Using a real-life case study, Jeanette Horan presents how the search for product quality improvement at Lotus led to the realization that the software measurement process needed to be changed to drive organizational priorities. Learn how a cross-functional team provided recommendations for a new process, standardized on core metrics, and implemented a new self-service application. Discover how the use of innovative technology and active participation by the stakeholders resulted in a consistently streamlined process that allows fact-based decision making resulting in improved product quality and customer satisfaction.

Many testing organizations focus primarily on software executable code, but that's not the only thing you can test. For instance, did you ever consider testing your software requirements? When you test only code, you face some big disadvantages, not to mention that design defects often aren't even fixable because they demand too much effort, too late in the release cycle. In fact, it's difficult to even report some requirements defects since the developers have already committed to the design strategy. But if you test your requirements early in the game, you can discover defects before they're cast into designs and code, consequently saving your organization potentially huge rework costs.

With more and more organizations claiming to be Capability Maturity Model (CMM) Level four or five, is high maturity all it's cracked up to be? This talk clarifies what attributes should be present in a true high maturity organization, and presents case studies where organizations benefited substantially from achieving these high maturity capabilities. It also addresses practices that, while they technically quality as high maturity, add absolutely no business value to development and its customers.

While we can't guarantee that our software will never fail, we can take serious steps to reduce the risk. The toughest kind of system to build involves safety-critical software where the reliability requirements are extremely strict-and whose failure puts lives in jeopardy. Shari Lawrence Pfleeger looks at what "solid software" means, and explores ways we can achieve it. She examines solid software within the context of the proposed National Missile Defense System.