The Latest
A Formula for Successful Peer Reviews[magazine] Peer reviews come highly recommended, but many who try them find they just don't work. Maybe that's because they didn't have the magic ingredients. Find out what could be missing from your peer reviews. |
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Power Plays[magazine] Get the software engineering slant on items from the recent news. |
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Much Ado about Outsourcing[magazine] Turn to The Last Word, where software professionals who care about quality give you their opinions on hot topics. This month, read why one man thinks the US is overreacting to the threat of overseas outsourcing. |
Adam Kolawa
January 10, 2005 |
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What Is Quality, Anyway?[magazine] All year long we've been asking people in every phase of the software development lifecycle to tell us what quality means to them. We found that while most agree on what quality is, there's still controversy over how to achieve it. |
Rebecca Traeger
January 10, 2005 |
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Bringing Joy to Your Job[magazine] We're pleased to bring you technical editors who are well respected in their fields. Get their take on everything that relates to the industry, technically speaking. In this issue, find out how to add a little happiness to your project life. |
Brian Marick
January 10, 2005 |
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What NOT to Test[magazine] When the schedule is tight, testing often gets squeezed. You could gnash your teeth and rail against the unfairness of it all. You could doggedly test until you run out of time. But maybe it would be better to plan for change up front with a flexible, prioritized test plan. Find out how to decide what to leave in and what to leave out. |
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Outsourcing: Twelve Tips to Make Outsourcing Work[magazine] More and more projects are being shipped overseas or outsourced to a contract company nowadays. However, managing an outsourced project is a risky task. Take home twelve hot tips that will help keep your project from getting burned. Ed Weller offers twelve tips to make your outsourcing experience better. |
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TimeLine Postmortems[article] We should use project postmortems to improve our software process. But few teams do, and fewer teams reliably learn from project postmortems. You can introduce postmortems to your team easily with a timeline postmortem process. If you are already doing postmortems, a timeline-based approach may improve your results.
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Seth Morris
January 9, 2005 |
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Not Your Father's Test Automation[article] If you think that test automation is mostly about executing tests, then you're missing out on a big opportunity. Or rather, you're missing a lot of small opportunities adding up to a big one. Consider this: stop thinking about test automation as merely executing automated tests, stop thinking about test automation as something you need expensive tools for, and start discovering automation you can implement in a couple of days and usually with extremely inexpensive tools or tools you already have available. In this week's column, Danny Faught and James Bach suggest taking a more Agile approach to test automation. |
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Alter Your Requirements Process[magazine] Fashioning a new requirements method is an almost impossible task, given budget and time constraints. But that doesn't mean you have to be stuck with an ill-fitting process. Learn about seven alterations that almost any organization can make. |
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My Mentor: The Internet[magazine] You've got no training budget. The old-timers in your organization are taking early-retirement packages. You know the basics, but feel like there's no one to teach you all the nuances of the trade. Have you considered turning to an unconventional mentor? Maybe the Internet? It sure worked for Danny Faught. Read all about how the Internet changed his career—-for the better. |
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Keeping Secrets[article] Test data has long been a challenge for testing; privacy legislation, identify theft, and the continued trend towards outsourcing has made it even worse. Just establishing and maintaining a comprehensive test environment can take half or more of all testing time and effort. In this column, Linda Hayes adds in the new and expanding privacy laws that inevitably limit your testing options. Yet from the quagmire of laws and company standards, better testing can emerge. |
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Bumper Stickers for Testers[article] Why is software testing perceived as dull? How many other jobs can list "crash," "hang," and "death march" in their daily vocabularies? In this week's column, Harry Robinson encourages testers to embrace a little pride and excitement in what they do, and Harry has just the mottos for bumper stickers that announce Tester Pride. Author's note: Feel free to add your own favorite slogan in the comment section at the end! |
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Thinking Inside the Box[article] The problem with urging outside-the-box thinking is that many of us do a less-than-stellar job of thinking inside the box. We often fail to realize the options and opportunities that are blatantly visible inside the box that could dramatically improve our chances of success. In this column, Naomi Karten points out how we fall victim to familiar traps, such as doing things the same old (ineffective) way or discounting colleague and teammate ideas. Thinking outside of the box can generate innovative and ingenious ideas and outcomes, but the results will flop when teammates ignore the ideas inside the box. |
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The Enemy Within[magazine] Not all threats come from outsiders. In an era of downsizing, layoffs, and pay cuts, sometimes it's your own disgruntled employees (or ex-employees) who are targeting you. Get some tips to help you protect your software from sabotage. |