StickyMinds.com New and Featured Articles

Book Review: Coaching Agile Teams

Reviewed by John Snuggs — Fri, 28 Jan 2011 14:56:21 GMT

Coaching Agile Teams is a guide for agile team leaders. In many ways, it acts as a mentor and, borrowing a part of the subtitle, a companion.

StickyMinds.com Weekly Column: Harvesting Stakeholder Perspectives to Organize Your Backlog

Mary Gorman and Ellen Gottesdiener — Thu, 06 Jan 2011 15:32:58 GMT

When Mary Gorman and Ellen Gottesdiener facilitated a game called The Backlog Is in the Eye of the Beholder for the Boston chapter of the International Institute of Business Analysis, both the players and the facilitators learned some important lessons in organizing a project requirements backlog. In this article, they describe the game and what it revealed, including the value of truly knowing your stakeholders.

StickyMinds.com Weekly Column: How Far We’ve Come (and How Far We May Go)

Michele Sliger — Thu, 06 Jan 2011 15:32:26 GMT

At the start of a new year, Michele Sliger looks back across the recent decades of information technology advancement—from the dawn of the personal computer to the abundance of social networking websites—and (with some pointers from Ron Jeffries and Linda Rising) ponders how those advances have impacted our view of change, software, and ourselves.

StickyMinds.com Weekly Column: Fuzzing Through the Side Door

Jonathan Kohl — Thu, 06 Jan 2011 15:31:30 GMT

Fuzz testing, or “fuzzing,” is an approach to test automation that attempts to uncover weaknesses in a system using tool-generated data. In this article, Jonathan Kohl recounts how he used this technique on a published web services interface to test “through the side door”—those testable, in-between areas like messaging APIs.

Book Review: Software Engineering Best Practices

Reviewed by Lorne Schachter — Thu, 06 Jan 2011 08:24:38 GMT

If you've been involved in software engineering for any length of time, then you've probably heard of Capers Jones. He is well-known for all his work on the software engineering process, so it's not surprising that he's put together a collection of best practices for software engineering.

StickyMinds.com Weekly Column: Good Training is an Investment, Poor Training is Expensive

Payson Hall — Mon, 27 Dec 2010 13:35:27 GMT

Large, internal development projects often engage in paradoxical spending, investing the lion’s share of staff and other resources in system development and testing while treating end-user training as an afterthought often accomplished through the least expensive means possible. In this column, Payson Hall crunches the numbers to help you get the most value out of your application training.

StickyMinds.com Weekly Column: 10 Frontiers for Software Testing

Chris McMahon — Mon, 20 Dec 2010 09:28:42 GMT

In May 2010, the first Writing About Testing conference brought some of the top minds in the field together to discuss the current state of public discourse on software testing and areas where testing is evolving within the realm of software development. In this column, Chris McMahon, who designed and launched the conference, continues his mission to advance the discussion by sharing ten of the most interesting frontiers for software testing.

Book Review: Teach What You Know

Reviewed by Robert Jahrling — Fri, 17 Dec 2010 10:27:31 GMT

If you've ever hired someone, been a new hire, or was asked to "show someone the ropes," Steve Trautman’s book serves as a useful guide to the practicalities of peer mentoring. Trautman, a former program manager at Microsoft, explains the techniques that he recommends for efficient mentoring success.

Featured Content: Counting Defects

Bert Wijgers — Mon, 13 Dec 2010 10:25:33 GMT

Defect counts are often considered as measurements of product quality. However, the most important defect count in that respect is by definition unknown; the number of undiscovered errors. Defect counts can be used as indicators of process quality. In doing so, one should avoid assuming simple causal relations. Defect counts can provide useful information but have to be presented with care.

StickyMinds.com Weekly Column: End-of-release Branching Strategies, Part 2

Steve Berczuk — Mon, 13 Dec 2010 10:24:31 GMT

In this second half of Steve's article, he prepares for a product release through branching strategies. Here you'll learn how and when to create a release branch to help your team code and test what's needed for a timely release.

Book Review: Reflections on Management

Reviewed by Alan Madick — Fri, 10 Dec 2010 08:30:20 GMT

Unlike many of today's fashions, Watts S. Humphrey’s book is not likely to be out of style or past its shelf life any time soon. The information provided here comes from years of practical experience and all relates to a recurring theme: quality must be a part of everything you do. Mr. Humphrey's take on the theme relates quality to processes and "soft" skills, such as leading, being led, and being part of a team. Quality never goes out of style. The advice provided today by Mr. Humphrey will be just as important ten years down the road.

Featured Content: Article: The Open Source Test Tool Paradigm

Reinder Otter — Fri, 03 Dec 2010 15:51:29 GMT

Testing is often seen as an effort to determine the quality of the product at the end of a project, so it needs to be executed when development has finished instead of being a means to deal with risks at the earliest stage possible. Therefore, project budget, is in most cases spent on the processes that actually produce tangible products, at the expense of the testing budget. Whatever budget is left for testing will be spent on people rather than on test tools.

Book Review: The Art of Enterprise Information Architecture

Reviewed by Jennifer Flamm — Fri, 03 Dec 2010 15:49:46 GMT

This book is a comprehensive resource and provides a wealth of information regardless if the reader is a beginner or an experienced information architect. An asset on any bookshelf, this book delivers an impressive amount of information in the form of tables, diagrams, and insights about enterprise information architecture (EIA).

StickyMinds.com Weekly Column: How to Resolve Disputes So Everyone Wins

Naomi Karten — Mon, 29 Nov 2010 08:07:10 GMT

t's a special skill to be able to terminate disputes amicably. In this week's column, Naomi Karten offers suggestions for how to resolve disputes so that none of the parties suffers from black eyes or bruised egos.

Featured Content: Article: Achieving Meaningful Metrics from Your Test Automation Tools

Jack R. Frank — Tue, 23 Nov 2010 15:13:08 GMT

In addition to the efficiency improvements you expect from automated testing tools, you can—and should—expect them to provide valuable metrics to help manage your testing effort. By exploiting the programmability of automation tools, you can support the measurement and reporting aspects of your department. Learn how Jack Frank employs these tools with minimal effort to create test execution status reports, coverage metrics, and other key management reports.

Book Review: Making it Big in Software

Reviewed by Mary Ann Overbaugh — Tue, 23 Nov 2010 14:48:06 GMT

You'll nod your head in agreement with what author Sam Lightstone writes in his book on the career and personal knowledge Lightstone’s gained over the years. Lightstone looks at all stages of a career in software development, from getting the best education, landing the job, working within an organization and team, attaining prominence in your field, to sharing and mentoring others.

StickyMinds.com Weekly Column: Software Project Estimation: Using Uncertainty Factors

Jonathan Kohl — Mon, 22 Nov 2010 08:54:37 GMT

Tired of guesstimating your estimation process just to create a completion date management will accept? Jonathan Kohl takes the guess work out of estimations by focusing on uncertainties. It may sound counterintuitive, but the idea is to focus on the fact that all projects face unforeseen delays. The rigorous estimation process Jonathan describes here provides your team a way that ensures enough time is scheduled for development and a date for completion management can agree upon.

Book Review: Agile Project Management with Scrum

Reviewed by Jan Scott — Fri, 19 Nov 2010 09:08:45 GMT

This book is all about product owners, whom the author sees as a role encompassing the duties of a traditional product manager, a strategic product planner, some duties of a traditional project manager, and the duties of a release manager. Yet, in my experience, most agile teams have a product owner whose role is often poorly defined, vague, and more likely contained in the duties of several people. The author addresses these issues in an engaging and interesting manner.

Featured Content: Article: Sometimes Perception Is the Problem

Payson Hall — Mon, 15 Nov 2010 08:56:31 GMT

High on a mountain twenty years ago, a wise man shared secrets of problem solving that have served Payson Hall ever since. In this article, Payson passes along a simple definition that offers insights into problems and potential solutions.

Featured Content: Article: Agile Light Bulb Moments

Michele Sliger — Mon, 15 Nov 2010 08:56:27 GMT

Many of us have our personal identities wrapped up in our jobs, which can make change hard, particularly in agile environments. Recognizing the power of storytelling, Michele Sliger started collecting first-person stories about how adopting agile affected individuals and what their “light bulb moment” was like. Find out how agile adoptions have changed individuals—their perceptions of agile, their leadership styles, and even their personal lives.

StickyMinds.com Weekly Column: Measure Throughput, Not One Hundred Percent Utilization

Johanna Rothman — Mon, 15 Nov 2010 08:16:07 GMT

Keeping your team busy with work all of the time may seem good for productivity and a good use of your work force. But it come with serious backlash in the form of delayed work, incomplete iterations, technical debt, and the negative consequences of multitask context switching. In this column, Johanna Rothman explains how teams should focus on throughput and not the conceived benefit of 100 percent utilization.

Featured Content: Article: The New Era of Software Quality Assurance

Damico Nicome — Fri, 12 Nov 2010 12:55:26 GMT

An effective Quality Assurance (QA) organization must have ARMS (the organization’s ability to perform certain measurement Activities, understand the activity’s Relevance to the software quality model, know the type of Metrics to collect, and create Synergy with adjacent organizations). This thesis focuses on the difficulty in obtaining measurement and explores whether or not QA organizational design can make it easier to measure certain characteristics of software quality.

Book Review: The Complete Project Management Methodology and Toolkit

Reviewed by Gerry Thompson — Fri, 12 Nov 2010 12:02:40 GMT

This book by Gerard M. Hill is written for project managers who already possess a basic level of competency in project management. The book is an excellent shelf reference and provides the tools on a companion CD, which are needed to begin implementing your own project management methodology.

Book Review: Refactoring in Ruby

Reviewed by Debra Martinez — Tue, 09 Nov 2010 12:51:33 GMT

When I first started reading this book, I noticed a few, unique things. First, it’s more of a workbook than a regular technology book. Second, a "cheat sheet" list of important facts and information to which you might need quick access are provided on the front- and back-inside covers. I just started using Ruby, so I learned a lot as I read along. There are a lot of examples of code in the book that are useful to a new user such as myself.

StickyMinds.com Weekly Column: Warning: No News is Not Always Good News

Naomi Karten — Mon, 01 Nov 2010 08:22:55 GMT

When your customers aren't complaining about the services you provide, it's easy to assume you have happy customers. But that could be a serious mistake. In this week's column, Naomi Karten describes what happened in two organizations that misinterpreted the absence of customer complaints.