Technical Debt - Why You Should Care
Felipe Rubim discusses several forms of technical debt, emphasizing that every member of the team should consider it, and suggesting taking concrete steps in measuring and reducing it.
Felipe Rubim discusses several forms of technical debt, emphasizing that every member of the team should consider it, and suggesting taking concrete steps in measuring and reducing it.
In its recent issue the Chip Design Magazine points out that the huge growth of portable and wireless systems combined with the increasing relevance of software in embedded systems poses a challenge. Quality issues need special attention, especially in safety-critical systems. This is why software test tools for software systems will become increasingly important.
In two recent papers, David Chappell, Principal of Chappell & Associates, outlines the different aspects of software quality – functional, structural, and process-, the groups of people directly interested in quality –users, developers, and sponsors-, and the outcome of defects in externally or internally facing software over time.
A Coverity study concludes that open source code using static analysis has on average a lower number of defects than commercial code, but they are on par when it comes to code of similar sizes.

The evolution of the software industry has created two separate roles: The developer and the tester. Traditional software development put these two at odds. Now, agile practices are bringing them together again in order to meet the original business goal: working software.

Often project leaders—even Agile project leaders—talk about their projects in terms of features. Yes, and what do features really mean for stakeholders? Features are what your system or process can do. Benefits are why people care. And benefits equal business value. Learn why and how to communicate benefits rather than features—and what it will mean for you, your team and your organization.

One of the main challenges when designing software architecture is the consideration of quality attributes. Not only their design turns out to be difficult, but also the specification of these attributes. Consequently, many problems in software systems are directly related to the specification and design of quality attributes such as modifiability or performance, to name just a few.
William Pugh explains how to use FindBugs, a Java static code analysis tool, to discover bugs. The talk covers general issues regarding code bugs with advice on how to make sure you get rid of them.
Erik Dörnenburg shares techniques for estimating code quality by collecting and analyzing data using the toxicity chart, metrics tree maps, size&complexity pyramid, complexity view, code city, etc.

Recorded at the 10th anniversary of the agile manifesto signing, Jim Highsmith discusses how he works with executive management teams to introduce and integrate agile techniques into enterprise organizations from both the business and IT sides. He defines adaptive leadership and discuses adaptive ALM, continuous delivery, lean and Kanban methods.

Are there repeated patterns of failure on Enterprise Agile Enablement efforts? Does success at the team level always result in success at the organization level? Sanjiv Augustine and Arlen Bankston discuss the Seven Deadly Sins that organizations repeatedly make so you can steer clear of them and benefit from a successful Enterprise Agile Adoption.

This mini-book offers an easy to follow 10 step guide to taking the initial plunge and start using Lean principles to optimizing value and flow in your system. Each step consists of a section explaining “why” followed by examples of specific tools, practices and rules that have helped other teams better understand and optimize their system.