|
Gaining the Respect of the Programming Team As the layer between the business sponsor and the end user, and as the one who is ultimately responsible for the success of a project, project managers occupy a challenging role. Often, we find ourselves playing the role of leader, diplomat, counselor, and dare I say it, salesperson. To achieve success, it is crucial to build a solid foundation of teamwork and respect among those involved in the project. In this article, Patrick Graves explains how this can be accomplished. |
||
|
Always Assume Your Assumptions Are Wrong A potentially serious impediment to success in software projects is false assumptions. Both yours and everyone else's. If you act on false assumptions as though they're true, such as by assuming you understand exactly what your customers want, you may find yourself faced with flawed software and failed projects. In this column, Karten explores false, conflicting, and hidden assumptions, and how you can "surface" them. |
||
|
The Meaning of "Schedule" As you move from project to project, have you ever marveled at how the meaning of the word "schedule" seems to change? This is not a delusion! "Schedule" is an emotionally charged word. At present there's no agreement about what a schedule is, or what it's supposed to do. All we know for sure is that the word is supposed to get people excited. |
Sheryl Smith
July 31, 2003 |
|
|
The ROTI Method for Gauging Meeting Effectiveness When I visit software organizations, I often hear complaints that we spend too much time in meetings. Many people spend a significant portion of each day in meetings. Wouldn't it be great to give some of that time back? |
||
|
When Should You Start Project Overtime? Many managers believe that overtime, even extended overtime is a good thing, and will help a project make progress. However, most technical people who try to work more than two weeks of overtime make huge numbers of mistakes. Often, they don't realize the mistakes and have already wasted a lot of time and money. |
||
 |
Calculating ROI on your Investment in Requirements Management Tools There's no question that a commercial Requirements Management tool is very useful; but, can it pay for itself at your company? In this article we'll look at a model to help you calculate ROI on Requirements Management tools. |
Richard Denney
June 23, 2003 |
|
Are You Lying to Your Customers? It's important to be honest when dealing with customers, no matter what that honesty entails. You may not always be able to deliver your product on time, but not communicating that truthfully with your customer can be devastating to your business. Dare to tell your customers the truth. They don't like to hear bad news, but they'll appreciate you for giving it to them straight and giving it to them as soon as possible. This article will help motivate you. |
||
|
The Business Value of Quality and Testing Business transformation is a journey, not a data point. Quality cannot be an emphasis or a program, it must be a non-negotiable. Every time someone makes a decision to ship a product owing to market pressures, or individual client pressures, or worse, internal schedule pressures, behaviors are reinforced that minimize revenue. Many of the suggestions made in this paper are atypical emphases for projects and teams focused on quality. |
Adam Tate
June 9, 2003 |
|
|
Agile Codeline Management Software developers often view version management tools and techniques as a necessary evil. This is particularly true of developers practicing agile techniques. However, version management, can be an aid to agility rather than something that gets in the way. |
||
 |
Managing Automated Testing When a suite of automated tests takes days to run from start to finish, there is value in adding versatility. With the right structure implemented, an automated test suite can be flexible enough to allow a user to dynamically change the tests executed every time the suite is run. Rebecca goes through the design steps of creating an interface-driven tool that gives test execution versatility. |
Rebecca Nuesken
May 27, 2003 |
Pages
Upcoming Events
| Apr 27 |
STAREAST Software Testing Conference in Orlando & Online |
| Jun 08 |
AI Con USA An Intelligence-Driven Future |
