The Latest

When a factory comes to a screeching halt and the collected team managers start pointing fingers at team members and ducking blame, one manager sets a valuable example by offering up a name--his own.

Ron Jeffries and Chet Hendrickson join Bob Payne in this podcast recorded at the 2006 Simple Design and Testing Conference. We invite you to take a listen to their impression of the conference as a whole, and the current state of software development and testing.

When a man suffered a cardiac arrest on a ski slope, a medley of medical personnel from different countries and backgrounds mustered together to take charge of the man's health. Despite language barriers, they were successful in stabilizing the man. While this incident may seem to have little to do with software development, Clarke Ching sees that the makeshift emergency team shared specific characteristics found in all strong software development teams. In this column, he details these characteristics and how applying them can turn your team into a more successful team no matter how dissimilar individual teammates may be.

Agile Earned Value Management (AgileEVM) offers a simple, lightweight method for integrating the benefits of traditional EVM metrics into your agile software development process without causing "drag" on team productivity. AgileEVM metrics can provide added value for project stakeholders, product and project managers, and Agile team members. In particular, AgileEVM adds a cost reporting component to the Agile toolkit that supports project decision making.

The relationship was wildly exciting and adventurous when it began, but soon Dion Johnson discovered the scandalous truth about his new friend, Record & Playback. Not wanting to endure or support such deceitful behavior, Dion embarked on a campaign against Record & Playback. With the intervening years acting as a buffer, he now wants to give Record & Playback a second chance. In this column, find out how Dion plans to save the relationship from totally dissolving.

Automated sourcecode analysis tools are becoming more powerful and more necessary than ever before. Alberto Savoia takes a look at the evolution of static and dynamic code analysis tools, from their humble beginnings to their present status as indispensable technology, and tells us what he predicts for the future.

There's a vicious game being played daily in the lives of software developers. The rules to this game are not clear cut, and it can change its structure rapidly. If you're not careful, the game will end up controlling your work schedule for quite some time. In this column, Johanna Rothman gives a referee's point of view of this game and reveals the secrets to winning.