Rex Black | ICT magazine

Posts Tagged ‘Rex Black’

How to Pick the Right IT Certifications

August 28th, 2010 | No Comments

The right IT certifications can help IT professionals and IT hiring managers to grow their skills and their teams. If chosen correctly, IT certifications can lead to vast improvements in effectiveness, efficiency and communication within teams. Here, Knowledge Center contributor Rex Black explains how IT professionals and IT hiring managers can obtain good value for themselves and their teams by picking the right IT certification programs. – In a previous Knowledge Center article, I talked a lot about how to build quality applications, ones that work together using various techniques and processes. Another key to quality applications is the quality of the teams involved in creating and maintaining them.
One tool for increasing the qua…

How to Improve Software Quality: Lessons from Toyota’s Debacle

July 12th, 2010 | No Comments

Software testing should be part of a much larger process for software quality assurance. When complex systems are built from many subsystems, it’s vital to understand, measure and manage the software quality assurance process for all systems from end to end. Here, Knowledge Center contributor Rex Black discusses software quality and testing lessons that IT professionals should learn from the debacle that recently befell Toyota. – How the mighty have fallen. Starting in the 1980s, Japanese companies became legendary for quality and none more legendary than Toyota. But earlier this year, Toyota led the news due to quality problems. The situation was so severe that Toyota CEO Akio Toyoda personally appeared at a Congressional h…

How to Achieve Greater Application Interoperability in Your Data Center

July 9th, 2010 | No Comments

In today’s data center, application interoperability matters more than ever. There are security, performance and reliability risks associated with poor application interoperability. Here, Knowledge Center contributor Rex Black explains how to reduce the risk of nasty surprises in your data center’s production environment. – In one of my previous Knowledge Center articles, I discussed how to build quality applications by integrating multiple quality assurance activities into your process. This is important, but most of us don’t have the luxury of thinking about only one application. In today’s data center, it’s not enou…

How to Build Quality Applications

January 28th, 2010 | No Comments

One of the most cost-effective forms of quality assurance is building software the right way, right from the start. To do so, you need to know the requirements to build the right features and how to apply the right software development life cycle model. Here, Knowledge Center contributor Rex Black explains both, as well as the three things every programmer should do with every piece of code written, and how to use continuous integration to avoid nasty surprises.
– In some of my previous Knowledge Center articles, I’ve talked about testing as a means to build confidence in the quality of your data center’s applications. It’s good to have confidence before you turn an application loose on users, but why wait until the end of the project? The most efficient form…

How to Successfully Outsource Your Software Projects

January 28th, 2010 | No Comments

Everyone wants to take advantage of the cost savings of outsourcing their software projects, but not everyone succeeds. Successful outsourced efforts require good communication, relationship building and trust, as well as a solid understanding about what Capability Maturity Model Integration does and doesn’t tell you about an outsource vendors capabilities. Here, Knowledge Center contributor Rex Black explains these and other critical logistical issues to consider when selecting an outsourcing vendor.
– In the last decade, outsourcing became a powerful force in the software industry. Motivations behind outsourcing vary, but the reason mentioned most is that of cost savings. Unfortunately, all too often, previous attempts at outsourcing failed to deliver the desired efficiencies or perhaps failed t…

How to Develop Effective Application Test Teams

January 27th, 2010 | No Comments

When it comes to software testing, the right test team can sometimes mean the difference between a good application and a bad application with security or code problems. IT managers often wonder if it’s wise to use junior programmers or whether or not users or business analysts should play a role in testing. Here, Knowledge Center contributor Rex Black explains how to determine the testing skills required for your project, how to find true professional testers, and how to automate the testing.
– In my previous Knowledge Center articles, I’ve talked about quality in the data center and how to set quality goals. I’ve mentioned that testing is important to achieving quality. As with any other activity, a major element of doing testing well is using the right people. The right test team can som…

How to Set Quality Goals for Your IT Projects

January 26th, 2010 | No Comments

We know the dot-com phenomenon (and bust) was driven, in part, by poor software and systems quality so why are organizations still managing quality like it’s 1999? There are key quality objectives every organization should have for their software and systems, and to run projects effectively. Here, Knowledge Center contributor Rex Black offers steps on how to remove bugs before delivering software into the data center, how to test for the right problems with the right metrics, and how to optimize quality from a financial point of view.
– We’re all fascinated by Web 2.0 now, but remember Web 1.0, the dot-com boom that became dot-bomb? One major reason for the crash was poor software and systems quality both for the Websites themselves and the hardware and software behind them. While Web 2.0 has a lot more speed and sizzle than Web 1….

How to Assure Quality in Your Data Center

October 29th, 2009 | No Comments

Some recent attention-grabbing headlines have included how Amazon’s cloud computing service had some hiccups, Google’s Web-based e-mail package, Gmail, suffered an outage and RIM’s BlackBerry devices stopped getting their e-mail. There’s a lesson here for IT professionals: Our data centers are more critical than ever. Here, Knowledge Center contributor Rex Black explains how to assure the highest level of quality in your organizations data center.
– Proper
quality assurance (QA) of a data center is not a trivial matter. We
need to ensure that our data centers are fit for the purposes to which
we and our users put them. The first step in assuring quality in your
organization’s data center is to make sure you understand what quot;fit for
th…