The Seapine View

In most companies, there are finite software release cycles. There is usually a deadline for a release to make it out the door. Schedules are often driven by business needs, whether it be to produce more revenue or to take advantage of a particular event, such as a holiday. Given a development cycle with a hard stop, it’s up to the team and business owners to decide which features to include in the release and to ensure they are code complete and tested.

It’s not unusual for development to take longer than anticipated, and this can cut into the QA time. This is especially true if QA does not get the first ‘testable’ build until all features are code complete.

However, if developers can provide QA with feature complete (or almost complete) releases earlier in the process, they will be able to start testing those features earlier in the process. The testers have typically completed their test planning and test case development by this time, so they are ready to begin work. Thanks to the ability to get incomplete but functional builds earlier in the process, QA is able to test earlier in the process and, thus, test more.

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Transitioning from current development methodologies to Agile can be very difficult for testers. Software managers need to provide the leadership needed for testers to apply their craft in an environment where change is constant. This webinar will explain how both testing and the role of testers change in an Agile development environment, and how managers can help testing teams adapt to those changes and consistently deliver quality software.

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Make plans to join us when the Seapine ALM Tour 2010 stops in Huntsville, Alabama on September 23. Meet some of our product management team, see the upcoming Seapine ALM 2011 release, and learn ways to boost agility, collaboration, and traceability! It’s all free!

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TestTrack product manager, Paula Rome, was recently interviewed on the topic of Agile Development by Mike Lippis for the Outlook Series. Listen to the interview.

In this interview, Paula shares her perspective with Mike on how tenets of Agile and traditional methodologies can, and often should, coexist to efficiently develop software. As described on the Outlooks Series web site:

“Agile development can boost the productivity of developers, QA testers, product owners—and ultimately, increase the value of what is delivered to customers. Agile also enables development teams to collaborate better, and shortens release cycles. So, even if your team is not completely immersed into agile development, you are probably seeking to make parts of your process more Agile. To meet that challenge, you need the flexibility to run Agile and traditional software development projects in parallel without different teams having to use different tools. Whether your organization is using iterative waterfall, scrum, or another development methodology, you need a solution that adapts to the way your team works. We interview Paula Rome to gain Seapine Software’s perspective on Agile Development.”

Along the way, you’ll also learn a bit about how the various products in Seapine’s ALM solution work together to facilitate Agile development. For an even more in-depth discussion of Agile, join our Agile Expedition.

Turnout for the expedition has been crazy, we’ve had to order more jeeps and thought it would be a good time to upgrade the bi-weekly articles as well. Rather than the typical PDF every other week, you’ll be reading in style with the new Expedition eBook. It’s the same information in a more interactive format. Tips, tricks, and traps are better defined to help you on the journey toward greater agility. Check out the product backlog eBook, the foundation of your Agile success, and let us know if you agree.

Not participating in the Agile Expedition? You’re missing out!

While planning the TestTrack 2010.1 release, we talked to a variety of customers and soon realized that every team uses story points slightly differently. Most commonly, the teams use story points as a high-level estimate of the difficulty of a specific task or work item. TestTrack is flexible in allowing you to manage stories in a variety of ways, we’ve outlined a straight-forward process here to get you started. As you become familiar with using story points, feel free to tweak your TestTrack configuration to better meet the need of your team.

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Thomism, the philosophy of Thomas Aquinas, holds that all intellectual knowledge comes through the senses. (ST I.84.6) This opinion is in direct contradiction with Cartesianism, the philosophy of René Descartes, which doubts the validity of sensate-derived intellectual knowledge. The scientific method implicitly agrees with Aquinas because it too begins with using our senses in the form of observations. Scientists should derive hypotheses from observations, not metaphysical ideas existing purely in the mind.

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I built a domain-specific language (DSL) in my text editor so that I don’t have to remember all of the details involved in WordPress blogging. To write this article I type :save-as-blog-draft in vim, my text editor. I don’t have to mess with the details of logging into WordPress, picking a post to edit, and then manually pressing the Save Draft button. Setup took about an hour and by now I’ve blissfully forgotten the manual labor involved in blogging.
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As a consultant, I have been exposed to many different development methodologies and processes. In most cases, assignments are performed by a person that is aware of staff resources and distributes tasks according to the availability of these resources.
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One of the key strengths of Seapine’s suite of tools is that they can adapt to many methodologies. One of the tasks that I am often faced with is adapting our tools to a client’s methodology. Some clients use the tried and true waterfall method, others use SCRUM, others use a combination of various methodologies, while other clients don’t use a specific methodology (which is why they asked for our help in the first place).

Which one is the most popular? Does it depend on the size of the team? Does it depend on the industry?
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