Project Management

Better Software Magazine Articles

My Summer as a Hacker

Pete TerMaat shares some valuable lessons learned from a summer with "hacking legend" Richard Stallman. He learned that attitude, passion for one's work, was most important. Reviews, coding standards, porting guidelines, bug hunting advice, and other measures can fall flat without a passion for clean code, for "getting things right."
Pete TerMaat
June 26, 2002
An Effective Technique for Verifying Software Design

While working at a telecommunications company, Linda Hamm had the task of developing and automating tests in a very short time with high-quality expectations. One of the projects was a rule-based expert system for switch maintenance. To help nail down the requirements, the group wrote state diagrams. This article is about what they are and how the group used them.
Linda Hamm
June 26, 2002
Getting the Most Out of Conferences

Will the benefits of attending, learning, and networking at a conference outweigh the costs of travel, time, and energy? Here are some tips on how to get the most out of conferences.
Alyn Wambeke
June 26, 2002
A Look at PREfix by Intrinsa

PREfix provides a source code simulation tool that is able to perform automatic review for a wide range of programming defects that lead to program crashes. Defects reported by PREfix include de-referencing NULL pointers, using uninitialized memory, leaking memory or resources, or using illegal values. Here is an analysis of the product.
Rodney Wilson
June 26, 2002
Learning to Love Unit Testing

Unit testing can become a developer's best friend. Find out how and why from two programmers who now rely on this practice to improve development.
Andy Hunt Dave Thomas
June 26, 2002
A Study in Failures

Examples of mistakes, manifestations, and problems help us understand all parts of the software. Brian Marick suggests Web resources that examine software failures.
Brian Marick
June 26, 2002
Managing the End Game: Avoiding End-of-Project Complications by putting the Test Team in Charge

Experiencing end-of-project woes? Read how one test team guided the work at the end of a project by establishing daily goals to meet weekly objectives; by grading the product with a two-tiered approach; and by posting frequent status reports.
Cindy Necaise
June 26, 2002
Project Politics

Politics is often seen as a dirty business--but in the right hands it can be a way of bridging the gap between "I've got a great new project idea" and getting the right product into your customers' hands. Elizabeth Schmitz shares what she's learned about project politics.
Elizabeth Schmitz
June 26, 2002
Project Planning: It's in the Cards

Spend two days with an engineer named Eddie, and see how one skeptic learned the value of a low-tech, team-intensive, Cards-on-the-Wall planning technique.
Dwayne Phillips
June 26, 2002
The Two Bugs

Brian Marick applies the philosophical concept of "ready-to-hand" to software programming and describes two bugs that illustrate problems caused by mismatched reuse of ideas.
Brian Marick
June 26, 2002

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