The Latest
The Demise of Record/Script/Play[magazine] Is the Record/Script/Play method of automated testing ready to take its final bow? What will the next generation hold? Linda Hayes reflects on the past changes in automation, inspects the current situation, and offers her vision of the future. |
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A Look at Our Other Tool Look[magazine] In January, StickyMinds.com introduced a new eNewsletter that covers tools and automation for the software development lifecycle. In this month’s Tool Look column, the editors of Better Software magazine and StickyMinds.com present a sample of what you can read each month in the Sticky ToolLook. |
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Waterfall 2006[magazine] Check your iterations at the door—it’s time for Waterfall 2006. With a wink and a finger pointed squarely at the April 1 square on his calendar, Mike Cohn offers some hints about what to look for at the much anticipated Waterfall 2006 conference. |
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Project Roundup[magazine] Have misplaced priorities or a lack of focus allowed your development project to run wild? Don't let a stampede of defects, repairs, and requirements change drive your project. Follow Robert Galen's advice, and corral that development with release criteria. |
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From Primitive to Prominent: The Past, Present, and Future of Automated Code Analysis[magazine] Automated code 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. |
Alberto Savoia
June 26, 2006 |
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Refactoring: Small Steps to Help You Clean Up Your Code[magazine] Poor software design will slow down even the most well-meaning code. Code smells are one element of poor design to watch out for in your projects. C. Keith Ray explains how you can start washing away your code smells with a dose of code refactoring. |
C. Keith Ray
June 26, 2006 |
Pair Programming Observations[article] Say "pair programming" to a programmer and he'll probably frown or turn his back on you. But add some rules the programmers must follow--rules that help maintain each person's sanity--and he just might come to find this practice rewarding and beneficial. This article, originally published on Jeff Langr's website, explains the rules and how certain teams have reacted to this structured version of pair programming. |
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Communication During a Crisis[article] When a crisis hits a business, you've got to work hard and fast to mitigate the negative consequences--a process which includes communicating with your clients. In this week's column, Payson Hall reminds us that keeping clients in the know is critical to a successful recovery and will stabilize the clients' faith in you, even when all has failed. Drawing from a recent crisis in which he was the client, Payson gives us key points to consider the next time we are overwhelmed by customers who want to know when business will return to normal. |
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Test Patterns: Nine Techniques to Help Test for a Greater Variety of Bugs. [magazine] Building on his earlier columns covering James Bach's Heuristic Test Strategy Model, Michael Bolton delivers nine techniques--each of which affords a different way of modeling the product--to help you test your systems for a greater variety of bugs. |
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Fooling Around with XP[magazine] True confessions of a certified project manager, tempted to abandon all she has been taught for her one true passion. |
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Best Practices In Global Agile Development For Product Innovation[article] Agile over the wire and how to make it work. In our experience, pure-play Agile development is destined to fail in a global delivery model. The basics of Agile, such as the emphasis on face-to-face communication, close interaction between teams and an adaptive approach to product development, are not possible while engaging an offshore team. However, by injecting process adaptations, Cognizant has successfully enabled some facet of "specially customized" Agile methodologies. In fact, a large percentage of Cognizant's software product innovation services use Agile practices in some form or the other. |
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Iteration and Release Retrospectives: The Natural Rhythm for Agile Measurement[article] At regular intervals, the team reflects on how to become more effective, then tunes and adjusts its behavior accordingly. (Agile Manifesto principle 12) A cornerstone of agility is the team's commitment to continued reflection and adaptation. For most teams, there is a natural cadence to this process as iterations occur frequently, typically every one to two weeks apart, and releases occur every two to four months. As such, the iteration boundary represents a frequent opportunity for immediate feedback and quick mid-course correction, primarily focused on the team's ability to simultaneously define, code and test new functionality in a time box. At the release boundary, the measures move to those things that reflect the team and the organizations ability to move that functionality from "inventory" to delivered product or system. In this article, we'll describe a set of iteration and release metrics that have been used to good effect by a number of agile teams. In our experience, teams that are effective in using these iteration and release metrics have the best chance to achieve the maximum benefits of agile. |
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5 C's of Agile Management[article] By focusing on the 5 C's of agile development: Courage, Context, Course, Cadence, and Cost - software will never become "easy" but it will become easier, and better managed. Learn how each of these aspects cannot be ignored to run a successful project. |
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Calculating Earned Business Value For An Agile Project[article] It is apparent that agility works, whatever that may mean. However, many software projects remain artifact-driven and waterfallish. Why is this? The most common excuses are that agility is too developer-centric, that it is too lightweight, and that feedback to business is hard to understand. In particular, many managers in larger companies miss their metrics. In this paper we address this last problem by defining a new metric, Earned Business Value (EBV), that replaces standard Earned Value Analysis (EVA) metrics, and can be calculated in an agile project. Using EBV, teams can gain better understanding of a project's progress and determine when and where to reallocate resources or change course. |
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Rhythms as Agile Diagnostics[article] A healthy agile project has several typical rhythms such as releases, iterations, stand-up meetings, builds kicked off by continuous integration, and the red-green-red test cycle of a developer. These rhythms have healthy ranges (such as a stand up meeting lasting less than 15 minutes) and characteristics (such as that same stand up meeting not containing design discussions). When they fall out of these ranges or do not display the appropriate characteristics, they indicate that something is wrong with the agile process. |