of large software development and systems integration projects-executive sponsors distancing themselves from your project, ebbing morale, aggressive schedules, and more. Although good project teams react to adversity and try to get the job done in spite of troubles, their adaptive behavior can lead to a loss of perspective. Sometimes, teams become desensitized to the warning signs of degrading project health and are slow to respond to significant issues. Learn the symptoms of project problems and regain perspective as you identify the causes and find the remedies.
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Payson Hall, Catalysis Group Inc
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The Give and Take of Design Criticism Have you ever engaged in a design discussion where people didn't play fair? Do you have trouble giving advice that sticks or accepting criticism of your own work? Do you know when you should take up an argument and when is it better to let things slide? Every software engineer needs skills at giving, absorbing, and reacting appropriately to criticism. We should know when to pick our battles and how to spot and counteract faulty reasoning. We should be able to give advice so that others get it, and if they don't, determine why. Join Rebecca Wirfs-Brock to explore how design teams can engage in more effective conversations while eliciting and exchanging constructive criticism. Rebecca surveys the biases that underlie reactions people commonly have to new information and how to overcome those biases.
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Rebecca Wirfs-Brock, Wirfs-Brock Associates
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What's the Deal with "Best Practices" - Revisiting the Idea We talk about "best practices" as though they exist-an ideal way to manage a team, develop software, and test applications. All we have to do is discover what best practices are. At best, this is naive, and at worst it's an irresponsible way to approach anything, especially software development. Learning theory-specifically the Dreyfus model of skills acquisition-provides the missing context for practices in general and best practices in particular. Dan North describes how people really learn and acquire skills and helps you discover where and how to use the ideas offered by best practices. See how the arbitrary imposition of best practices is inherently risky and can have a detrimental effect on productivity and morale. Dan explains why the term "best practices" is flawed and suggests more useful ways of sharing experience and evolving what we do.
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Dan North, ThoughtWorks
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