Articles

Articles Links

• Community for Software Engineers Offers various resources - including news, articles, forum and job board.
  
• Nine Steps to Delivering Defect-Free Software By a software developer and consultant with over 30 years experience.
  
• The Programmers' Stone Recapturing, exploring and celebrating the Art of Computer Programming.
  
• Lessons Learned -- Current Problems Technical and managerial best/worst practices. Based on study of US Department of Defense software projects.
  
• Major Causes of Software Project Failures Based on interviews with software consultants and practitioners who were asked to provide "autopsies" of failed projects with which they have been acquainted.
  
• Survival Crib Notes: NASAs Success Checklist 9 Dos and 8 Don'ts for software project success, from NASAs Goddard Space Flight Center. (Sample chapter from Steve McConnell's book Software Project Survival Guide.)
  
• Introducing Demeter and its Laws Adaptive Programming - specifying the connections between objects as loosely as possible. Makes programs more flexible, more resilient to change, and more adaptable to varying configurations of classes within a given domain
  
• High-Pressure Steam Engines and Computer Software Software safety. Parallels between the early development of high-pressure steam engines and software engineering that we can apply to the use of computers in complex systems.
  
• What Do Users Want? Engineering Usability into Software User-Centered Design. Simple approaches for delivering smaller, simpler systems that better serve the needs of users.
  
• Heavy Rotation For business software, faster-cheaper can be better too.
  
• On the Criteria To Be Used in Decomposing Systems into Modules One of the classic articles leading to modern software engineering, by D.L. Parnas.
  
• To Hell and Back CIOs reveal the projects that did not kill them and made them stronger.
  
• Classic Testing Mistakes The role of testing, Planning the complete testing effort, Personnel issues, The tester at work, Test automation, Code coverage
  
• Seven Steps to Test Automation Success This paper presents seven key steps: improve the testing process, define requirements, prove the concept, champion product testability, design for sustainability, plan for deployment, and face the challenges of success.
  
• Orphans Preferred Characteristics of software developers - personality type, demographics, age, education, attitudes.
  
• Seven Principles Of Software Development Emphasizes "soft" issues - attitude, approach.
  
• Sure It Works, But Is It Beautiful: The Relationship Between Software Aesthetics and Quality Some aspects of the relationship between quality and aesthetics (beauty) in software, using architecture analogies.
  
• Ten Things Your Mother Never Told You About the Capability Maturity Model Common misconceptions concerning software process improvement and the Software CMM.
  
• Architecture Paradox Two articles on Software Architecture Paradox, and how to defy that paradox to design resilient architectures.
  
• Principles of Good GUI Design Describes the basic rules for all good interfaces - the cardinal dos and don'ts.
  
• Large Software SystemsBack to Basics The importance of software architecture, and related items such as unambiguous requirements and coding standards.
  
• Scripting: Higher Level Programming for the 21st Century The advantages of scripting languages - typeless data, smaller code size, greater reuse, higher productivity. By TCL creator John Ousterhout.
  
• Successful Engineering Management: 7 Lessons Learned People management advice for technical people.
  
• Hacking Considered Constructive Hacking as a method for system development. History, ideology, analysis of systems created by hacking. By Gisle Hannemyr.
  
• Ten Tough Questions to Ask when Reviewing a Project Plan High level checklist regarding estimates, risk, scope, metrics.
  
• Essays on System Effectiveness Management Index to articles written by members of Jerry Weinberg's SEM Group.
  
• Designing and Managing Successful Projects An overview of some simple principles to attain success designing and implementing new projects
  
• Core Competencies for Project Managers Covers soft and hard skills - behavior, attitudes, communication styles, planning, scheduling, and controlling.
  
• Classic Mistakes Enumerated Description of 36 ineffective development practices: people-related, process-related, product-related, technology-related. (Sample chapter from Steve McConnell's book Rapid Development.)
  
• The Many Dimensions of the Software Process Explores the importance and purpose of software process and quality.
  
• Risky business: what we have yet to learn about software risk management Examines the way in which computer scientists perform risk management, and compares it with risk management in other fields.
  
• Building bug-free O-O software: An introduction to Design by Contract (TM) Advanced use of assertions for clearer specifications and greater software reliability. By OO guru Bertrand Meyer, creator of Eiffel.
  
• The Therac-25 Accidents Case study of a well known software error.