The value system and practices that embody Agile Software Development have been around for well over a decade, and have been touted as having "crossed the chasm" by organizations such as the Agile Alliance, Gartner, and Forrester Research. Numerous studies indicate...
PDM/PLM-Product Data and Lifecycle Management
Declutter your multi-computer desktop with ‘Mouse without Borders’
For the everyday user with a laptop or desktop, this article may not apply. And for those of you who have no need to have more than one PC on your desk -- kudos! But from time to time, its necessary to have several PC's on your desk at the same time -- especially...
PLM in the Cloud: Computer System Validation in FDA Regulated Industries
Product lifecycle management (PLM) systems have evolved from being custom-built, on-premise applications to cloud-based, off-the-shelf solutions. As adoption for PLM in the cloud increases, system validation approaches in FDA/GXP regulated industries have had to...
Macs in a Corporate IT Environment
Macs running OS X have been around for quite some time, but only recently have they gained enough traction with our customers at SPK to be used as their day to day desktop environment. Historically, IT organizations have been reluctant to embrace this change. This...
A Brief History of Automated Builds
Almost every programming book starts with an example of a small program which can be compiled from the command line using a simple call to the compiler with maybe a few flags. Known as “Hello World”, the few lines of code needed to output the text is almost universal....
Do you Think an Engineering Employee is Really Cheaper Than a Consultant? … Think Again.
Occasionally I’ll get a comment from a potential client who is particularly price sensitive about the rates for our consultants, and the comment usually goes something like: “I can hire a full-time employee who would cost me a lot less than what you are going to...
Deploying IPv6 on a Cisco IOS router with a Tunnel Broker
The time has finally come! Just a few days ago, major internet companies participated in IPv6 Launch Day – meaning from this point forward, they will be running their production systems and making their services available to you via the IPv6 in addition to IPv4....
LinkedIn Password Database Leaked!
LinkedIn, the social network for professionals, has reported that its user database has been hacked and the encrypted passwords of 6+ million users have been stolen. Even though the password database was encrypted, users with weak passwords could be exposed with...
The Project Management Skills Gap
When it comes to product innovation and project development, the role of the project manager cannot be underestimated. That's why it's important to take an objective look at the skills and resources available in your organization and determine if a skills gap exists...
A Six Step Setup Process for Incorporating CSS and jQuery into Your Electric Commander Plugin
Let's suppose you've been tasked with developing a custom dashboard for your Electric Commander installation to show off some real-time stats about your software development process. If you read my previous article about displaying Commander metrics in a GWT...
How a Disaster Turned out to be an Opportunity
This post started out as a discussion of how Clonezilla made my life easy and Acronis made my life hard, but it quickly morphed into something different and more personal. Hopefully someone can take away from this that disasters can be quite bad when they happen, but they can also set you on a path you didn’t expect that may end up being wonderful.
Avoid Fatal Product Design Flaws with QA
The difference between quality assurance (QA) and testing is often misunderstood. In fact, the terms are frequently used interchangeably. However, testing is actually just one part of QA. Quality assurance, on the other hand, covers a larger, more holistic part of the...