A client at a large company with large development teams and a long history of waterfall development made a comment: “The only people who are talking about doing this project in Agile are developers who think it will allow them to avoid responsibility.” My client may have been right (that […]
Software development / Test Automation / Testing
Posted on:
Test Smarter, Not Harder – Part 3
This series is a reprint of an article by Scott Sehlhorst, written for developer.* in March 2006. A recent article on dailytech about “new” methods for software testing points to some very interesting research by the NIST (the National Institute of Standards and Technology) Information Technology Lab. We’ve split the […]
Software development / Test Automation / Testing
Posted on:
Test Smarter, Not Harder – Part 2
This series is a reprint of an article by Scott Sehlhorst, written for developer.* in March 2006. A recent article on dailytech about “new” methods for software testing points to some very interesting research by the NIST (the National Institute of Standards and Technology) Information Technology Lab. We’ve split the […]
Software development / Test Automation / Testing
Posted on:
Test Smarter, Not Harder – Part 1
This series is a reprint of an article by Scott Sehlhorst, written for developer.* in March 2006. A recent article on dailytech about “new” methods for software testing points to some very interesting research by the NIST (the National Institute of Standards and Technology) Information Technology Lab. We’ve split the […]
Business Analysis / Interface Design / Product Management / Requirements / Requirements Models / Usability / UX
Posted on:
Global Actor Hierarchies and Personas
We use actor hierarchies to organize the different users of a system. Different people play different roles, and thus do different jobs. We use different actors to identify and organize those people. When deploying a system globally, we usually discover people that do the same jobs, but do them differently. […]
Consulting / Project Management / Software development
Posted on:
Outsourcing Debate – Two Guys Talk it Out
Bill Miller, who writes You Want it When?, a blog focused on improving the way you manage software development and I had a debate over email about outsourcing. We looked at pro’s and con’s, and our discussion centered around the best outsourcing model, and what the ramifications of outsourcing really […]
Business Analysis / Interaction design / Product Management / Requirements / Software development / UX
Posted on:
Managing Stakeholder Goals
A couple weeks ago we wrote about Outside-in Software Development, by Carl Kessler and John Sweitzer. One of their ideas about stakeholders and goals has got us thinking about traceability.
Usability / UX
Posted on:
Foundation Series: Heuristic Evaluation
A heuristic evaluation (or heuristic analysis) is a quick, low-cost usability analysis of the design of a user interface. Pareto’s rule tells us that we can get 80% of the results from 20% of the effort. And that’s where discount usability tests like a heuristic evaluation come in to play. […]
Agile / Business Analysis / Product Management / Requirements / Requirements gathering / Requirements Models / Software development / Software requirements specification / Use Cases
Posted on:
Requirements Details – How Much is Enough?
What is the right level of detail for writing requirements? What about for writing specifications (functional, non-functional requirements, etc)? The answer is that there is no one answer. But there are guidelines, and reasons to write more detail, or less detail – for any given product or project, and any […]