- The Worried Executive's Guide: Preventing the Telephone Company's Disasters from Becoming Yours (Part 1 of 3)
- Jun 9, 2006
- It may not have occurred to you that your phone company can have a disaster of its own, or that a disaster for them can quickly become one for you. In this three-part series, Leo Wrobel talks about ways to mitigate some of Mother Nature's fury by preparing in advance for catastrophe. Part 1 discusses some quick-and-dirty (and cheap!) ways to switch over incoming calls from your call center when it's swamped (maybe literally).
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- The Accidental Architecture
- Jun 2, 2006
- Every interesting software-intensive system has an architecture. While some of these architectures are intentional, most appear to be accidental. Grady Booch explains.
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- SSH Issues: Does Installing SSH Enable More Exploits Than it Solves?
- May 26, 2006
- SSH, the wonder tool of the security set, is misused by your users more easily and more often than you may think. John Traenkenschuh points out how well-intentioned administrators are using SSH to create gaping holes in their own security, and what you can do about it.
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- Software Engineering with Microsoft Visual Studio Team System: A Value-Up Paradigm
- May 19, 2006
- Previously, software engineering projects were managed from a "work-down" perspective, where software engineering is a deterministic exercise, similar to other engineering pursuits. This chapter introduces the concept of a "value-up" perspective, in which the project is allowed to change to meet the expectations of the end-user, rather than the intentions of the designers.
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- Web-based Backup Solutions: Which One Is Right for You?
- May 12, 2006
- More and more people are considering the two aspects of online backups: the "traditional" backup solutions that back up specific files or drives to online services, and backups that put a staggering amount of information "in the cloud." Jeremy Wright shows why a balance of the two enables users to be both mobile and confident that they will never again lose a major presentation just because their two-year-old thought their laptop was thirsty.
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- An Introduction to Catastrophe Disentanglement for Software Projects
- May 4, 2006
- Just as the smart thing to do when a ball of twine seems hopelessly entangled is to stop whatever we are doing with it (otherwise, the tangle gets worse), so it is with a disastrous project; the longer we keep at it, the worse it gets. At some point, we need to halt all activity and reassess what we are doing. This chapter introduces you to the concept of catastrophe disentanglement.
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- Introduction to Six Sigma for Marketing Processes
- May 4, 2006
- Six Sigma for Marketing and Six Sigma for Sales are relatively new approaches to enable and sustain growth. They are part of the bright future offered by adapting Six Sigma to the growth arena. The linkage of Six Sigma for Marketing and Six Sigma for Sales tasks and tools to strategic, tactical, and operational processes is where the Six Sigma discipline adds measurable value to marketing and sales team performance. This chapter provides an introduction to the concept of Six Sigma for Marketing.
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- Six Sigma in 90 Days: The Initiative, the Deployment, the Technology
- Apr 14, 2006
- One of the most important competencies an organization can develop is that of driving change. Six Sigma is a management system for handling change within your organization. This chapter will provide you with an overview of the different dimensions of Six Sigma.
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- The Worried Executive's Guide: Disaster Recovery Planning for Mixed-Hardware Environments
- Apr 7, 2006
- When considering how to protect a company's technology assets, we tend to think in terms of the mainframe, the network, the phone system. But laptops, PDAs, and other little proliferating gadgets now carry a great part of the burden of data for most organizations. Have you given any thought to how to protect such equipment? Leo Wrobel points out why our adorable little gizmos are deserving of high-end attention.
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- Making Effective Software TCO Calculations
- Mar 24, 2006
- Because open-source and free software advocates differ in opinion when it comes to cost, David Chisnall tells you the whole story so you can make a solid financial decision for your business.
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- Confidence Games in Software Engineering
- Mar 17, 2006
- Have you heard the pitch for the tool that gives a 600% productivity improvement, or the new programming language that will solve all of your problems? Matt Heusser explains that confidence games abound in software development - and suggests what to do about them.
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- Business Resumption Planning in Small and Medium-Sized Offices
- Feb 17, 2006
- Your small business can go from thriving to surviving in the time it takes for an earthquake, an intruder, or some other disaster to wreak havoc on your property. Leo Wrobel explores some steps that even very small businesses can take to prevent or handle a disaster and get back to normal.
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- Truth 1 About Managing Your Career: Hitting the Ground Running Can Get You into Trouble
- Feb 10, 2006
- It's common when starting a new job to be told that you need to "hit the ground running." Experienced people who appear in the job market after their companies have downsized often hear this. The expectation is that since they bring connections, experience, and other intangible assets to a new job, they don't need time to learn the new culture and the players. The temptation on hearing this is to dive in with all your energy, ready to make an amazing first impression. After all, you do need to prove yourself. Although your boss may be satisfied, that attitude can get you into trouble in more ways than one.
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- Comparing Open Source Licenses: GPL vs. BSDL
- Feb 3, 2006
- David Chisnall compares the two most popular software licenses in the free and open source software (F/OSS) communities: the GNU General Public License (GPL) and the Berkeley Software Distribution License (BSDL). Each has advantages, but the distinctions are sometimes quite subtle.
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- How to Perform System Boot and Shutdown Procedures for Solaris 10
- Feb 3, 2006
- This chapter provides a description of the OpenBoot environment, the PROM, NVRAM, and the kernel. It describes how to access OpenBoot and the various commands that are available to test and provide information about the hardware.
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- The Web Services Distributed Management (WSDM) Standard
- Feb 3, 2006
- Is WSDM just another management standard? Or a significant step in the direction of producing manageable web-based systems, software, and networks? Software consultant Stephen Morris looks at the various aspects of the argument.
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- Facing a Disaster: How Utilities Providers Prepare
- Jan 27, 2006
- The weather has been in the news a lot lately. These days, if we're relatively unconcerned when we hear newscasters mention outages, it's because we've experienced how quickly utility companies get things back on track. Sharon Fisher explains how these providers can restore service so rapidly.
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- Installation Prerequisites for MetaFrame Presentation Server 3
- Jan 27, 2006
- In this chapter, you'll learn the necessary prerequisites that should be met prior to your attempting to install MetaFrame Presentation Server 3.0. In addition to the hardware and software requirements, you'll learn about licensing and the types of licenses involved in this process.
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- Measuring the Effectiveness of Application Security Policies
- Jan 13, 2006
- Just because a package has few REPORTED vulnerabilities, that doesn't mean that it actually HAS few vulnerabilities, or address the severity of the holes that are reported. In this article Chisnall argues the true measure of security is what happens once a vulnerability is found.
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- Methodology Design: The Way We Do Things Around Here
- Dec 30, 2005
- When people talk about "improving" software methodology, they rarely talk about tradeoffs. Requirements freeze, for example, runs the risk of delivering exactly what the customer asked for - and not what he needs. Concrete, detailed estimates take a considerable amount of time to create, and that's time that could be spent writing code or executing tests. Matthew Heusser discusses the tradeoffs and choices you'll have to make when the goal is improving (or even initially developing) your methodology.
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