Articles

Car dashboard with various meters and dials 5 Key Elements for Designing a Successful Dashboard

When you’re designing a dashboard to track and display metrics, it is important to consider the needs and expectations of the users of the dashboard and the information that is available. There are several aspects to consider when creating a new dashboard in order to make it a useful tool. For a mnemonic device to help you easily remember the qualities that make a good dashboard, just remember the acronym “VITAL.”

Nels Hoenig's picture Nels Hoenig
Score being shown at a baseball game More Than a Score: Taking a Deeper Dive into Your Metrics

One key benefit of metrics is that they can be measured using a standard process; we can explain the numbers, and leadership can understand what that means. The downside is that it is only a measurement, so issues can easily hide until they become problems, and great work can also go unrepresented. Sporting events are a great example: The end score tells you who won, but not the details of the game. We need to look deeper.

Nels Hoenig's picture Nels Hoenig
Ubertesters logo One Experience with Ubertesters, a Mobile Test Management Platform

Many companies creating mobile apps struggle to find the time to test on a variety of devices, organize bug reports, and resolve issues efficiently. Andrew White’s organization tried Ubertesters, a platform that provides a team of mobile testers and a set of features for feedback. This is his account of how it affected their test process.

Andrew White's picture Andrew White
Clock: adding value How Testers Can Add Value Earlier in the Development Lifecycle

Before you can achieve continuous delivery, you need to first start implementing continuous integration. Some say CI is just for developers, but testers also play their own important roles. This article describes solutions that will help you add value to the development lifecycle—whether you work in an agile, DevOps, or traditional context.

Antoin Boerboom's picture Antoin Boerboom

Better Software Magazine Articles

Making the Move to Product-Driven Process

Just because you follow the rules of your software development process doesn't necessarily guarantee project success. According to David Hussman, there are four product-centered principles that everyone should practice.

David Hussman's picture David Hussman
Planning to Performance Test Your App? Think Again!

To complement functional validation, software teams are expected to validate performance. But, according to Jun Zhuang, you must be prepared to invest time, personnel, and resources to benefit from performance testing.

Jun Zhuang's picture Jun Zhuang
Is Agile Breaking Product Management?

It can be a challenge for a product manager to know how to lead an agile software team. As product managers take on many different roles throughout a project lifecycle, there can be confusion, resulting in the product manager doing what nobody else wants to do. Steve Johnson offers a perspective of the agile product manager that every software developer should know.

Steve Johnson's picture Steve Johnson
Monetization 2.0: The Evolution of Software Licensing

The cloud and the rapid migration to mobile devices and the Internet of Things have made traditional software licensing schemes obsolete. Omkar describes new software monetization based on business, pricing models, and usage.

Omkarnath Munipalle's picture Omkarnath Munipalle

Interviews

Annette Ash Motivate and Inspire Software Quality Goals: An Interview with Annette Ash
Video

In this interview, Annette Ash, a coach and trainer with SolutionsIQ, talks about the dirty term in the room: quality metrics. She reveals whether tracking metrics is beneficial, what it accomplishes, and what should be tracked with regards to software quality.

Jennifer Bonine's picture Jennifer Bonine
Sanjiv Augustine discusses product owner certification Product Owner Certification: An Interview with Sanjiv Augustine on Agile, Lean, and Scrum
Podcast

In this interview, Agile Leadership Network cofounder Sanjiv Augustine discusses his upcoming product owner certification class at the Mobile Dev + Test Conference. He talks about who should go, detailing how he'll be incorporating agile, lean, and Scrum into the lecture.

Josiah Renaudin's picture Josiah Renaudin
Process improvement specialist Deborah Kennedy The Ethics of Metrics: An Interview with Deborah Kennedy
Video

In this interview, Deborah Kennedy talks about her upcoming presentation at STARWEST 2014, the importance of using data wisely, why executive messaging is more important than people acknowledge it for, and the psychology behind the small things when it comes to metrics.

The Essential Product Owner—Championing Successful Products: An Interview with Ellen Gottesdiener
Video

In this interview, Ellen Gottesdiener talks about her presentation at Agile Development Conference and Better Software Conference West 2014, the importance of having context for requirements, good ways to set value considerations for requirements, and the common mistakes of product owners.

Conference Presentations

Making the Marriage of Product and Engineering Thrive
Slideshow

y now you have probably heard that there should be a healthy tension between the product and engineering teams. The key word there is "healthy"—when this relationship is unhealthy, silos tend to form, ideas may be thrown over the wall, and a lack of ownership can develop. 

Vidya Dinamani
Agile Dev West 2018, Better Software West 2018, DevOps West 2018 Beating the Feature Factory Mindset
Slideshow

On a human level, we crave outcomes and impact. But in software product development, there is something addictive about the "build more and more features" approach that often leaves people frustrated and unsatisfied. Developers understand the challenges of working in output-focused environments and the adverse effects this has on productivity, morale, and business impact. Join John Cutler as he discusses these "feature factories," why they exist, how they impact your business, and how you can shift the focus to outcomes and impact. John thoroughly makes the case that churning out features is no longer a competitive advantage and can in fact harm your business and disengage your team. Instead, he will show you how to move your organization beyond the feature factory and toward an outcome-based way of working that increases employee engagement and customer satisfaction.

John Cutler
Agile DevOps Impact Maps: Let Your Goals Drive Your Product Features
Slideshow

Wouldn’t it be great if there were a way to combine quantified business goals, direct traceability from goals to features, surfacing of value assumptions, cause-and-effect analysis, design thinking, and visual facilitation in a single approach? Mathias Eifert says there is! Impact maps...

Mathias Eifert
Project Management Tips to Improve Test Planning
Slideshow

When done right, testing is more than test plans, test scripts, and executing tests. In fact a test leader should consider testing a sub-project of the larger development project. By applying the same techniques project managers use to plan and manage the overall project, test leaders can...

Ricki Henry, Clark County Nevada

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