Better Software Magazine Articles

Geographically Challenged

Office politics are a fact of life in the workplace, but they sometimes spill over and affect employees' lives outside the office as well. In this tale by Leonidas Hepis, office politics endanger a QA team member's work and her family time.
Leonidas Hepis
September 6, 2006
The Blind Men and the Quality Elephant

Lee Copeland takes a look at quality assessment through the filter of John Godfrey Saxe's poem "The Blind Men and the Elephant" and offers an important lesson: When assessing quality, make sure everyone on your project is looking for the same thing.
Lee Copeland's picture Lee Copeland
September 5, 2006
QA All-Stars: Building Your Dream Team

A testing team can mean success or failure for a project, but developing a team means more than putting a few people together and telling them to test something. Hans Buwalda shares his teambuilding experiences and gives some tips on how you can build the best team for the job.
Hans Buwalda's picture Hans Buwalda
September 5, 2006
Successful Software Managment: Fifteen Lessons Learned

We normally think about process improvement as something applied to projects. But process improvement is also for people-and even for managers. Join Johanna Rothman as she shares lessons she's learned and management improvements she's made during her years in management. Like many other technical managers, Johanna became a manager by rising through the technical ranks. And, like many other managers, she had plenty of technical training and mentoring but had to learn management skills the hard way-through trial and error. Johanna describes fifteen lessons she has learned as a manager and offers tips and techniques to help you avoid difficult situations. Learn how to motivate your team and raise their level of work-and how to manage yourself.

  • What is the software manager's real job
  • How to create an effective work environment
  • How to help people do their best work
Johanna Rothman, Rothman Consulting Group, Inc.
Managing Upward: Getting Approvals for the Tools You Need

Executive management does not like to spend money (on others); however, to build better software you may need to purchase better tools. Although skilled in producing code and running software tests, many development and QA managers do not have much experience preparing proposals and driving requests for funding through the management approval process. To gain their enthusiastic approval, you need insight into the executive heart and mind to better frame your proposal. Learn the decision-making process of executive managers, the facts they need to make a decision, and why they are reluctant to spend money even if it is in the budget. Build the case for your proposal in terms that match the business objectives of the CEO, CTO, CFO, and others with decision-making authority. Take away a template for a proposal along with examples of successful proposals, including visuals, data, competitive analysis, and much more.
Doug Smith, Aberro Software
Industry Benchmarks: Insights and Pitfalls

Software and technology managers often quote industry benchmarks such as The Standish Group's CHAOS report on software project failures; other organizations use this data to judge their internal operations. Although these external benchmarks can provide insights into your company's software development performance, you need to balance the picture with internal information to make an objective evaluation. Jim Brosseau takes a deeper look at common benchmarks, including the CHAOS report, published SEI benchmark data, and more. He describes the pros and cons of these commonly used industry benchmarks with key insights into often-quoted statistics. Take away an approach that Jim has used successfully with companies to help them gain an understanding of the relationship between the demographics, practices, and performance in their groups and how these relate to external benchmarks.
Jim Brosseau, Clarrus Consulting Group, Inc.
Managing Distributed Teams

Globalization, open source software, and cheap communications have forever changed the structure of software development project teams. Project managers face a new set of challenges with geographically distributed work teams. Unclear expectations, language and idiom differences, lack of direct supervision, and a lack of accountability are just a few of the issues that project managers must overcome. As the leader of a development team with members and customers all over the world, Keith Casey is intimately familiar with the character of distributed teams. He explains why you need a coherent strategy-and that means more than email, instant messaging, conference calls, and software tools-for effectively executing a distributed development project. Join Keith for a discussion of the strategies you can use to avoid the disasters awaiting those who ignore the needs of a distributed team.
Keith Casey, CaseySoftware, LLC
An Integrated Configuration Management System Revealed

Many people talk about an end-to-end software development process in which requirements are developed and transitioned seamlessly into code with tests tracing back to the requirements. Geree Streun has learned that an integrated configuration management system should be at the center of that process. She explains the criteria for evaluating and selecting a configuration management tool to support your development process and why configuration management should be implemented in an integrated way. Find out what an integrated configuration management tool can do for you, how much control to impose, and how much administration you can afford. Watch a demonstration of the integrated configuration management system Geree's company uses to record defects against any software artifact and to ensure that tests track to the current version of the requirements.
Geree Streun, ANS
How to Estimate Anything

Given the choice between making an estimate of the time and resources to complete a project or getting root canal surgery, most of us would rush to the dentist’s office. We know that the pain of a root canal is short lived ... poor estimates can cause us agony and frustration for months or even years to come. The good news and bad news is that anything can be estimated. However, the quality of the estimate will depend upon the effort invested in the estimate, how thoroughly the thing to be estimated is understood, the quality of relevant assumptions, and finally, luck. An effective process can improve everything but the luck. Join Payson Hall as he presents a practical estimation process that can be applied to estimate anything and then practice applying the process during his presentation.

  • What goes into any good estimate
  • How to develop a good estimate for complex things
Payson Hall, Catalysis Group Inc
Essential Software Quality Planning

An old-yet still true-saying is "You can't test quality into a software product." By planning for the quality expected in your software, your team and management will focus on the big picture-integrating development methods, the test processes, and the customer and product requirements within the framework of a quality assurance perspective. Starting with the key element of quality planning and its benefits, Tony Raymond explains how to derive quality objectives from requirements using a "just enough" balanced approach. He introduces methods to confirm that the development lifecycle processes are consistent with quality objectives and discusses the relationship of the quality plan to the test plan. Take back examples of quality planning and test planning templates to use in your next project.

  • How to define "just enough" quality objectives
Tony Raymond, New Harbor Technical Management

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