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

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.

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.

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