It happened when I participated for the first time on a SEI/CMM process improvement initiative at my employer. That’s when I realized the power of software metrics. Instead of handing us a ready made process to follow, each of the different product organizations were tasked with the objective of developing their own processes with the goal of achieving Level 2 certification. Each group formed teams around the key process areas (KPA) to develop the practices to be followed. It was without a doubt the best process improvement experience of my career changing the way I manage and view software management permanently.

It has been my experience that shortchanging quality has always had a negative impact to the team and the organization that was never worth the trade-off.

The one essay that I was hoping would have a large readership was “An Objective Method for Navigating Your Projects.” Out of all the pieces published the methods described in this article can make a tremendous improvement in managing your software releases. There are many benefits to using metrics to managing software projects.

When I was a high school student I was an avid competitor in the sport of wrestling. It’s an extremely demanding and punishing sport: requiring extreme stamina, strength, skill, agility, and mental toughness. You have to have a strong mind to compete successfully in wrestling. When you’re in the 3rd period of a match, you’re exhausted, and your opponent continues aggressively to push the action, only the tough-minded continue to fight and pull out a win.

Did you ever read one of those articles where the writer had instant credibility? I recently stumbled upon one when I was looking to get my web site indexed on dmoz.org. The article is titled “Nine Steps to Delivering Defect-Free Software” by Terence M. Colligan. When I read the article I knew he isn’t just writing about somebody else’s experience because it mirrored my own experiences when I was writing software myself. In the article he identifies nine traits contributing to defect free code.

The Agile software development practices are in their infancy stage as evidenced by the number of variants that are being promoted in popular print and usage today:  Scrum and XP being two popular variants.  Clearly …

Have you ever wondered why software process has yet to flourish in the software industry?  Why, after many decades of industry growth, there is no consensus on a process methodology or even best practices?  Why …

There’s a lot of activity and promotion of the Agile software methodologies that can be found on both the Internet and in books today.  Its adherents are zealous in their commitment to the Agile principles …

Does your final project schedule look identical to the project schedule that you began your release with?  If it does, you either aren’t managing your schedule or you are working on a dead product.  Project …

“Another 30 defects uncovered yesterday,” reports the QA Lead. “Ten defects were fixed,” reports the Tech. Lead. Taken alone these are alarming statistics, and if they persist long enough, the release date would certainly be in jeopardy.

Many software teams struggle through the QA phase with great anxiety as they normally work through the phase without a compass: nothing to tell them whether they are on track or not. How many defects are left? Will we be able to fix all the defects before the release date? These are a few of the questions that teams have anxiety about. It’s only until a few weeks before the planned release date that they come to grips with the realization that they are in trouble.