Community Interview: Dassian

The following post talks about who some of our customers are and why they chose Lighthouse. Feel free to contact us if you would like an interview as well!

Client: Dassian

[Artifact] What does your company do and what's your role?

[Keith Lee] Dassian builds add-on components (software) for SAP (the largest ERP software company in the world). We concentrate in the project accounting area and cater mostly to Aerospace, Defense, Engineering and Construction companies.

[Artifact] What issues were you trying to solve when you found Lighthouse?

[Keith Lee] Dassian was looking for a tool to cover two main purposes:

1. To allow us to communicate with each other as we are going through a development cycle with a new product (or upgrades to an existing product). Our staff is international and 100% virtual.
2. To allow customer interaction with our staff for issues, bugs, enhancement requests and questions. We also wanted to integrate our user and technical guides when we resolved customer queries.
   

[Artifact] Why did you choose Lighthouse and how is it most helpful for you?

[Keith Lee] We chose Lighthouse for the following reasons:

• Lighthouse provides a framework to interact with our customers that is 100% web-based and not dependent on software installation.
• Lighthouse provides an easy-to-use tool to communicate internally as we are developing and resolving issues.
• Lighthouse took NO TIME to get started. We were productive within a few hours and within a few days had created a Dassian-specific user guide that we were able to provide to our customers.
• Lighthouse has a low cost of ownership.
• Lighthouse allows us to grow into using more functionality for our software development cycles.
  

To learn more about Dassian, please visit their website at www.dassian.com

Artifact Software Featured in Eweek.com

Today, Darryl Taft at eWeek published an article on three bay area (Chesapeake Bay that is) companies - Artifact, Avicode and Codign. Artifact Software is featured and the article provides a good bit of information on what we have to offer.

We are also in the process of releasing a major upgrade scheduled for this weekend. The feature emphasis will be on extending our customization capabilities to let our users change and add new fields for defects, requirements, tests, change requests, issues and much more. But, more on that in the coming days.

Why should you care about code coverage?

I wrote an article a few months ago about the differences between code, branch and path coverage, especially as it relates to unit testing. In my previous life, I wrote code and was a QA Manager for McCabe Software, which is where I became obsessed with metrics.

As part of any development methodology, coverage is something that project managers, developers, testers, and executives should pay attention too.

So, why should you care about coverage? My personal favorite reasons are:

1. Code coverage tells you what blocks of code have not been tested
2 Path coverage tells you what logic in your code has not been tested
3. Coverage forces you to ask more question
4. Coverage provides a way for everyone (managers, executives, developers) to talk at the same level of understanding
5. Coverage provide insight
6. Coverage help you set expectations
7. Coverage can act like documentation (well, really the tests behind the coverage, but you get my point)
8. Coverage help you prioritize
9. Coverage help you fix bugs and refactor faster

There are many studies available that talk about the benefits of coverage, as well as many open source and commercial products to help you get started. If you haven't tried measuring coverage yet, give it a shot with your next release. Measure something ... and just maybe you'll become as coverage-addicted as me.

Community Interview: Pembrooke

The following is a first in a series of blogs talking about who some of our customers are and why they chose Lighthouse. Feel free to contact us if you would like an interview as well!

Client: Pembrooke

[Artifact] What does your company do and what's your role?

[Jake Whitlow] Pembrooke is a leading provider of employment screening and risk management services for both DOT and non-DOT clients. Pembrooke helps companies manage their employment screening data by providing easy access to drug test results, background checks, and other related services. I lead the business analysis and project management efforts within the organization. This includes creation, maintaining, and enforcing methodology as well as functioning as the senior business analyst and project manager.

[Artifact] What issues were you trying to solve when you found Lighthouse?

[Jake Whitlow] Pembrooke had no standing requirements management methodology until about one year ago, and as a software development organization many requirements were going uncaptured, and therefore were not met. We required a tool that would assist in the capturing and management of requirements in order to shore-up this process.

[Artifact] Why did you choose Lighthouse and how is it most helpful for you?

[Jake Whitlow] We chose Lighthouse due to its ease of setup and use (no major configuration needed), it's readily available as a web-based application, and it's associated project management tools. We are currently utilizing it almost exclusively for requirements management, but have plans to begin to leverage the project management tools to a larger extent.

To learn more about Pembrooke, please visit their website at www.pembrooke.com

What is TDD?

This past week I attended a local ALPN event, and the topic was Test Driven Development (TDD). This was more technical than our usual topics, but I thought it was well presented and answered a lot of questions.

George Dinwiddie was the presenter and did an excellent job of introducing TDD to a mostly non-technical audience. He started the discussion asking the attendees if they had heard of TDD (most everyone has) and what they thought TDD was. This is where it got interesting.

Not everyone responded, but those that did had a wide variety of answers, anywhere from TDD is another name for unit testing, to TDD is something that developers use to write code.

Here is what TDD is

• assurance that your code does what you think it does
• code documentation
• code 'designer'

TDD has many benefits, but can be hard to adopt - it is a different way of thinking. The basic premise is to write a failing test case first, then write the code to make the test case pass.

It's a great way to improve code quality.

Here is why you should get your team to try it

George pointed out that his code quality has dramatically increased since adopting TDD, and said that he is now producing three times more code in the same time frame.

I've tried it myself and can certainly vouch for my productivity, but it was difficult to get started, and sometimes I don't stick to it as much as I should. As George said, it's important to start slowly, but take the time to be successful - often hard to do when you are under pressure to deliver.

I don't know - maybe I'll pick it up again!

Here is where you can get more information

The web has a lot of information on TDD. The best sites are xprogramming.com, the wikipedia entry and of course, George's blog.

Great Post on Software Project Failures

Just came across this post and wanted to show it to you - found it true and funny - but be warned, there is a curse word or two!!

Here Comes Cozumel

Lighthouse will be unavailable on Monday, June 25th from at 10PM US Eastern to midnight EST. You will not be able to log in to Lighthouse during the upgrade, so please plan accordingly.

We apologize for any inconvenience the upgrade might cause. Please check our forum for service updates on Monday and Tuesday.

Our much anticipated Custom Fields release is finally available. This Lighthouse Premium feature lets you fully customize virtually all of the existing data elements in Lighthouse! You need Lighthouse Premium to access this option, so go ahead and sign up for a 30-day trial - it's free! You can see the details on our website.