Archive of Foundation series Articles

When prices go up, demand goes down.  But how much does it go down?  Price elasticity of demand is the term economists use for the math that describes this behavior.

There are a bunch of new* ways of selling software these days.  SaaS (Software as a Service) has been in the consumer space for a while, and is making significant inroads into the enterprise software space today.    If you’re considering purchasing or using software, you should understand what SaaS means and how it is different from the software products of the past.*

One of the most common mistakes people make when looking at data is to jump to conclusions about the data. We all live in a world of cause and effect. It is only natural that when we see data that appears to show cause and effect, we assume that it does. But it often doesn’t. This article shows the difference between cause and effect relationships and correlated data.

Utility is an abstract concept usually relegated to economics. What is it? How does it work?

Inbound product manager or outbound product manager – what’s the difference? We’ll look at the overall role, and the breakdown of responsibilities. We also follow-up with some suggested detailed reading.

JAD is an acronym that stands for Joint Application Design. JAD sessions are collaborative meetings where the customers meet with developers to determine what the product needs to be or do.

What is a data dictionary and how is it used when communicating and managing requirements?

Use cases represent the activities that people do when interacting with a system to achieve their goals. Use cases are a very effective tool for communicating and documenting what a system is intended to accomplish. Formal use cases are use cases that use a specific structure to represent the information. Knowing how to read a formal use case is important.

Functional Testing, also referred to as System Testing of software is the practice of testing the completed software to confirm that it meets the requirements defined for the software. A functional test is typically a test of user interactions, but can also involve communication with external systems. We contrast functional testing with unit testing. We also show how functional testing provides different benefits than unit testing.

Continuous Integration is the software development and quality process where all team members merge their code and verifies it frequently – at least daily. This verification project includes both an automated build process and automated testing. The main benefits of continuous integration come from risk-reduction and cost-reduction.