Ten Ways to Ensure RIA Failure

This video explores the lessons learned and pitfalls of inefficient workflows, worst practices, and poor communication that will ensure the demise of any software project.

http://www.softdevtube.com/2009/12/09/ten-ways-to-ensure-ria-failure/

More Procedures in Software Configuration Management

The last Methods & Tools poll examined how software configuration management (change management / version control) is performed by organisations. Is it an informal activity or performed with formal procedures that are validated by an automated tool?

	2009	2006
No formal procedure and no tool	13%	15%
A formal procedure but no tool.	11%	10%
A tool but no formal procedure	17%	26%
A formal procedure and a tool	36%	49%
Continuous integration	23%

Participants: 271 (346 in 2006)

Ending date: November 2009 (April 2006)

If we compare the current results with the 2006 numbers, we can see two major points. The first is that the number of participants that don’t use tools remains at the same level, around 25%. It is true that there has not been any strong innovation in the area of software configuration management tools in the recent years. The major open source products were also available three years ago. Things have change however for the participants that were using tools. The number participants using a formal procedure is now a clear majority, counting the people that do continuous integration in this category. The increased demand for regulation, for instance the Sarbanes-Oxley law, has surely influenced corporations to adopt formal policies in their software development practices.

We introduced in this poll a new answer to take into account the “continuous integration” way of software configuration management. This agile-linked practice is adopted by 23% of the participants to the survey. This result is similar to the survey conducted by Jurgen Apello on noop.nl. In his case, 29% of the participants had adopted continuous integration. As a funny conclusion on this topic, when I researched on this topic, I noticed that in the 2007 Agile Survey by Version One 50% of the participants declared that they were practicing continuous integration and 57% were currently using a continuous integration tool. This makes me wonder what 7% of the participants were using the continuous integration tool for. ;o) Anyhow, this always remembers us that we should be very cautious with survey number.

Reference

http://www.noop.nl/2009/04/the-big-agile-practices-survey.html

Related articles

Configuration Management and ISO 9001

Continuous Integration: the Cornerstone of a Great Shop

Software Configuration Section of the Software Development Articles Directory

Related videos

Simple tools to fight a big battle: “Continuous integration on a minimalist platform”

1500 Tools to Assist Software Developers

Created in 2007, the Software Development Tools Directory has now more than 1500 references. It is one of the rare web sites where you can see on the same location both commercial and open source software development tools. Tools are categorized by programming language, license, operating system or software development function (software testing, project management, database, IDE, user interface,  etc.).  The Open Source category is the most important one with 770 tools.

Functional Test Tools: Adopted but not Used?

A recent Methods & Tools survey tried to evaluate the usage of tools to automate execution of functional software tests. A similar poll was conducted in 2005 and it was interesting to compare the results.

http://www.methodsandtools.com/dynpoll/oldpoll.php?FuncTest2

More than 1000 Videos and Tutorials on SoftDevTube.com

There are now more than 1000 software development related videos and tutorials categorized on SoftDevTube.com. SoftDevTube is a repository of videos, interviews and tutorials focused on all software development activities: UML, Agile Methodologies (eXtreme Programming, Scrum, TDD, FDD,..), Software Testing, Software Configuration Management, Database Modeling, Coding (Java, .NET, ruby, python, C/C++, Cobol,… )  Rich Interface Application (Ajax, Flex, Silverlight), Software Project Planning and Management, Test Automation, Software Analysis and Design, Quality Assurance, Software Process Assessment and Improvement, Software Development Tools, Risk Management.