Open Kosmaczewski

Introduction Total Quality Management is one of the founding pillars of modern mass-production economy, of which the software industry is by far the youngest (and most rebel) child. This article will provide a short discussion on some TQM principles and about their applicability to software projects.

By Diomidis Spinellis: I have friends working at large IT companies who have to wait months to get a commit window to apply their fixes to code they maintain. No matter what problems one thinks that open-source processes have, agility is not one of them.

J’ai poste le commentaire suivant dans un article paru aujourd’hui sur Profession-Web: “On n’est là pour lui, car C’EST LUI QUI ENGAGE.” Je pense que l’état d’esprit de la phrase ci-dessus explique le turnover élevé et le bas rendement en général de l’industrie du software et du web en Suisse (particulièrement dans le consulting). Je [...]

Another open space! Wheeeeee!!!!! We’re going to be building out the space to create a environment really optimized for our great engineers, product managers, web developers, designers and quality engineers to all sit and work together. Very high energy, with a lot of thought given to providing the best possible place to design & build [...]

In Buenos Aires I’ve studied corporate management (I did, shame on me), and as part of that, I had to learn about all the different identified types of organizations: matrix-based, pyramidal, military, organic, etc. Afterwards, books like Peopleware made me rethink these concepts, particularly when seeing the pityful state of some software development companies here [...]

Interesting observations about Amazon: Innovation can only come from the bottom. Those closest to the problem are in the best position to solve it. any organization that depends on innovation must embrace chaos. Loyalty and obedience are not your tools. Everyone must be able to experiment, learn, and iterate. Position, obedience, and tradition should hold [...]

Brilliant. It’s striking how often programmers manage to hit all eight points by accident. Someone has an idea for a new project, but because it’s not officially sanctioned, he has to do it in off hours—which turn out to be more productive because there are no distractions. Driven by his enthusiasm for the new project [...]

Mercury TestDirector for Quality Center is an enterprise-class solution, recognized as one of the most complete and integrated software suites geared towards the management of testing- and quality-related activities. Mercury Interactive, the company behind TestDirector, was bought by Hewlett Packard in 2006 for USD 4.5 billion (Wikipedia). TestDirector is used by several important organizations such [...]

Introduction The explosion of the Columbia Space Shuttle uncovered several internal problems in the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA). This paper will summarize the reasons of the accident, highlighting the organizational issues, and provide an overview of the roles played by the different stakeholders of the project.