Software Development Assessments for the 21st Century

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During the last 35 years, software development and technology processes in general have evolved at a rapid, even chaotic, rate. These processes range from small, Lean, agile (sometimes labeled iterative) development pockets to large, bureaucracy-laced legacy projects of tremendous scope (sometimes labeled waterfall development) and everything in between. Many organizations have undertaken attempts to classify, […]

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Product Guide: Statistical Analysis Software

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This directory highlights the features, as well as format, language and price specifics, of several statistical analysis software programs.

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Lean Template System Reduces Document Waste

Lean Template System Reduces Document Waste

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Excessive โ€“ and often redundant โ€“ documentation can often be found in organizations handling outsourced projects. To overcome this waste, follow a simple plan for leaning existing documents, and for creating new Lean documents.

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Start Software Testing With All Five Essentials in Place

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Five essential elements are required for successful software testing. If any one of the five is missing or inadequate, the test effort will most likely fall far short of what could otherwise be achieved. Exploring these five essentials can help improve the effectiveness and efficiency of any software testing program. Here are the five essential […]

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Implications of Analyses of Software Inspections Data

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A variety of analyses can be done during the Analyze phase of a Six Sigma DMAIC (Define, Measure, Analyze, Improve, Control) software project with data from Fagan-style inspections. These analyses suggest possible implications when considering Improve activities. Analyses used here are based on a real situation and the conclusions drawn are valid in that situation, […]

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Core Set of Effectiveness Metrics for Software and IT

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Most software and IT organizations have great difficulty measuring organizational efficiency and effectiveness, despite a bewildering array of metrics that have been proposed and occasionally used. However, a basic-yet-powerful set of metrics that gets to the heart of these issues does exist, and at the same time facilitates the application of Six Sigma. It is […]

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Optimizing Software/IT Role in a Typical Organization

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Whether the business unit is called information systems, information technology, software development or some other name, the group that provides these services is often among the most misunderstood and undefined in a corporation. And it is no wonder, considering that technology capabilities and dependence are rapidly expanding, combined with an ever-changing array of desktop and […]

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Developing an Agile Planning and Tracking Scorecard

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Agile changes the nature of planning and tracking. The term agile is used to refer to a variety of software development frameworks (like scrum, XP, crystal methods) which all share approaches to scoping work and managing the delivery of working features. Using scrum as an example (Figure 1), it is clear that the available development […]

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Making the Case for FMEA in Managing Software Projects

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Many times, a company is required to do a root cause analysis once a defect or bug is found in the software system it has developed and released to customers. Such an approach is not only costly, but almost without exception results in customer dissatisfaction. What is needed is a proactive approach to understand the […]

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A Software Project’s Cycle Time: Are We There Yet?

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Software project managers, who are responsible for shepherding software projects to completion, often feel like they are on a cross-country trip with several youngsters in the back seat. It seems like every few minutes someone asks, “Are we there yet?” Cycle time for a software project is usually understood to mean the elapsed calendar time […]

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Need for Six Sigma in the Age of Information Technology

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Since the start of the information technology age, software quality has been an ambiguous term, meaning different things to different people. It has been defined internally from the viewpoint of software developers; and it has been defined externally from the viewpoint of end users of the software. But either way, early in the history of […]

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Software and Systems: The Disciplines of CRM

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  The total customer relationship management (CRM) market will reach $12.1 billion by 2004, representing an annual growth rate of 29.9 percent, according to the 2000 CRM Market Forecast and Analysis prepared by IDC, the world’s leading provider of information technology data and analysis. It is highly unlikely, however, that the CRM market will reach […]

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Enabling Technology Adoption by Using Six Sigma

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A survey sponsored by the Carnegie Mellon Software Engineering Institute (SEI) finds that Six Sigma is feasible as an enabler of the adoption of software, systems and IT improvement models and practices.

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Case Study - Salvaging a Call Center's Big Software Investment

Case Study: Salvaging a Call Center’s Big Software Investment

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Software can be a helpful tool but it is not a magic wand. After investing half a million dollars in tracking software for its call center and still seeing a high volume of complaints, one company used DMAIC to turn a disaster into a success.

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Making Use of DFLSS to Cultivate a Shared Compute Farm

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Digital check processing. Fraud detection. Compliance monitoring. Trading floor analytics. These are all integral functions for many modern financial service institutions. And all have one thing in commonย โ€“ they require a huge amount of computing power. One approach to providing fast responses even with highly complex computations is distributed computing, or creating a shared compute […]

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Six Sigma and the Software Development Life Cycle

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Many software organizations are beginning to use Six Sigma, and are finding that they need to rationalize its relationship to the standard software development life cycle process. A number of issues and alternatives arise when this need is addressed. Roadmaps and Software Development Life Cycles (SDLC) Six Sigma includes two complementary roadmaps. The first of […]

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Use Cases and Measures: Strengthening the Six Sigma Link

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“Use cases,” a term coined by Ivar Jacobson early in the evolution of object-oriented thinking, have been widely accepted as a helpful way to understand and document the functionality that is important in all kinds of software or business systems. Anyone within miles of object-oriented design will be familiar with the typical application of use […]

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QFD: When and How Does It Fit in Software Development?

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Quality function deployment (QFD) is a tool that appeals to many engineers and designers. It looks so nifty that they think, “There just has to be a place to use this.” Experience shows, though, that with its niftiness comes a certain risk connected with trying to apply QFD in places or in ways that it […]

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