Customers are requiring frequent and feature-rich releases of software products to support Lucent Hardware. The fundamental problem is that the time required to develop and test features often exceeds the release interval. One option to meet the needs of our customers is to use concurrent development and testing; however, the use of concurrent development has several potential pitfalls. The primary problems associated with concurrent development are: 1) How to isolate the long lead features from the features that fit within a development cycle, 2) How to manage the propagation of bugs fixed between releases that are in the field and releases that are still being developed, and 3) Developers must be trained to work in the concurrent paradigm. This paper describes a unique approach, using existing Configuration Management tools, to managing the development load lines in support of concurrent Fixed Interval Feature Delivery (FIFD). Software load line management is the infrastructure and p

In this show that aired one week after the U.S. Presidential election in November 2000, Ms. Dekkers and Mr. Pressman talk about system failure and the importance of ergonomics in designing human interfaces.

Every problem-solving activity in an organization requires some learning. Both the stakeholders and the facilitators of the organization need to learn as they go through change. This paper describes our fist experiences with facilitating process improvement and problem solving by focusing on congruence, building trust relationships, systems thinking and lots of "letting go."

If you are lucky, you've never been on the receiving end of a Vice President discovering that a large investment in testing hasn't paid off in improved quality. This article gives an example of how a beefed up test team caused a decline in developer-test practices--with disastrous results. The article describes in detail how the whole team can work better–technically and psychologically–and ultimately ship software with fewer defects.