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...
Software Development & Release Management
Avoid Budget Overruns and Unhappy Customers with Better QA and Testing
Any project can be divided into different parts including requirements gathering, design, implementation, documentation and so on. One key aspect of the project lifecycle is quality assurance (QA), but it's often overlooked. Although almost all project managers...
Blog: Leveraging PTC’s Integrity Platform for IEC 62304 Compliance
SPK and Associates leverage PTC’s Integrity platform to help Medical Device companies develop software efficiently while achieving IEC 62304 compliance.
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...
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...
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...
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.
Gain Greater Control Over Windows Disk Defragmentation with Defraggler
This week we have a look at an alternative to Windows Disk Defragmenter. Piriform has a number of Windows utility offerings, among which is Defraggler. Defraggler has the following capabilities, a number of which are not available with the Windows default utility. 1....
Outsource Your System Administration to Set Your Engineers Free
The inquisitive nature of engineers, which makes them so good at designing, developing and building products, can also lead them to become distracted by other “interesting things” like managing the very systems and tools that allow them to do their engineering....
SDLC Basics: The Vision Statement
In the Beginning In the beginning, there was an idea. The idea took shape and became a project. The project became an application and the application got used. Or maybe it didn't get used. Maybe it was completely the wrong application for the business. Or maybe it was...