Last article in our series on creating custom metrics.
We will address different costs regarding the customization of metrics, generally poorly identified or completely ignored in a project of selection of a code analysis tool.
We will conclude by summarizing all the different questions to ask to a customer in order to determine if creating custom metrics is really a criterion for choosing such a tool.
Continue reading
Third article in our series on creating custom metrics, and why the ability to define your own metrics in a code analysis tool is not the important factor that everyone believes it is.
We saw in the first article that the most simple metrics were not the most numerous and in the second post in this series, that the most interesting and important rules were also the more complex to implement, sometimes (or often) impossible.
In this post, we will address the issue of customization in terms of application technology, before a final article will summarize and identify all the right questions. Continue reading
Is there any interest in creating its own metrics in a code analysis tool? What benefits can we expect? What disadvantages? What obstacles are we going to meet?
It always strikes me to see that these issues are mostly ignored when choosing a tool. Most of the times, the question is to know what is the ease or the level of difficulty to customize the software and create his own rules rather than wondering if it is really needed.
The objective of this series of articles is therefore to clarify these questions and help you to choose the right criteria if you want to acquire a code analysis tool. If you are a quality consultant and must assist a client for such a choice, you can discuss these issues with him to help him in his selection. Continue reading
A quality consultant asks me if it is “Possible to create your own metrics with Sonar?” and “Is it easy to introduce new rules?”.
I know he is working for a customer who wants to choose a code analysis tool. And this is the typical criteria that you will systematically found in the specifications that are elaborated when it comes to choosing such a tool.
It has become a universally accepted rule, even to the point that some software vendors have made of this a selling point and include in their pre-sales demos the creation of a new rule. This is not critical but people like it. Can you imagine a car salesman opening the hood of a running vehicle to adjust the carburator or to add fuel? It would be spectacular, but is it really useful? Continue reading
I received some material from Capers Jones, well known author and international lecturer (I don’t need to present him, but just in case: http://www.namcook.com/aboutus.html). Capers Jones is vice president and CTO of Namcook Analytics LLC.
This is a good synthesis of the current state of software quality, so I just did a summary of the main points, as an opportunity to ask Capers some questions.
What lessons can we learn if we apply ITIL principles for Capacity Management to the field of application quality?
We have seen in the previous post that, in order to provide quality in accordance with Service Level Agreements (SLAs), schedules and budgets, we need to know what we have, the application portfolio, but also its quality.
This knowledge based on quantitative and qualitative metrics help us to better meet users needs, as we will see in this second and final article.
I presented last week the main axes of Capacity Management according to ITIL.
If we try to apply these best practices in the domain of Quality, what are the lessons that can be learned? What would be Quality management seen as an analogy of Capacity management? Is it possible to do « more with less » as do more and more Production teams?
The primary objective of Capacity Management is to deliver the capacity, that is to say, the resources you need: a development or a QA server, a little more disk space for a database, more CPU in a virtual machine, etc.
ITIL adds also that Capacity Management must be ensured in accordance with SLA in a timely and cost effective manner.
If we apply this approach to Quality, we could say that the “Quality management” is to deliver quality, in accordance with service level agreements and deadlines and budgets. How to get there? Continue reading
A question we see regularly: how to improve the productivity of IT departments? In this era of economic crisis, increased competition, globalization, how to further reduce costs, where to find new sources of optimization? In short, how to do « more with less »?
I’m sure many will think that I am talking about « how to improve the productivity of developers and projects »? But I think that, more and more, the Production departments are the ones doing better to answer this question, thanks to virtualization.
You know what is my favorite joke about consultants?
A man walks into a pet shop and sees a monkey in a cage with a label ‘C Monkey – $2,000’. The store owner comes and the customer tells him « This monkey is expensive. He must be very special ». And the owner explains « It’s a monkey that knows how to program in C. Very good programmer, fast, he produces good quality code and bug-free. At that price, it’s a good deal ».
The customer looks at another cage with a sign ‘C++ Monkey – $3,000’ and says « This one is even more expensive. What does he know? ». « Same as the first one, but with C++, an object oriented language, more complex. He too is a very good programmer. And he also knows a bit of Java. ».
The customer then sees a third cage with a panel ‘Monkey – $5,000’. « Oh, this one is as expensive as the other two combined. He must be really good. What he can do? ».
« Well, I don’t really know » replies the owner. « But he says he is a consultant ». (1)
I was thinking to the previous post about the measure of the effort in a project – estimate the costs of development and QA before the project has started and there is little data – when I came across an announce in a forum about measurement of software quality, for a conference on the same subject.
You know, one of these events in which various speakers do a presentation on topics such as ‘what metrics to assess projects’ or participate to roundtables about ‘methods for estimating development costs and maintenance’.
The author of this thread asked to the forum members what topics of discussion they would like to see addressed at this conference, which triggered a series of responses and reactions rather unusual, that I will summarize briefly: