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If you're working on more than one project at a time or if your managers are asking you to do so, it's time to make some decisions. Not every project should be started or finished, and certainly no one person or team should work on all projects at the same time. The organization needs to make some decisions about whether to commit to a project, kill it so it doesn't interfere with other projects, or transform it so it can succeed in a reasonable time.

Michael Sayko introduces CruiseControl, which enables the implementing CI of Java applications. Using CruiseControl's build loop, dashboard, and build resultsJSP, Michael shows how any Java development team can receive added value through this open source tool.

As evidenced by news stories relating blatant failures on the part of the Transportation Security Administration, many organizations fail to learn much from the information testing provides. What can we do to improve the quality of our measurements so we can learn valuable lessons from the results?

Kanban,a Japanese word meaning “signal card,” introduces a new way to think about software development. Through signaling, a limit is set on work in progress resulting in a system that is never overloaded. Kanban signals do not need to be based on passing physical cards; any virtual signaling mechanism will do equally well.

Test-driven development is usually presented as a developer process. On the other hand, acceptance test-driven development (ATDD) is a communication process between the customer and the developer. In ATDD, the tests provide the terminology in customer-understandable terms. The customer's terminology suggests abstract data types that make code more readable.

It's a technique children and teenagers have mastered: asking "why" until they get to an acceptable response (or until we're too tired to continue answering). Find out how Michele Sliger uses a similar approach designed by Six Sigma to drill down into the underlying cause of any problem within software projects. She then continues the inquisition with a series of other questions in order to find out how these problems affect business value and technology. Read on to learn what these questions are and how you can start using them to find out why things aren't going as planned.