The Salesmen/Developers Ratio
Published March 29th, 2011 Under Software Development | 3 Comments
Many of us might think that software is a technological industry. Maybe. But maybe not. If you consider the biggest organizations that sell software tools like Oracle or Microsoft, I suppose that few of us would consider them as technology leaders, but we will all recognize their financial strength and marketing power. This makes me think that long lasting organizations in the software industry have more financial strength than technological capabilities. Read more
Continuous Integration: Continuous Build or Continuous Quality Control?
Published September 14th, 2010 Under Numbers | 1 Comment
The last Methods & Tools poll wanted to determine the level of adoption of continuous integration tools in organizations. We asked the following question: “Do you use a tool for continuous integration (automated build and unit testing)?”
| I use tools for continuous integration | 66% |
| My organization has tools, but my project or I do not use them | 13% |
| My organization has no tools for continuous integration | 21% |
Participants: 130
Ending date: September 2010
Source: Methods & Tools
A large majority of the participants is using continuous integration tools, but it remains to see how continuous is the continuous integration used by participants. It is easy to understand that this practice is one of the easiest to put in place as it is basically a pure technical issue of combining the build process with the unit testing tools. However, previous Methods & Tools unit testing execution surveys performed in 2006 and 2008 on showed that between 50% and 60% of participants were not using unit tests or were doing them in an informal way. Continuous integration could thus be considered by organizations more as a continuous build process that a continuous testing of the code quality.
Resources:
* Continuous Integration Feature Matrix
* Continuous Integration: The Cornerstone of a Great Shop
* Continuous Integration Tools directory
Software Testing & Quality in Methods & Tools Summer 2010
Published June 21st, 2010 Under Methods & Tools | Leave a Comment
Methods & Tools is a free e-magazine for software developers, testers and project managers. Summer 2010 issue has just been published with the following articles:
* Aspects of Kanban – Lean Worfklow Management
* Test Language – Introduction to Keyword Driven Testing
* A High Volume Software Product Line
* Better Requirements Definition Management is Better for Business
* The Core Protocols, an Experience Report – Tools for High Performance Teams
* Tool: eValid- Functional and Load Web Testing
* Tool: Hudson- Continuous Integration Server
* Tool: FitNesse – Test Cases Management
* Tool: VoodooMock – Mock Objects Framework for C++
* Conference: Jazoon
80 pages of software development knowledge that you can download from http://www.methodsandtools.com/mt/download.php?summer10
More Procedures in Software Configuration Management
Published November 23rd, 2009 Under Numbers | Leave a Comment
Our last 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) Read more