August, 2009

Gauging the value of procedures and work instructions

Revision-controlled documents such as procedures and work-instructions are a beautiful thing. Sure, the work required to establish the documentation up front can be significant. But the reward can pay off with smooth transitions between staff members or departments as well as consistency across systems.

A good practice point that I have found useful to ensure that procedures and work instructions are correct is to engage another person to literally pick up and run with it. This can be a new hire, temporary employee or even an existing IT staff member that has developed strengths in other areas. We frequently strive to develop procedures and work instructions so that “even a monkey could do it.” But, how frequently do we actually do that?

The value of a hand-off for procedures and work instructions can be measured by its effectiveness to a new person assigned to work in technology areas related to the documentation. This will identify issues such as:

-Out of date versions of software titles
-Updated procedures that may have changed
-Clarity of the procedures
-Ensuring that nothing is omitted from the steps
-Identify unforeseen prerequisites (such as permissions)

Other benefits come from validating the correctness of procedures and work instructions as well. The effectiveness is truly measured once a person with no expectation or prior knowledge of the technologies in question is assigned to perform the procedure or work instruction.

New IBM Rational change management interfaces boost interoperability

“Software development teams work with a wide range of tools, and their biggest challenge is making all the tools work together in a way that’s effective for their software delivery process,” Scott Bosworth, Open Service Lifecycle Collaboration (OSDL) program manager, IBM Rational, told me yesterday.

Today, IBM addressed that problem, announcing new change management interfaces for three IBM Rational products available now: IBM Rational Team Concert, IBM Rational Quality Manager and IBM Rational ClearQuest. OSDL spec support for IBM Rational Change is due in September.

The new IBM Rational interfaces are the first released on OSLC change management specifications released this summer. A 20-member software industry group founded by IBM, OSLC wants to increase tool data interchange via widespread adoption of industry standards. A similar IBM initiative achieved standards adoption for Eclipse client IDE.

“The promise is that in any part of the life cycle in which you need to see a change management interface, you could now integrate with any system that supports OSLC,” Bosworth said.

Bosworth explained that the OSLC change management specification and new IBM interfaces target common problems quality assurance (QA) and testing teams face in the software development process.

QA analysts will be able to use their tools at every step of the development and application life cycle, he noted. Tools are often used only for specific roles in the life cycle, Bosworth said, and they typically have their own ways of storing data and presenting data. This change management specification was driven by the need for integration between quality management tools to be able to find, locate defects stored in a change management system.”

Software testers will be able to upgrade their tool choices as more and more tools provide the interface, the tools become more pluggable, Bosworth said. “They get more choice and easier-to -maintain integrations.”

These kinds of integrations would be applicable to any type of change management systems, according to Bosworth.

“People have existing change management systems for different reasons, like for a project that has some complexity like the technical purchase of a company. They need to have a common way of integrating change management systems with other tools.”

As an example of such integration, Bosworth mentioned recent work on IBM Rational Quality Manager.

“We set out last year to have Rational Quality Manager and Rational Team Concert integrated. We could have done that in a one-off fashion, which is traditionally how these things are done. Instead, we used the OSLC approach in which we defined common set of resource descriptions and described common services interface that would interact with any change management system in a consistent way.”

Over time, OSLC plans to move beyond change management area to requirements and quality management, software estimation, reporting, software configuration management and more domains, Bosworth said.

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Agile expert advises on agile transition snags, PMO problems

Recently, I spoke with Alex Adamopoulos, CEO and founder of emergn about his company’s new agile development transition consultancy program, AgilePMO. In these remarks from our interview, Adamopoulos offers advice on agile development process adoption and his views on agile.

Emergn, is a new company, but Adamopoulos’ experience in the software service field is extensive. He is a 20-year veteran and an active blogger.

What is your agile philosophy?

Adamopoulos: A transformation program. If I think about the guiding principles of an agile engagement, they’re the same fundamental principles of a well-run global company.

What are some common problems within PMOs (Project Management Offices)?

Adamopoulos: Even when I was embedded in the outsourcing community, I thought that large enterprises had a methodical process for why they’d select a vendor, manage a project, etc. I discovered that not only did a lot of them not have them, but the ones that do have them are typically by line of business.

Could you offer a hypothetical example of a company with a PMO problem?

Adamopoulos: A good example would be a top bank, in the top three. Their investment banking side, which drives more than half of the revenue, has a PMO, and that PMO is only operated by three people. It’s fragmented across two geographies. Then, if you go to asset management side, you discover that they have one-person shops or half-person shops. That is common for eight out of 10 of our clients.

Usually, they have no metrics or measurements in place. The metrics that exist are rudimentary project metrics that do not even translate into economic numbers or business value that a CIO can sit with his boss and say, “Here’s why we are making these decisions and how they are affecting our company.”

So, it would make sense for them to explore a way to drive it more efficiently. Right?

Adamopoulos: Clearly the largest problem we see is that there is no single project or program governance in place. There is no methodology for how programs should be governed. There is a lot of waste. We see morale being affected.

What are common snags that occur in transitions to agile?

Adamopoulos: Typically, it becomes a land grab. it is very difficult for some organizations to change their existing behavior and their business psychology. Asking them to collaborate and communicate, and be more dependent upon the business in several areas [is a big deal].

The biggest risk is the psychological impact that agile can have on an organization. Right or wrong, many have already settled into their comfort zones. Agile is a very disruptive methodology, not just at the software level but at the cultural level as well. The larger risks are people asking, “How are you going to impact my job, and why? What does it mean to me in terms of the responsibilities I might have?” There needs to be a lot of coaching in the transitioning people out of their current working mindsets and into something new.

Who are emergn’s target customers?

Adamopoulos: Today, the traditional customer for us is in the application development areas of IT; but we are starting to branch out with the AgilePMO product. Our primary target is the enterprise client, meaning the tier-one enterprise, the $1 billion-plus players. That is where the majority where our business is today. Is it likely that we’ll do things below that? Probably, but it would have to be very specific, because agile enablement reshapes a company’s sourcing strategy. Those are pretty important programs, ones that aren’t taken lightly, and we’ve found that the larger companies are more ready to do those than the smaller players.

The economy has been a help for us as opposed to a hurt; the whole drive of saving money, reorganizing, efficiency has supported our model. So, organizations that have very fragmented sourcing programs are the primary focus for us.

How long do you customers need emergn’s consulting services?

Adamopoulos: I am pretty sensitive to the consulting side. I have been a customer. I don’t believe in having people from the B-team or sit there for one, two years and billing against my company.

Maybe I sound old-fashioned, but we definitely want to drive value. For some companies that may take one year or even half. We are currently doing one large scale agile transfer program for one of the UK’s largest utilities that is a 24-month roadmap, but that is something we defined up front.

British Airways is a great example. We did an entire agile transformation for them. Since they are an airline, they have a gazillion projects going on. We have begun applying a number of initial successes into some points of business. How long they’ll take? I don’t know, but in their case they want to see their entire organization become as agile as possible.

Side effect of Openbravo on Ubuntu: Easier testing, QA

Openbravo just released its ERP 2.50 Profesional Subscription for Ubuntu, an integrated open source ERP software stack packaged with the Ubuntu operating system. cost-effective commercial open source product that is cloud-deployable via virtual appliance and also available on various platforms.

The new package offers a software testing and quality assurance (QA) benefit, too, according to John Fandl, Director of Product Strategy for Openbravo.

“The QA angle centers on the general benefit of standardization in aiding QA efficiency,” Fandl said.”When you can execute a hands-off installation that runs in an hour, and automatically creates and pre-configures a full ERP stack — including database, web server, application server — that makes it really easy for enterprises to do a proper QA cycle, with separate development, QA, user acceptance and production environments.”

I asked Fandl to carry through that thought to the testing side of things. He said that installing proprietary ERP stracks is difficult, so the QA function often has to compromise and forgo proper testing.” Considering the complexity of ERP, it’s hard to match QA environments actually to production environment. “For example, they may be testing on a different version of the application server or database than is in production, which can cause surprises when the code is promoted to production. Being able to rely on an efficient, automated “full-stack installation” that can be effectively “pulled from the cloud on-demand” is a godsend for QA.”

Fandl has a point, Medicity QA director and SearchSoftwareQuality.com site expert John Overbaugh told me.

“There is definitely value in a clean installation of the entire stack of applications. Anytime a technology is difficult to employ, teams will find a way around it, by either mimicking a clean install or by doing a small amount of machine clean-up before starting in again on testing. This often results in an unreliable environment.”

Fandl elaborated, saying: “Inexperienced testers and especially developers doing unit testing–since QA is not their major focus — may not be as rigorous in regards to testing on a proven-clean environment. Mimicking a clean environment sounds like a time savings, and it does work most of the time…until it doesn’t. The problem comes from subtle environment differences that arise over time between QA and production environments; differences that “shouldn’t matter” until they do! And the way you find out is with a production problem that you can’t duplicate in the QA environment. Ouch.”

So, I asked Fandl, how does the Openbravo-Ubuntu package help testers get clean installs and avoid these ills?

Fandl told me that fully automating the installation, including the entire stack and all of its dependencies, gives the same result everytime, regardless of the starting-point state of the target machine.

“For example, if Tomcat 5.5 is on the machine, the installation package which knows that Tomcat 6.0 is required for Openbravo ERP 2.50) will automatically retrieve it from the Ubuntu repository and will upgrade your server from Tomcat 5.5 to 6.0, before continuing with the Openbravo application installation. So, Ubuntu’s Debian-based package management system transparently takes care of these details, so that the QA person does not have to be an expert in the underlying stack. This is a great help, especially for business-centric QA staff testing ERP, who may not know how to determine what version of a system component like Tomcat is actually running on the server.”

Openbravo did its initial testing –installing the package from the public repository — from a clean instance of Ubuntu 9.04 set up inside of a virtual machine.

With this release, Openbravo is following in the footsteps of other open source ERP and software vendors who are creating easy-to-install stacks. For more information on this trend, check the blogosphere, where Matthew MacKenzie writes about Openbravo and SMB ERP. Also, on the blog, How Software Is Built, Scott Swigart and Sean Campbell interview OpenBravo CTO Paolo Juvara, who oversees product development. Juvara notes that Openbravo provides a foundation upon which developers and users can customize their software, making components proprietary if they wish.

How extending Agile to business processes fosters innovation, growth

Pollyanna Pixton believes that businesses should adopt the tenants of the Agile development methodology, and she explained why when I met her last week in San Francisco. We also talked about the new book she co-authored that lays out the Agile business process methodology.

She first explained how she came to that belief. Her early work involved developing control systems for electrical power plants throughout the world. She even created systems for and spent time on oil rigs. On one of those projects, she was asked to be the team leader. Immediately, she chose to be a collaborator and not a master.

“I’d seen the problems inherent in top-down, command-and-control leadership, which doesn’t nurture talent or foster innovation and often stymies rapid growth of an organization,” Pixton told me.

Her first venture as a leader was not only successful, it stoked her interest in business leadership. As a result, she founded Evolutionary Systems in 1996, a business consulting firm specializing in collaborative leadership. She put her experience on her own and with Evolutionary Systems’ projects into the book she co-authored, Stand Back and Deliver: Accelerating Business Agility (Addison-Wesley).

“The tools in our book help leaders give ownership and then stand back and let the teams and the talent in an organization deliver on their goals and meet users’ needs,” Pixton said.

Here are a couple of video excerpts of my conversation with Pixton. In the first one she offers tips for winning over Agile-resistant staffers.

Next I asked her about mistakes she sees in organizational processes, even in organizations that have adopted Agile.

After I read this sample chapter of Stand Back and Deliver, I sat down and read the whole book in one sitting. The content is rich and the format easy to read. Best of all, there are a lot of drawn-from-real-life examples, something that – for me, at least – makes the discussion of processes more understandable.

Reluctant Twitterer finds golden IT links, mentors

Are you a software developer, tester, quality assurance manager or Agile/waterfall expert? Then I’d like to follow you…on Twitter, that is. In this post, I’ll introduce you to some of the smart software experts I follow on Twitter and share my experience as a reluctant Twitterer.

Exactly when I began writing about Twitter, I couldn’t get on the site due to a denial-of-service attack. That the attack was made indicates that Twitter has arrived. That I was mildly put out because I wanted to tweet shows that I’ve become a Twitter.

I started as a reluctant Twitterer. Email, phone and IM communications keep my day hectic enough, I thought. I asked myself and others: “What meaningful communication can take place in 140 characters?” That said, I do write about information technology, so I figured I’d give it a trial run. Maybe I’d be able to write a scathing review. Well, two things have won me over to Twitter:

• Twitter lets me keep up with interesting people I don’t talk to daily.
• The links those people share have taken me to top-notch IT content.

Since I’ve been a computer industry journalist since the 1980s, I’ve covered many beats, ranging from desktops to operating systems to e-software (remember that?) to virtualization to software development. Twitter gives me an easy way to catch up with and continue to learn from my mentors and friends in fields I no longer cover, as well as the new beat I follow now. Here are some examples of both types of people whom I’m following now:

• Bernard Golden is an open source software expert I met when I helmed SearchEnterpriseLinux.com and who also moved into virtualization about the same time I led the launch of SearchServerVirtualization.com.
• Burton Group senior analyst Chris Wolf was and still is my virtualization mentor. He’s actually just about everyone’s virtualization expert, and he knows his way around virtual labs, too.
• I was just introduced to Matt Heusser”, creator of the dev/test blog, Creative Chaos, Now I read his blog daily, and I hope to be working with him soon.
• I read this chapter of Stand Back and Deliver: Accelerating Business Agility, which led me to reading the whole book in one day. Then, I got the inside scoop on the book from and began following co-author Pollyanna Pixton.
• After doing keyword searches on Twitter, I began following software testers and Agile experts Anne-Marie Charrett and David Alfaro. In last week’s blog post, Testing blog digest, I wrote about Charrett’s blog tip on discovering software bugs. Almost every day, Alfaro tweet links send me to super-informative articles.

I enjoy reading about the lighter side of my band of Twitterers’ days, too. A few minutes ago. Chris Wolf’s update said: “Driving up 95 to NJ. My son sees an oil refinery in Baltimore and asks ‘Is that New Jersey?’”

Finally, I’m forced to admit I’ve grown to love the 140-character tweet limit. Not only does the limit make me boil things down to the real nitty-gritty, it saves me from having to read long-winded posts.

Care to join my Twitter community? I tweet about software testing/QA articles I read, my conversations with experts and more. You’ll find me on Twitter as jlstafford. Please invite me to follow you, too.

New testing tool portal launches

This week marks the launch of a new portal of software testing tools run by The Clever Tester Network. While I’ve always been a fan of OpenSourceTesting.org, this looks like a useful new site.

In the press release for the launch, Managing Director of the Clever Tester Network Andrew Hutchinson states,

“We are very excited about the launch, and hope that the Quality Assurance community finds testertools.com to be a cutting-edge source for all of their software testing needs. As we know in test management, it is important to utilize tools that assist us in maintaining accuracy, time constraints and budget.”

The site boasts over 1,000 tools broken out across 39 categories. It includes the ability for users to submit new tools for the site, along with user-submitted reviews and rankings. Along with the standard tool listings for performance and test automation tools, the site has a collection of tools for web traffic analysis, server management, data generation and Cloud Based Testing tools.

Just looking through the performance testing tools listed, I see a lot of new names that I don’t recognize. On the other hand, at the time I wrote this review, the “Test Environment Management” category on the site had no tools listed under it. So I’m not sure how well the 39 categories are covered.

Agile not just a development approach, emergn CEO says

“For me, agile goes far beyond being a software development methodology. I view it as a culture and a transformation program,” Alex Adamopoulos founder and CEO of emergn, told me recently. This point of view led to emergn’s creation of AgilePMO, a unified sourcing framework for companies using agile principles released last week. AgilePMO’s focus on organizational issues as well as integration and implementation differs from traditional templates and kick the box contracts, he said.

Launched early this year, emergn is a sourcing strategy and agile enablement consultancy firm located in New York City. The company’s focus was born out of Adamopoulos’ 20 years in IT services, where he continuously saw companies executing an ad hoc, mishmash of business management strategies. He saw in Agile not only a development methodology but a template for bringing more adaptability into business processes.

“We are not strictly using agile guidelines just for software development. We have also focused our impact on organizations that have struggling IT portfolio management,” Adamopoulos said. “The whole idea in introducing agilePMO is to introduce an accelerated, more efficient and measurable way to run sourcing.”

AgilePMO is designed for a short implementation timeline. Adamopoulos stressed that the framework is set up to run after implementation, rather than requiring years of consultancy contracts. The goal of Agile and emergn, he said, is to get development and business processes moving along quickly and well without taking too much precious company time and revenue.

AgilePMO can be used by a broad array of development organizations, Adamopoulos said, but early adopters have been large enterprises. Moving to agile reshapes a company’s sourcing and other strategies, and “those are pretty important programs and ones that aren’t taken lightly,” he said. At this point, “we’ve found that the larger companies are more ready to do those than the smaller players.”

Watch this blog for more highlights from my interview with Adamopoulos.