People & Teams

Many managers look to formal techniques-requirements reviews, code inspection, and testing-to improve the quality of their software. While these techniques are valuable, they only evaluate the state of quality rather than improve it. The key is to create quality software in the first place. This can only be achieved by a change in management style. Jason Bryant proposes a set of simple and effective principles you can employ to produce high quality software. First, you must foster a culture where people are given the freedom, time, and resources to do the job correctly the first time. By embracing user centered and incremental development practices, you will go a long way toward ensuring accurate and timely software delivery. Focus on training your staff to become masters of their craft and invest equally in architecture, new features, and maintenance.

Wouldn't it be nice to know what your staff is doing without looking like a micromanager? Have you wondered how to treat people fairly while still giving them what they need? Would you like to spend a week out of the office, but you're worried your staff won't be able to manage while you're gone? Johanna Rothman explores questions that face software managers every day. Gain new insights through the mistakes she made and the lessons she learned after she became a manager and then a consultant after years of hard-core technical work. Johanna describes seventeen technical management tips and tricks she has learned through trial and error, including the dangers of extended overtime, the value of one-on-one meetings, ways to build trust, and many others. Learn about a manager's job, how to create an effective work environment, and how you can help people do their best work.

With all the hype about agile, lean, CMMI®, and every other method du jour, we sometimes forget that our real goal is high performance. High-performance software teams consistently deliver products that delight their customers, all while remaining on schedule, keeping with agreed-to functionality, and maintaining high quality. These teams are proud of what they produce and are continuously improving the way they work. Over the past decade, Noopur Davis has worked with many high-performance teams in both large and small organizations. She has discovered that high-performance teams share a number of key practices, regardless of the process they use. Noopur shares these effective practices, including self-direction, openness and transparency, simplicity of work practices, focused use of data, an uncompromising commitment to quality, and others.

Turbulent weather such as tornados is characterized by chaotic, random, and often surprising and powerful pattern changes. Similarly, turbulent software projects are characterized by chaotic, seemingly random project changes that happen unexpectedly and with force. Dealing with turbulence is about dealing with change. Testing teams must contend with continuously changing project requirements, design, team members, business goals, technologies, and organizational structures. Test managers and leaders should not just react to change; instead, they need to learn how to read the warning signs of coming change and seek to discover the source of impending changes. Rob Sabourin shares his experiences organizing projects for testing in highly turbulent situations. Learn how to identify context drivers and establish active context listeners in your organization.