Articles

Essentials for Small Team Dynamics in CM Practices

Personality matters a great deal when you need to be able to help a small team implement essential software configuration management practices. Small teams have dynamics just like any other team and you need to know what it takes to help your team achieve success. SCRUMs may have a maximum size of nine members, but you will likely find yourself in organizations where successful teams grow and you have to deal with the dynamics implicit in a successful team that now has new requirements for communicating and working together successfully. In this column, we will take a look at some of the essentials required for small teams.

Leslie  Sachs's picture Leslie Sachs
When Large Teams Shrink

Ben Weatherall addresses what happens when large teams shrink to the extent that they are considered small. There are several situations where this commonly happens—for example, when a team has been raided by other teams, when the majority of the work has been accomplished and a large team is no longer needed, or when the corporate situation is such that downsizing occurs.

Ben Weatherall's picture Ben Weatherall
People Skills Play an Essential Role in Release Management

Release management is a complex function that involves many essential technical tasks that must be completed in a very specific way. At first glance, one might think that Release Management has little or nothing to do with personality and psychology. In the book Configuration Management Best Practices: Practical Methods that Work in the Real World, Bob Aiello and I focused three of our fourteen chapters on the people side of CM. The fact is that people skills play an essential role in release management. Read on if you want to improve your ability to get the job done and achieve success in release management!

Leslie  Sachs's picture Leslie Sachs
9 Questions You Must Ask When Selecting the Right Tool and Vendor

The key to selecting the best vendor and tool is asking the right questions. The answers to these nine essential questions can mean the difference between satisfaction with your purchase and a giant waste of time and money.

Joe Townsend's picture Joe Townsend
Picking SCM Standards or Frameworks

There are many things to consider when picking an SCM standard or framework for your organization. Taking the time to explore compliance, politics, experience, and driving forces before making a selection will increase acceptance and smooth the transition.

Joe Townsend's picture Joe Townsend
What Is a “Best” Practice?

What's good for the goose isn't always good for the gander. This is especially true when it comes to labeling "best practices." Joe Townsend has a few things to keep in mind when determining "best," "better," and "good" practices in your organization.

Joe Townsend's picture Joe Townsend
Leap IT: Lean Accelerators for Productivity improvement in IT

“Expectations from IT just keep increasing every single day “– this is a point of view echoed by several CIOs across the organizations all over the globe. Newer developments in IT like Social Networking, Green IT, Virtualization, and Business analytics are changing the way businesses are run.

Balaji OS's picture Balaji OS
Database Compare and Synchronize Methods as a Part of the Software Release Management Process

By testing migration processes between environments, bugs are able to be found earlier, and before the migration to production. Using automatic packages, and well-thought out staging areas, migration can be a less painful, and more informative process than it may have been for you in the past.

Yaniv  Yehuda's picture Yaniv Yehuda
Small Teams in a Large Organization

Ben Weatherall writes that the need to tailor existing SCM tools should be kept to a minimum and the solutions be implemented is such a way as to be reused in the future. Additional SCM requirements for these teams over and above those already in place are generally modest.

Ben Weatherall's picture Ben Weatherall
The Rationale for Standards

Ben Weatherall gives the rationale for standards from a non-traditional viewpoint, Know what you are trying to solve by first determining the root problems and your culture, and then try to either find a standard that matches or one that can be modified to fit your situation. Just make sure that if you follow a standard, you truly follow it and that if you modify a standard that you document where you vary from it.

Ben Weatherall's picture Ben Weatherall

Pages

StickyMinds is a TechWell community.

Through conferences, training, consulting, and online resources, TechWell helps you develop and deliver great software every day.