Creating reports
codeBeamer ALM 9.0 is Released!
Unparalleled Collaboration, Simplified Audits, Product Line Management & more: Find out What is New in codeBeamer ALM 9.0! Save software product line management costs with re-use, branching, and merging. Cut compliance audit times with the Audit Trail feature. Achieve unparalleled collaboration using ChatOps. Easily integrate your ALM with 50+ tools. Introducing codeBeamer ALM 9.0, the…
Transitioning to Conversation-driven Development with ChatOps
If there’s work I can’t do alone, I’ll just ask a buddy to help out. That’s how collaboration has worked forever. Conversation has always been the primary facilitator of achieving goals together, be it any kind of work. Agile and DevOps emphasize efficient communication, and for good reason: in order to break down walls and…
NVIDIA Introduces Computer for Level 5 Autonomous Cars
Still struggling to build, test, and ensure the high quality of the vast amount of software code in their current products, carmakers are already looking to the future. The development of self-driving vehicles is well underway, with several global automakers joined by non-traditional players in the automotive industry (for instance, tech giants such as Google).…
A Guide to Future-proofing Your Requirements Management
In a time of dramatically changing technology and market landscapes, a lot of development teams sit back and enjoy their tried and tested requirements management (RM) processes. But true maturity in software development is only achieved by continuous improvement. Download Intland Software’s free eBook to learn how you can stay ahead of the curve by…
A 2017 Analysis of Agile Adoption Trends
The process of Agile adoption follows its own lifecycle. After the Agile manifesto was published in 2001, Agile gathered a fair bit of attention, and was widely discussed by experts in the media. The iterative and incremental framework that promised to cut development time and costs, and yield better results for all stakeholders started to…
A Glimpse into the Future? Top Automakers by Market Value 2017
Industry analysts generally rank automakers by their revenue or number of cars sold. While it might not reflect directly these companies’ past market performance, it’s interesting to take a look at the market value of the largest carmakers today. Market value gives us a good idea of how investors perceive the business prospects of the…
Calculating the Return on Investment of Application Lifecycle Management Tools
In today’s digital market saturated with smart, IoT-connected products, developers are competing to deliver software-heavy, innovative products to their customers. Software development competences are becoming the new currency in many industries. Product manufacturers are rushing to hire skilled, experienced, and creative software developers. As fierce competition forces companies to rapidly acquire or expand their software…
codeBeamer ALM’s Official Scalability Performance Test Report 2017
Most ALM vendors claim to be scalable in terms of both users and work items. Performance benchmarks, however, are not always provided. With this Official Scalability Performance Test Report, codeBeamer ALM proves that it works swiftly and smoothly with 10 million work items and 1,000 concurrent users. Demonstrating its ability to handle as many as…
Automotive Recalls in the First Half of 2017
Recalls due to faulty products are any automotive company’s worst nightmare. Issuing a recall is expensive, negatively impacts the company’s reputation for quality, and is oftentimes a result of a product mistake that was discovered in an accident where users were injured. Yet despite all the efforts of suppliers and carmakers to avoid such scandals…
Russian Internet Giant Yandex Announces Self-driving Car
In a recent article, we analyzed how autonomous technology is shaping the automotive market in the EU and the US. New and sometimes unlikely alliances are formed in the race to develop the first “Level 5” fully autonomous car, one that can take passengers from point A to B with no human intervention whatsoever. While…
Introducing Intland’s Pharma GAMP® 5 Template for Pharmaceutical Development & Compliance
Production in the pharmaceutical industry is both highly automated (through the use of automation systems) and rigorously controlled to ensure patient safety and product quality. This poses a variety of challenges to pharma developers. In addition to achieving high product quality and the least amount of waste possible, compliance with regulations and guidelines (most importantly…
ALM: Will You Take It to the Next Level?
Embedded Software: Coming out of the shadows The world we live in is not quite what it seems. The car you drive is not simply a mashed-up fusion of wheels and motor parts, nor are airplanes merely fuselages with engines attached. Behind-the-scenes lies the backbone of modern technology: data. Data is manipulated, applications are launched,…
New Alliances Shaping the Future of Self-driving Cars
Automotive industry players and market analysts agree that once fully developed, autonomous technology will completely reshape public and private transport. It’s no wonder that everyone wants a piece of this fundamental and disruptive change that will open up new opportunities for those equipped to handle the challenges that are, for now, towering ahead. In order…
Fritz Stephan Medical Case Study: Compliance in an Exceptionally Highly Regulated Environment
The increasingly rigorous requirements of safety-critical regulations pose a challenge to companies developing products for the automotive, medical device, railway, nuclear, financial, pharmaceutical etc. industries worldwide. Achieving compliance with a single standard can be difficult enough. But in the case of special products such as Fritz Stephan’s mobile emergency care units, several standards of multiple…
Review Hub for Simplified Approvals and Compliance Audits
codeBeamer ALM’s new Review Hub was one of the major features introduced in our Application Lifecycle Management tool’s latest version 8.1.
Replacing IBM DOORS to Modernize a Legacy Requirements Management Toolchain
IBM® Rational® DOORS® is hardly unknown to enterprise product development teams. As a legacy software suite for requirements management, DOORS has been a popular option for decades for managing requirements in the development of software products and physical devices with embedded software components. However, user experiences show that both DOORS and its younger brother DOORS…
The Role of Next Generation ALM in the Future of Product Development
As an IT, software, or product development professional, you must have noticed the recent buzz around Application Lifecycle Management tools in professional discussions. Despite our best efforts, this is actually not a result of the hard work of ALM vendors’ marketing departments. Instead, it’s accounted for by the fact that experts are noticing a growing…
Can DevOps and ITIL Work Together?
For a number of years, DevOps has been one of the industry’s top buzzwords. With all that talk about this relatively new concept, however, it seems like most IT experts still have but a vague idea about DevOps: sure, it helps enhance IT service management (ITSM), but isn’t that what ITIL has been helping us…
Medical Device Risk Management in Compliance with ISO 14971
With integrated, value-based healthcare moving health awareness and care “upstream” to prevent hospital care, medical devices are becoming more and more integrated in the lives of patients. That is, in our everyday lives, since digital healthcare technology is used even before (and specifically to prevent that) we become patients. The group of products regulated by…
codeBeamer 8.1 is Released: ALM for Quality Assurance Professionals
With the advanced features of its latest version 8.1 focused on collaborative quality assurance, codeBeamer’s position is reinforced as the go-to Application Lifecycle Management solution for developers of quality high-tech and safety-critical products worldwide. Fully reworked, comprehensive safety-critical templates, an advanced Review Hub, versioned Test Management, and state of the art Reporting & Analytics options…
Keeping Pace with Changing EU Medical Regulations
When prompted with the question “What are the biggest challenges you are facing?”, 66% of senior management respondents to Emergo’s 2016 medical industry survey answered that changing regulatory requirements are affecting their companies the most. Somewhat related, the challenges of developing new products came in second with 45%. The importance of adhering to standards in…
Digital Health Industry: Medical Technology Trends in 2017
The rapid advancement of innovative technology today is propelling fundamental changes in several, if not all, industries. Due to the speed of current breakthroughs, this process is now widely referred to as the Fourth Industrial Revolution. As one of the world’s largest industries, the healthcare sector is greatly affected by this technology-driven transformation that is…
Does Waterfall Scale or Not?
Over the years we have come across many proponents of various Agile systems, selling their particular Agile brand with the idea that when a system does not work, dump it for another – their version. In the case of Jeff Sutherland and Ken Schwaber (who founded Scrum) and their legions of Scrum consultants, they frequently…
Automotive Industry Development Trends 2017
The automotive industry has always been a sector of fast development. Last year was no exception, as 2016 has seen the auto industry put the pedal to the metal in terms of technological advancement. But technology isn’t the only factor that’s changing. Diving deeper into currently unfolding auto industry trends provides insights into how our everyday…
Automotive Functional Safety Compliance Overview
The future of automotive development is one of increasing complexity and variety as consumers move away from multipurpose vehicles to vehicles fit for purpose. Hardware components will increasingly include imbedded electronics and software components. The standardization of these components between models and the inclusion of internet of things (IoT) connectivity will provide automanufacturers the ability…
The Ultimate in Software Development Trends – Agile ALM Software
Application development is increasingly becoming the revenue-generating engine of most businesses; new features are more often than not provided by software. Electronic circuitry and software is increasingly being added to previously non-electronic devices as connectivity technology has become more accessible as component prices have fallen. IoT and the promise of big data insight is driving…
Defining, Approving, and Managing Requirements: Challenges & Best Practices
Each and every step of the requirements management process is an error-prone, yet crucially important stage of software development. From defining requirements to analyzing their test coverage, the requirements lifecycle is a rocky road for most development teams. In fact, statistics confirm that inadequate requirements management is the number one reason for failure in (embedded)…
Security Concerns About Self-Driving Cars
Self-driving cars are definitely a hot topic now that most automotive manufacturers have thrown their hat into the ring. The greatest barrier to acceptance to machine driven cars is the fear of relinquishing control to a machine, we imagine the worst that can happen and the inability to intervien which in itself is utterly disconcerting.…
Application Lifecycle Management: a Tool for Project Managers?
Historically, Application Lifecycle Management tools have evolved to support the work of software developers. As software architectures were (and still are) getting more and more complex, development teams were finding it increasingly difficult to keep track of work items, processes, relations between artifacts, and other important details using their old tools. They needed a way…
ALM + PLM integration Essential for IoT Security
High profile cases of automotive hacking and the concerns related to such events have finally been addressed in Washington. A recent senate report condemned automotive manufacturers for their lack of protection for IoT connections, labelling them as inconsistent and haphazard. Also pointed out was that auto manufacturers were also failing to protect the transmission of…
MicroFocus + HPE’s Spin Merge: Two Old Dogs Do Not Make A Race Horse
HP’s recent decision to sell its software business segment shocked HP ALM and HP QC users worldwide. While it might have been a reasonable business decision from a financial point of view, the spin off and merger of Hewlett Packard Enterprise Co. and Micro Focus International PLC proposes a set of important questions from the…
Are you Having Trouble Deciding which Agile Framework to Adopt?
Lets face it, Scrum methodology only forms part of the process ecosystem necessary to create complex software solutions for stakeholders. When looking in detail at any company stating that they use Scrum, its usual to find that in fact that implementation is a fusion of Scrum with other processes adapted to meet requirements. Consequently, tools…
Is Requirements Management Software Obsolete?
Requirements management is critical to software development and yet surprisingly a large number of developers still use tools not suited for Requirements Management including Microsoft Office at the most basic of levels. Considering that the single biggest cause of failure for software development projects is inadequate Requirements documentation, it does beg the question why are…
Prepare for Takeoff: Autonomous Aircraft Technology Trends in Aviation & Defense
Among other examples of advanced technology transforming various industries as well as our everyday lives, autonomous cars have been a hot topic in recent years. While seeing a driverless car on the road might surprise you (and this surprising moment could happen sooner than you’d think), road vehicles aren’t the only means of transport that…
Internet of Medical Things: Wearables & Other Modern Technologies in Digital Healthcare
There is hardly any aspect of our lives that disruptive and transformative technology is not affecting. Home automation, self-driving cars, IoT-connected kitchen appliances, smart bikes and similar products have gone from breaking news to being around us wherever we go. As humans increasingly accept technology as a part of their everyday lives, “digital healthcare” (the…
How Do You Know You Are Doing Scrum Right?
Scrum is one of the most well-known Agile methodologies. One of the main priorities of Scrum masters is to keep their teams focused and ensure that Scrum works effectively and efficiently. How do you know if you are doing Scrum right? Is Scrum only about Sprint and Velocity? Scrum, the iterative and incremental Agile software…
codeBeamer 8.0 is Released! What is new in this latest version?
With the release of codeBeamer’s latest version 8.0, current and prospective users get access to a long list of features that far surpass those of a simple Application Lifecycle Management platform. Major feature updates bring powerful enterprise functionality, while significant usability improvements render 8.0 the most convenient and fast version of our ALM platform so…
How Dev Tools Make Good Development Teams Great
Software development is all about collaboration; you might think this is an obvious statement; however, you would be surprised at just how many developers we have come across that never heard about ALM software. First ALM software is a collaboration tool; often the limit of their understanding is that it is a yet another collection…
How Does Visual Data Analysis Help You Develop Better Software Faster?
The need for optimization is the main driving force behind a considerable portion of the technological advancement we see today. If you take a long and investigative look at certain new pieces of software, most cutting-edge B2B services, and even some new, innovative hardware products on the market, you’ll find that a large fraction of…
Why IoT Manufacturers Require PLM + ALM Integration
Although the Internet of Things (IoT) is proving to be a product design megatrend, still very few manufacturers have invested in the technology necessary to leverage these designs. This is perhaps not surprising when you consider that the speed of disruption is bewildering, even back breaking. Back in 2014 Gartner claimed that well over 50% of new…
Are you designing an IoT product?
The Internet of Things is a confluence of technologies which has become a viable concept as both hardware and software costs have fallen to an all-time low. Agile software development methodologies and variants of Agile Development (hybrid methods or DevOps) are making IoT product manufacture a cost effective proposition. It enables connected products to be…
Addressing the Weaknesses of Agile Development
Once and a while we come across customers who complain about Agile Methodology. No matter the complaint, more often than not it is dismissed as the fault of the customer for not implementing Agile Methodology correctly, as if by doing so, then all problems would be magically resolved. The reality is somewhat different. Unfortunately the…
codeBeamer Receives TÜV “Trusted Tool” Certification for IEC 61508 and Automotive ISO 26262 Compliance
We are glad to announce that in August 2016, Intland Software’s codeBeamer ALM has been awarded safety-critical qualifications by the internationally recognized testing body TÜV NORD. This “Trusted Tool” certification reassures users working on safety-critical products that codeBeamer ALM is an adequate solution to support development in accordance with the requirements of IEC 61508 and…
Preventing Automotive Software Failures
Once and awhile we review the various automotive industry software failures hitting the news headlines, not with the purpose to embarrass any particular automotive manufacturer but rather to highlight that in most cases such failures could have been avoided with straight forward software development best practices and the right development toolset. Disclaimer: – Of course…
How an Agile Team Should Adopt Continuous Delivery
For developers considering adopting continuous integration or continuous delivery and are using a wide range of tools for development purposes, you have a golden opportunity to take the step that all growing developers eventually take, to leapfrog competitors to the adoption of an integrated development environment. Developers should take the time to review their existing…
Why DevOps is Essential for IoT and Innovation
Constant innovation is central to building a great product, sounds great doesn’t it? However, often for the operations teams, constant innovation is tiring, – a roadblock to doing their job effectively. It means more changes to communicate to the customer, as well as having to deal with the likely fallout from the disruption of service…
Is Mob Programming just a fad?
Programming is typically a solitary business, requiring extreme concentration for long periods. Hence, programmers tend to enjoy their quiet, and generally prefer to work in smaller teams and so in many ways, the very idea of Mob Programming is counter intuitive, akin to back seat driving. What is Mob Programming exactly? Mob programming is based…
Quality Assurance Using Code Coverage Analysis
The world of software development is evolving at a breakneck speed. Agile development methods, IoT-connected products, faster computers and more advanced embedded technology are fundamentally transforming the way software is developed. However, one of the greatest changes that have shaped the way software is built in recent years wasn’t something technological or methodological. It was a…
What Agile or Hybrid Methodology to Use for Building Autonomous Cars
When planning an Agile software development project for a hardware product design, project design strategy can be greatly simplified by choosing a development environment that is designed for use with your industry standards (the first box to tick). It is even more important when the product safety is a key concern, requiring compliance with a…
Why ISO 20000 Escalation Management Is SAFe With DevOps.
To be ISO 20000 certified is good for business, why? Because the ISO 20000 service management system (SMS) is the defacto standard for enterprise IT Services Management (ITSM); and as such is not only a sign that the service is of high quality and can be trusted, it is the most widely used and accepted standard…
Challenges of Developing Autonomous Vehicles
Among the many changes that fast evolving technology is causing today, one advancement seems to emerge as the most obvious and as having the greatest impact on our everyday lives. Autonomous (self-driving) vehicle technology was a long-time engineering dream depicted in science fiction cartoons and movies for decades. It is now starting to become reality,…
Hybrid Cloud – The Future of Enterprise IT Infrastructure
The Age of the Agile Enterprise is now, and is powered by the Hybrid Cloud and SaaS. This global revolution was sparked by the convergence of mobile (MDM Management) and encrypted cloud storage technologies, but also by the evolution of Agile and Lean software development methodologies and the tools used to manage Agile development in…
When and How to Use Kanban and Scrum?
Implementing Agile is a bold step ahead for most software development teams. Some just want to improve their existing processes, others feel they need a complete overhaul of processes and culture in order to be able to keep pace with the accelerating market environment. There are various approaches to implementing Agile (and scaled Agile), and…
Achieving Functional Safety in Safety-critical Embedded Systems
As manufacturers are adding more and more embedded technology and software to their devices in practically all industries, ensuring the safety and dependability of these software-imbued products is becoming a pressing issue – and as a consequence, a hot topic among product developers worldwide. Safety and reliability are vital considerations when it comes to devices…
Why Medical Device Development Requires ALM Software?
Since 2011, medical devices have become increasingly sophisticated, and as the level of sophistication has increased, so has the time needed by the FDA to assess complex 510(k) medical device submissions (the majority of which are class 2 devices). Most recently in 2015, the typical FDA approval process had grown to between 9-12 months. In…
Basics of the Scaled Agile Framework – Introducing SAFe 4.0
In recent years, it has become evident that software is driving innovation and development in practically all industries. Agile was created to help software development teams keep pace with the accelerating rate of innovation and fast evolving user needs. Scaling Agile across large organizations was, and to some extent, continues to be a problem –…
Implementing Six Sigma and CMMI within an Agile Framework
The reality of undertaking a business process improvement drive is a pix and mix approach to adoption of both improvement strategies and methodologies along with their associated processes, those necessary to achieve the desired outcome. In terms of Six Sigma and CMMI, there is no need to choose between the two, since they have different…
SAFe or Scrum at Scale – Which Framework is Best for You?
When comparing frameworks for scaling Agile such as SAFe or Scrum at Scale, the question is not what the best framework for scaling Scrum is but rather which framework is best for you considering your knowledge base, your starting point and what you are looking to achieve. Then you need to consider what you think…
Using Agile in Hardware Development & Manufacturing?
The question of ALM-PLM integration has recently become one of the hottest topics among product developers, ALM and PLM tool vendors, and hardware engineering & software development experts worldwide. Understandably so: with the advent of IoT and software increasingly powering the innovative features of modern products, the problem of unifying hardware and software development lifecycles is…
Why Use ALM – Agile Software for Waterfall Project Management?
In Waterfall Project Management, there is a top – down management style with an emphasis on upfront planning. The application lifecycle occurs in distinct phases in a specific order, with each phase completed before moving on to the next. In contrast, Agile Software project management is a much more fluid, – dynamic lifecycle, subject to…
Strategies to Unify ALM and PLM
The fact that software is increasingly becoming the main differentiating factor in engineered product development shouldn’t be news to regular readers of the Intland blog. Manufacturers are increasingly replacing hardware components in their products with software functionality, or a combination of both in order to decrease their products’ cost, weight, time to market, or to…
Migrating from Isolated Tools to Integrated ALM
Mobile and smart devices, the abundance of sensors and the vast amount of data they collect and generate, and connectivity to the Internet of Things have made software omnipresent in our everyday lives. Due to the increased software content embedded in engineered products, managing product development is moving away from controlling hardware and software lifecycles…
What is the Dark Side of DevOps?
DevOps integrates development and operations teams to improve collaboration and productivity by automating all sorts of processes. There are situations where this may not be appropriate. Similar to any other domain or solution, one size does not fit all. DevOps Teams: Why Does Automation Matter? Before talking about the “dark side” (downsides) of DevOps let’s see…
Reacting to a Shifting Business Environment with Modernized Processes
Intland Software’s recently published case study with Medtronic investigates how the world’s leading medical technology company was able to overcome their most pressing challenges using our integrated Application Lifecycle Management platform, codeBeamer ALM. While an interesting story, it primarily sheds light on the technical details of how this medical tech giant was able to make this…
Are You Practicing Agile, Wagile, or an Agile-Waterfall Hybrid Approach?
In recent years, Agile has become a mainstream topic the basics of which even laymen interested in the world of software development can understand. Yet some Agile enthusiasts warn that even with the adoption of this modern software development framework booming across industries and across organizations of all sizes, whether all these companies really are…
Is Continuous Delivery and DevOps Replacing Agile?
The question “Is continuous delivery replacing Agile?” is often discussed today. It is frankly an absurd question, with no evidence supporting that it is the case. More often than not the question is raised by Continuous Delivery vendor advocates (targeting developers without an integrated development environment – ALM Software). In actual effect, the reverse is…
Why Switch from Scrum to Scrumban
Scrumban is for Scrum teams that need to respond to change more quickly but wish to stick with the fundamentals of the Scrum framework rather than ditching it entirely for Kanban (which is great for service related tasks) or another model. Scrumban is a hybrid model, combining elements of both Scrum and Kanban to build…
Managing Requirements the Agile Way
The importance of requirements management (RM) in software development need not be further emphasized. Based on both research data and empirical evidence, it has become a cliché to point out that adequately capturing what is expected of developers (what problem their end product should be able to resolve, and how exactly it should do that)…
What Developers Want from an Application Lifecycle Management Platform?
Application Lifecycle Management (ALM) is not a development approach but is rather a way to manage the adopted approach. Its use began in the age of Waterfall, back when silo’ed teams typically blamed each other for the failure of projects. A culture of blame was only part of the problem but alone, it certainly contributed…
Should You Use Gantt Charts in Agile Project Management?
The topic of Gantt diagrams in the context of Agile software development has been a much debated question. On one hand, there are those who claim that using Gantt charts and trying to stick to them during the Agile lifecycle is likely to bring you about as much success as burning down your entire office…
Compliance in Avionics Software Systems Development (DO-178C)
The development of embedded aeronautics systems and software follows a complicated lifecycle. For avionics embedded systems developers, orchestrating the engineering, design, production, testing and integration of an extremely large set of hardware items with great precision is just part of the task. Various hardware devices are controlled by embedded software, the development of which in…
How ALM Software Benefits Business?
In a world reliant on the internet and the internet of things, that is increasingly reliant on software to provide new cutting edge features to add value, investment in your development teams, their infrastructure and development tools can make the difference between success and failure of products. The features of ALM Software bring many of…
Medical Device Development: Common Mistakes in Risk Management
If you’re the least bit interested in safety-critical product development, there is one obvious fact you have probably heard a million times: in this area, product quality, reliability and safety are fundamental. In order to make sure your railway, automotive, medical or other equipment functions as intended, you’ll have to take into consideration all the…
ISO 29119 Testing Standard – Why the controversy?
The road to ISO 29119 was a long time in the making, and although far from perfect, the 5 standards that make up ISO 291119 do provide an important benchmark for testers to test themselves against, as well as for consumers of testing services to assess the quality of testing provided. Prior to ISO 29119…
Must-Have Metrics for Agile or Waterfall Software Development
Directors, CEO and Head of IT obviously want to have metrics that tells them how productive the team is. In case of software development, it is always a difficult task to estimate the costs and efforts of software development projects. There are several estimation models and methods but it is hard to tell which one…
Case Study: How Does the World’s Largest Medical Technology Company Use codeBeamer ALM?
Development teams working on safety-critical end products (such as automotive embedded products, airborne flight equipment, railway equipment, and so on) really understand the importance of quality. One small fault in the product could cause catastrophic events, and in the case of major issues, the costs of the resulting recalls could affect the profitability of the…
Leveraging Traceability In Medical Device Development
Innovation in the Medical Device Development industry is hampered by complex standards and regulations and once the medical device prototype is developed and tested, it then faces a long approval process. Traceability is essential for ensuring compliance with medical device standards and regulations but this often overshadows its most important function as an enabler for…
The Future of IoT Product Development
This blog post is a short summary of Intland Software’s latest e-book titled The Way Forward in IoT Product Development. Click the title to access the e-book for free, or simply download it at the bottom of this page. In recent years, the Internet of Things has been a central topic in complex product development and…
Methods + Techniques: Cost Estimation for Agile Projects
Building trust between the developer and product owner is paramount for a successful project, and yet one of the most valuable opportunities to build trust is one of the most commonly missed opportunites is during the planning phase,- specifically Cost Estimation for Agile Projects. Many Agile developers fail to see the merit or outrightly reject…
Purchasing ALM 101: A Guide to Evaluating Application Lifecycle Management Solutions
When it comes to purchasing an Application Lifecycle Management solution, the decision to make the transition from using a clunky ecosystem of isolated, standalone software solutions (MS Office, bug trackers, etc) to using an integrated, efficient ALM platform that provides complete traceability is just the first step. That’s when the real work starts. Getting everyone…
Intland Software’s codeBeamer ALM Recognized as Market Leader in Ovum’s Decision Matrix ALM Report
Ovum, the largest European analyst and consultancy firm, have just released their latest report on ALM solutions. The report, titled Ovum Decision Matrix: Selecting an Application Lifecycle Management Solution, 2016–17 evaluates and compares the ALM platforms currently available on the market. The report recognizes Intland Software’s codeBeamer ALM as a market leader in the ALM field…
How to Validate Your ALM Tool in Medical Device Development?
The application, as well as the benefits of using ALM platforms in the development of medical device software have been thoroughly documented by Application Lifecycle Management solution vendors (see this blog post) and medical device developers alike. However, the validation of (C)OTS (commercial off-the-shelf) software used in the development of medical devices is a closely…
Why QA + Testing is so Important?
When considering the various arguments for implementing adequate QA & Testing processes, none is more convincing than the associated costs of fixing bugs. The longer a bug goes undetected, the more costly it is to fix. A simple costs vs benefits analysis will show overwhelmingly that the benefits of employing a QA Test Engineer to…
Should You Adopt ALM for Safety-Critical Development?
Most companies involved in the development of safety-critical devices such as airborne electronic equipment, automotive embedded systems, or medical devices have their tried and tested development processes. They have invested a lot of time, effort and money into formulating workflows and building a tool environment that help them develop high quality products in compliance with…
Manual Testing vs Automated Testing
Testing is a vital part of software development, since it is about finding the software bugs. Testing can be done through both automated and manual testing, but which is best and for what circumstances? Whether you use one or the other or both, the decision should depend on a cost vs benefit analysis. Read on for an…
ITSM with ITIL vs DevOps, a Question of Requirements
Requirements Management + ITIL Using a process management system for Enterprise IT Services Management, would typically mean using the Information Technology Infrastructure Library (ITSM with ITIL), in a historical sense, this has had some surprising weaknesses, the biggest of which was the complete lack of a Requirements Management (RM) phase. Requirements Management is the bedrock…
Agile, SAFe and DevOps – Replacing ITIL
The introduction of ITIL as a formal approach to enterprise IT Service Management (ITSM) put in place order and structure where previously there was none to speak of. The benefits were dramatic, greatly improving IT service, in terms of both quality and speed of service, thereby greatly improving customer satisfaction. Its success has made it…
2016 Automotive Industry Trends and Challenges
Following up on last week’s industry forecast for medical technology developers, let’s see what 2016 holds for car manufacturers and companies involved in the development of products for the automotive industry. 2015 has been a record year in the US in terms of the sales of road vehicles (cars and trucks). With low loan rates,…
Has Your Business Outgrown GitHub + Open Source?
Wave Goodbye to GitHub How Do You Know If You’ve Out Grown GitHub? As development projects grow there comes a point in time when the GitHub ecosystem ceases to operate effectively, typically the reported use issues relate to scaling up. The reported problems are related to the flow and accessibility of information amongst users, with the…
2016 Trends and Challenges for Medical Technology Providers
The medical device manufacturing industry is among the world’s fastest growing industry sectors. According to research, the majority of companies operating in this market are optimistic about the future of the industry in 2016. And for good reason: the medical electronics and healthcare IT market hit the $100 billion mark by the end of 2015, and…
Lean Software and Systems Engineering – SAFe 4.0
With the release of Scaled Agile Framework 4.0 a new 4th level is added to the freely available knowledge base. It is for a higher level of operation for larger organizations, providing a greater value stream for those businesses that have both software and systems engineering teams, developing both hardware and firmware (embedded software). Scaled…
How to Scale Agile with Compliant Processes?
Large multinational companies developing components or manufacturing products for any safety-critical industry (such as the transport – aviation, railway, automotive, etc – nuclear, or medical device sectors) have to dedicate immense resources to ensure that their end products comply with the relevant safety regulations, standards, guidances or directives. A large portion of these rigorous standards…
An IoT Society is a Greener Society
The Internet of Things does away with the throw away society of yesteryear and ushers in a new age where the software development and networked embedded electronics (smart devices) provides the means to facilitate a new order of things, a society where things are updated rather than thrown away. Dubbed Industry 4.0 by the German…
ALM vs PLM: Rivals or Teammates?
A need of ALM-PLM integration has been established but still there are road blocks to achieving it, and is primarily a work cultural problem, PLM users resisting the required Agile work culture change and pitting ALM vs PLM. ALM-PLM integration is one of the hottest topics in the industry right now. Actually, it’s a hot topic in several…
Davos 2016 – Industry 4.0 and the Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT)
The World Economic Forum Annual Meeting 2016 was entitled “Mastering the Fourth Industrial Revolution”, the event covered the potential applications of new technologies that collectively are referred to as the Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) or Industry 4.0. The event did little to address the core technological challenges ahead. Much was said about IoT in a…
Agile + IEC 62304: Using Agile in Medical Device Development
The reliance on embedded software is increasing as medical devices are achieving higher and higher levels of sophistication. Despite widespread discussions of the benefits that adopting Agile could bring to software development companies, some medical device developers still hesitate to make the transition from Waterfall to Agile. While the advantages of Agile seem obvious, developers are…
Managing Software Development: Why ALM Software is Essential
The problem with deciding what tools to use for software development is the overwhelming complexity and availability of the available tools, and often the bigger picture is lost amongst the details. Specifically, when comparing Application Lifecycle Management (ALM) systems, features and the associated benefits of adopting an ALM Software, the bigger picture is whether the tool in question…
What Are the Software Testing Trends for 2016?
The overarching Software Testing Trend for 2016 will be that of QA and Testing Departments under great pressure. As Application Lifecycles shorten and as the number of releases increases, the emphasis must be placed on increasing capacity and quality. Testing Budgets will need to rise in 2016 to meet these requirements. In the seventh edition…
Why is Scrum so Popular? Why is Scrum So Successful?
After reading around the topic of why scrum is so popular for project management I came to the conclusion that there was no satisfactory answer available online. Most articles provided a lazy answer, concluding that Scrum is popular because its successful and simple, or rather, it is more successful because it is simple when compared…
SAFe with codeBeamer ALM: Agility, Scalability, Compliance
Large enterprises the world over are lagging behind in software product innovation, due to being slower to adapt to changes in the market than their smaller competitors. “Coincidentally”, these smaller companies are increasingly adopting Agile, allowing them to react faster than global juggernaut enterprises. Not surprisingly, large companies are also looking to jump on the…
Agile Scrum: How Agile is Scrum Methodology?
Agile Scrum is the most popular Agile Development methodology, as much as 70% of all development teams are now using Agile are using Scrum, or some home brewed hybrid version of Scrum (that should not be called Scrum at all). Does it follow that just because Scrum is the most popular that it makes it…
Why MS Excel & Word Are Not Suitable For Requirements Management
Traditionally, many software developers have used general-purpose tools such as MS Word and Excel to manage the requirements of whatever software products they were working on. In fact, a surprisingly high percentage of companies still stick to these solutions, despite their obvious disadvantages (which we’ll explore later in this post). While at first, it may…
Source Control Management Best Practices
Source Control Management (SCM) is more than just a tool for developers to use for collaboration in development, tools such as Git, Mercurial and SVN, which we have already written about extensively. Beyond tools SCM is also a set of best practices that can include the concept of a change lifecycle and a change request…
Why Is Business Process Management (BPM) Critical for IoT?
Business Process management (BPM) is a vital component of any device that has IoT connectivity. Its role in terms of the internet of things is to determine what is to be done with data received from other devices. With the exponential increase in the number of such devices available on the marketplace, the potential for…
Agile + ISO 26262: Adopting Agile in Automotive Development
With dozens or even hundreds of suppliers, various industry regulations to adhere to, and an immense volume of software code, automotive development processes are perhaps among the most complex lifecycles that companies face. There could be over 100 million lines of code in a modern car, the sheer volume of which necessitates practices to cut…
Internet of Things (IoT) Growth Forecast for 2016
Winter gives rise to analyst predictions for the following year, the most high profile of which are made by Gartner at their Annual Gartner Symposium, this year was no different, with many motivating facts and figures, predictions about the following year. Of particular interest is their prediction that there will be 6.4 billion connected things…
Adopting Agile & Maintaining Process Control in Safety-Critical Device Development
A lot of companies working in industries that are highly regulated by standards and guidelines (safety-critical industries, such as the medical, automotive and aviation sectors) still rely on the Waterfall/V-model development method when creating software for their end products. While this doesn’t allow them to take advantage of more modern Agile methods, they choose to…
A New Trend in Development: Migration Projects 2015
Anecdotal evidence from surveys suggests a steep rise in the number of software development migration projects in 2015; is this a new trend in development? Migration projects typically make good financial sense for companies that have already invested in proven application software and the stores of data they provide. This is true even if there…
Integrating ALM and PLM in Complex Product Development
Today’s complex products increasingly require the integration of hardware and software development processes, making ALM-PLM convergence one of the hot topics in the industry. Application and Product Lifecycle Management software platforms have been designed to support the development of software and hardware end products. However, they have evolved separately to suit the needs of these…
The Scaled Agile Framework SAFe Architecture
The Scaled Agile Framework and its architecture is the most popular method for scaling Agile for enterprise use. It builds upon Scrum, XP and Lean Agile development processes, but in addition provides SAFe architecture necessary to Scale Agile effectively. SAFe® differentiates between three different levels, the Team Level, Program Level and Portfolio Level and architecture…
Safety-Critical Software Development 101
Building software to be used in safety-critical environments (for example, software embedded in medical devices, automotive or aviation systems, railway software, etc) is different to “ordinary” software development. As human lives may be dependent on these systems, it is imperative that they operate reliably, without the risk of malfunction, over extended periods of time, under…
Compliance in Avionics Development: DO-178C & more
As is the case with medical devices, automotive systems, manufacturing equipment and various other sectors, the aviation industry is increasingly relying on software. Since aircrafts and avionics systems are prime examples of safety-critical equipment, it is no surprise that this rapid increase in the use of software in all kinds of airborne equipment has led…
DevOps Enterprise Guide
Do you hear the term DevOps every day but still struggle with understanding the complete meaning? Are you unsure about the benefits of DevOps and what features DevOps tools should have? If so, then our white paper titled DevOps Guide: Implementing Continuous Integration & Delivery is just the perfect resource for you. It includes the…
Driverless Cars: On the Road to Becoming Reality
Building an autonomous (driverless) car has entertained the imagination of automotive companies since the earliest days of automobiles. The idea has first popped up in a newspaper back in 1926, and has continued to haunt the dreams of automotive developers ever since. The emergence of reliably operating driverless cars is already dubbed the next revolution…
How to Build a Testing Strategy and Environment
The question of how to build a testing environment is dependent upon the test plan and within this plan the test strategy. This defines not only the testing approach and testing environment but also sets the role of software testers by defining what testing to do. The scope of the project testing strategy is defined…
DATATRAK Case Study: A Success Story of Traceability and Process Transparency
Most companies that choose to replace their set of single-point tools with an integrated ALM solution do so because they are facing certain well-defined problems. Common issues are the lack of process transparency, burdensome methods to ensure traceability, and difficult collaboration between teams and team members. Like many other companies, DATATRAK found a way to…
JavaForge to Shut Down on 31 March 2016
Our open-source platform JavaForge was started back in 2005 to support open-source development by providing free hosting, tools and services for various development projects. To date, JavaForge has 110,000 registered users taking advantage of our free project hosting, document management, wikis, forum, chat, issue tracking, as well as Git, Subversion and Mercurial integration. The technology…
Subversion (SVN): One Repository vs Many
A common question from our business clients is how to structure their projects with Subversion (SVN), whether to go with one repository or many. The quick answer is that it is purely a matter of access control and maintenance, however this answer is a rather simplistic one at best and it has a rather more…
Scaling Processes: Managing Multiple Teams & Development Streams
Keeping pace with the ever-increasing complexity of software products alone is a challenging task. However, most companies are working on more than one sophisticated product at any given time, each of which may combine hardware, software and even service components. Large companies today are also relying on multiple geographically dispersed teams and departments that contribute…
Embedded System Projects + Software Testing
Introduction to testing Embedded Software with codeBeamer ALM What’s the difference between testing in Embedded Software development and Application Development? Application Development is all about the user interface, whereas in Embedded software, what the user interface looks like to the user is way down the list of priorities. Since embedded software is for hardware, interfaces…
Medical Device Development: Process Safety Management
Software quality, safety and reliability are crucial for medical device development. There are some important requirements that should be considered if it comes to process safety. We need to establish traceability for all steps performed and for each intermediate step taken during development. We should be capable to trace what happened at a specific certain…
Service Desk: Incorporating Customer Feedback in Development
Whatever industry you’re developing software for, your ultimate goal is to listen to your customers, and create products that satisfy their expectations. Whether your end product is a piece of software embedded in passenger cars, or a yoga app for smartphones, you want to make sure that it does exactly what it’s supposed to do,…
Consumer Demand for IoT Networked Cars Escalates
Approximately 30 Million cars will be produced in the European Union and the United States in 2015, from an estimated total of 90+ Million produced world wide. Manufactures in Germany, Spain and France producing the most in the EU area. The United Kindom is the EU’s 4th largest producer by volume and is one country…
Compliance in Medical Device Development – IEC 62304, FDA Title 21 CFR Part 11, ISO 14971, IEC 60601 and more
Medical device development is increasingly reliant on software to enhance the functionality, operation, maintenance or user-friendliness of medical products, eventually making it easier and safer for patients and doctors to use them. However, this also adds complexity to the development of these safety-critical products. In the context of medical device development, software complexity equals risk.…
How to Manage Product Variants Efficiently?
Companies developing products for the automotive, engineering and electrical industries, among a variety of other markets, have to manage the increasing complexity of their products. Not only is this true because of new innovations and features (IoT, anyone?), but also because some markets are increasingly granular in terms of target groups. Companies in these fields…
ALM Software for Software Quality Assurance (SQA)
One of the biggest concerns of the CTO at any enterprise stepping into realm of software development, is how to ensure that they will get the features required within the final product. This is especially true for projects where functional safety is an issue; this would include mission critical software for medical devices, the automotive…
Compliance in Automotive Development – ISO 26262, IEC 61508, ASPICE, CMMI and more
Embedded electronics and software are more and more heavily used in modern road vehicles, increasing the complexity of development processes. In order to reduce or mitigate the risks introduced by this complexity, various automotive industry standards have been devised by regulatory bodies. These aim to enforce the use of adequate processes and hazard management methods…
Safety Critical System Development: Regulations and Compliance
The one thing that all safety critical systems have in common, no matter the intended industry, is that they are always heavily regulated and require certification against industry standards by the relevant governing body. Compliance requirements for a wide range of complex standards provides a similar set of challenges for business, that if incorrectly gauged…
Maturity Models + Automotive SPICE V3 (ASPICE)
Globalization has lead to the continual geographical redeployment of manufacturing facilities to lower cost business environments as manufacturers seek the ever elusive competitive edge. Product development has become more complex, with consumers demanding ever more advanced features, requiring a mix of embedded electronics and embedded software. Consequently products or services are built with a network of specialized companies…
Open DOORS to Streamlined Development with codeBeamer
IBM’s® Rational® DOORS® is usually implemented as part of an enterprise suite, making it the go-to legacy Requirements Management (RM) solution for some large companies. While DOORS® offers a range of features, considering other options is definitely a good idea, as your teams may benefit from the advanced capabilities provided by other RM or Application…
Scaling Agile in Safety-critical Systems Development for Regulated Markets
In our post last week, we have explored how medical device development companies are increasingly transitioning to Agile to be able to develop quality products in shorter time. For them, switching to Agile entails the challenge of matching the process transparency, traceability, and compliance with relevant medical standards that their Waterfall processes allowed them to…
Can Kanban be Scaled? How to Scale Kanban?
Kanban is designed for flexibility when compared to Scrum for example, which is considered less flexible because it follows a blueprint, a framework for adoption. Often how teams work can ’t be standardized across an organization, consequently Kanban is often a good fit, with processes adopted that are fit for purpose. Scrumban, a combination of…
DevOps and The Internet of Things (IoT)
With the emergence of Big Data and the Internet of things (IoT), the value of DevOps has become all too clear, breaking down the traditional barriers between Agile Development and Operations. This new interconnected world where business networks and their applications share data with, not only the increasingly connected, mobile end user, – providing products…
Using Agile in Medical Device Software Development
Software is increasingly used in all kinds of physical devices to expand the functionality of (or even completely replace) hardware components. This has been a trend in recent years across various industries, and is also the case with medical devices. Software enables the sophistication of even relatively simple devices such as insulin pumps, bringing new…
Tools for Agile Project Management
Agile Project Management can be used for a wide range of applications and industries such as construction, healthcare or automotive manufacture,although it is most often referred to with regards to software development. What all Agile Projects have in common is that they use iterative and incremental methods of design and build, and are of most…
Managing the Intertwined Lifecycles of Hardware, Software and Service Development
As covered by a previous blog post & white paper on the Intland website, the Internet of Things is completely reshaping the definition of product. We are now going to explore how this affects product developers, and how interconnected lifecycles can be managed. Read an excerpt of our latest piece of premium content below, or…
How To Choose The Perfect Application Lifecycle Management Solution
It’s no wonder that the adoption of Application Lifecycle Management software tools to streamline software development processes has been steadily rising over the past years. Increasing product complexity, the need to shorten time to market and to develop higher quality software, and fierce competition in several industries is forcing companies to adopt methods and tools…
Test Driven Development (TDD) in a Nutshell
The Agile concept of Test Driven Development (TDD) has stood the test of time, emerging from the shadows cast by the test-first programming concepts of XP from where it originated (with the release of Kent Beck’s Test Driven Development by Example in 2002). Much of its success can be attributed to its simplicity in concept,…
Application programming interface – API Testing (White Box Testing)
An interconnected world dependent upon proprietary business networks is dependent upon the ability to share data, the principle mechanism for doing so is the application programming interface, otherwise known as the API. Despite the clear importance of API testing, it is sorely neglected due to a lack of awareness of the business value. Business growth…
Introducing a New ALM Tool to Your Development Environment
To most readers of this blog, the benefits of Application Lifecycle Management (ALM) must be obvious by now. Even newcomers may have heard a thing or two about the increased efficiency, complete end-to-end traceability, process visibility and enhanced collaboration that ALM could bring. However, some still hesitate due to concerns about the presumed sacrifices in terms…
Git Repositories – GitHub – Git Confusion?
During the last 10 years, if you have been living in a developer bubble, for example working at a large software developer such as Microsoft or IBM, although you might have heard of git and gitHub you may not had the chance to work with git repositories. In the case of programmers working at Microsoft, programmers tend…
Custom Workflow Configurations in ALM
Rolling out a new piece of software doesn’t need to be a painful, disruptive experience – even if it’s an ALM solution used to support all your development processes. While rethinking your processes to optimize efficiency is usually a good idea, most development teams have their tried and tested workflows that they’d rather keep, whatever…
When and Why to use Continuous Testing
The purpose of Continuous testing and continuous integration is to enable continuous delivery, the end goal of which is to accelerate the delivery of high quality software. Continuous testing builds upon automated testing which enables teams to run a large number of tests, cost effectively within a short period of time. Continuous testing, as the…
Quality Assurance and Testing in Automotive Device Development
The automotive sector is a highly regulated industry, and for good reason: with millions of vehicles running on dirt roads and in the fast lanes of modern motorways across the globe, accidents are bound to happen. On such densely populated roads, safety is key. Quite naturally, those looking to drive have to pass driving exams,…
Less Agile Scrum – Project Management Framework
The Pragmatic Approach to Agile Adoption It is perhaps a little ironic and apt in relation to Agile and Scrum that LeSS is the abbreviation used for the Large Scale Scrum Framework, used for scaling Scrum for enterprise use. Many now consider Agile Scrum, or seperately, the two terms Agile and Scrum together as contradictory (especially…
Agile Test Management + Agile Test Manager
Do you need a Agile Test Manager for Your Agile Test Management? The position of Test Manager in the traditional sense is redundant when working within an Agile Development team. In Scrum, the most popular Agile method there is no position or role for the Test Manager. This is not to say that test management…
codeBeamer ALM’s Bidirectional JIRA® Integration
codeBeamer ALM’s bidirectional JIRA® integration provides data consistency and traceability throughout the lifecycle Development teams using several single-point tools in their internal processes often struggle with connecting these standalone solutions to allow them to manage the entire development lifecycle in an integrated manner. Due to its several integration points via REST API, codeBeamer ALM has…
How does DevOps help your business to grow?
Have you ever wondered how DevOps can support your business? Is DevOps only an IT support tool or is it more than that? What else is DevOps good for? Although there is no agreement on the definition of DevOps, with everyone using slightly different terminology to describe it, there is a working consensus of implementation. DevOps…
Risk Management in Automotive Development
The importance of managing risks in safety-critical industries such as the medical field, the automotive sector and other transport industries (railway, aviation etc) cannot be emphasized enough. The lives of human users may depend on such devices, so their safety and reliability is vital. Safety is a top concern for automotive manufacturers and developers of…
Scaling DevOps: What Features Should DevOps Tools have?
The growing trend of businesses integrating the disciplines and associated processes of Agile development and IT Operations (DevOps) has resulted in an increased demand for tools suitable for DevOps, – DevOps tools suitable for Scaling DevOps for Enterprise use. So what factors should be considered when assessing DevOps Tools? First thing to mention here is that…
Why Every Enterprise Should use ALM Software
All software fails eventually, it is just a question of when, and therefore it should be expected to fail. Is your business prepared for when the inevitable failure occurs? Most Enterprises have backup systems in place; however, these can fail too. The more complex a system is, the more likely it is to fail. In…
Bidirectional Requirements Traceability: Why Is It Such A Big Deal?
Industry blogs and media outlets the world over have been discussing the topic of traceability extensively for ages. Still, we’re seeing continuous interest in ensuring traceability. And for good reason: there’s no silver bullet solution to this problem that’s becoming more and more difficult with the increasing complexity of development lifecycles. What’s traceability? First off,…
A Scaled Agile Approach to Enterprise Architecture
Several recent articles by Jason Bloomberg on Forbes have put the spotlight on the division between enterprise architects and the Agile movement, and have highlighted the necessity of bringing these two sides together. Towards the end of his article titled Scaling Agile Software Development for Digital Transformation, Jason urges digital transformation professionals to choose their tools…
Achieving IEC 61508 Compliance with codeBeamer
Conforming with the rules set forth by industry standards is essential for companies operating in safety-critical industries to reduce the risks of malfunction or failure of their products. What’s more, proven compliance with certain standards is more and more often a mandatory requirement for companies bidding on safety-critical projects. One of the most important standards,…
What Separates the Best from the Rest: Agile Software Development Excellence
In an ideal world, the stakeholders would know what features they want in their product from day 1. Developers (Scrum Master) would know the cost of each feature in terms of time and effort and therefore be able to estimate cost correctly. A simple low risk formula for success. Unfortunately, the reality is very different…
Mitigating Risk: Outsourced Agile Development on a Fixed Price Project
Outsourced Software Development at Fixed Price with a variable scope is recipe for disaster for both owners and the software developer. Potential Problems Associated with Fixed Priced Projects. Out Sourced developers often do not speak up and expose issues simply because it complicates the work they are already doing thus avoiding immediate pain (human nature).…
Connecting UML and ALM in Software Engineering
Unified Modeling Language (UML) is a widely applied industry standard in software engineering that is used to model system architectures. To keep it simple, UML is a framework for visualizing system architecture as well as the entire development process, from requirements all the way to testing documentation. It is a set of rules and notations…
HFMEA & Risk Management in Medical Software Development
In one of our previous posts titled Quality Assurance, Testing and Compliance in Medical Device Development we have thoroughly explored the importance of safety and reliability regarding medical devices. We have also discussed the benefits of adequate QA processes, and how industry regulations and standards govern the requirements of both medical end products, and the…
Effective Agile Planning for Enterprise
Large Scale adoption of Agile is no longer a pipe dream but reality, with the recent economic crisis highlighting the need for business to be able to react to changing economic environments. Even greater pressure is applied on business from the need to meet the demands of emerging technologies and the parallel requirements to meet…
Continuous Delivery & DevOps in Practice
As those who have read our 2-part series on DevOps (click here for part 1, and here for part 2) already know, DevOps is a fairly recent IT approach that brings together the disciplines of development and operations, aligning their goals and weaving their processes together. Basically, DevOps brings the entire development-to-operations process together in one…
Why Upgrade from Waterfall to Evolutionary Development (EVO)
We often hear that Waterfall development cannot be iterative since it was not designed to be, built at a time before the internet and mobile applications, a world much slower than today, – a time when software requirements were unlikely to change. Despite this Waterfall Development is still widely used, but today we have a new kind of Waterfall,…
Scaling Agile in Large Enterprises: LeSS, DAD or SAFe®?
Due to its prosperity in the software industry, Agile no longer needs an introduction: in the past decade or so, seemingly everyone has been talking about this modern framework. Having recognized the success that small and mid-sized companies are realizing by using Agile, a growing number of large enterprises are also looking to adopt this framework.…
Implementing Agile Processes Within a Waterfall Project
One of the unstated requirements of Agile Adoption is to have the leadership onboard, however this is often not possible initially. Many large enterprises still use Waterfall Methodology, despite the obvious advantages of using the Agile Methodology. You might call it an Enterprise Waterfall legacy, where historically Waterfall has always (a very long time) been…
Quality Assurance, Testing and Compliance in Medical Device Development
Safety and reliability are two of the most important aspects when it comes to medical devices – quite naturally, since human lives may be dependent on them. As a consequence, ensuring the high quality of products used in the medical field is a top concern. Strict regulations and international standards specify the general requirements related…
Agile Management: Why Do Managers Resist Agile?
When Agile Development fails, the most sited reasons for failure are to do with the adoption of Agile and can be narrowed down more precisely to the failure of adoption at the managerial level. This often comes under the work cultural change umbrella and typically has symptoms the root cause of which can be broadly…
ROAM & Risk Management Under SAFe®
The importance of managing risks in your software projects need not be further emphasized. Even if you’re not working on safety critical products, risks have the potential to fundamentally derail your projects. With safety critical projects however, it is even more obvious that product (functional) risks mean a serious threat not only to your project’s…
How to Measure Agile Performance
One of biggest attractions of Agile Development is that it offers greater productivity whilst improving quality. The most popular version of Agile, Scrum is all about motivating teams with deadlines, putting the responsibility of pieces of work in the hands of individual programmers, thereby creating an element of ownership. Business loves the idea of greater…
Change and Configuration Management in a nutshell
The Features of Change and Configuration Management tools that enable Large enterprise to scale Agile development to multi-team environments are the features of distributed version control (DVCS) tools such as GIT or Mecurial and document management features. As tools for project management, you might think that this would fall under project management label, – and…
Why ALM Maturity is Key to Your Company’s Success
In previous posts on the Intland blog, we have thoroughly discussed How the Internet of Things is Changing the Definition of Product. In a nutshell, IoT connectivity enables products to offer never before seen services, unlocking great opportunities for companies. As always, opportunity also means a challenge. 1. Increasing product complexity Products are no…
DevOps and the Scaled Agile Framework (SAFe®)
The relationship between Agile and DevOps has been thoroughly discussed in our two-part series on DevOps (Part 1, Part 2). By now, you know that DevOps means the integration of the entire development lifecycle with the operations approach, to incorporate post-deployment aspects and to maintain customer focus throughout the process. DevOps means that development no longer…
Jeff Sutherland: Scrum @ Scale – Powering Up The Business
The effectiveness of Agile methods, especially Scrum, is no longer a matter of debate. Its efficiency is being confirmed day after day by an ever-growing number of users. Not only is it being used successfully by hundreds of companies in various industries, but for developers aiming to bid for US defense (DoD) projects, the use…
Why Quality Assurance (QA) Measures May Not Reassure the Customer
In larger projects, the discipline of Quality Assurance is necessary. It comprises of several roles including Software Quality Assurance Engineer (SQAE), Software Quality Analyst, and Process Consultant. Software quality assurance is frequently confused with software testing; the main difference between the two is that although software testing is critical to reducing errors, it often does…
Requirements Management in IoT-enabled Systems Development
In the weeks leading up to REConf 2015, requirements management is back in the focus of many industry experts and media outlets. In case last year’s media buzz about IoT wasn’t convincing enough, Embedded World 2015 has shown that connectivity-enabled embedded systems and the Internet of Things are topics of significant and rapidly increasing importance. What’s…
Requirements Management: Word + Excel for Documents Management
To the uninitiated the idea of using Word or Excel to manage documents might be concerning. After all we are all familiar with Microsoft Office to some degree or another and consequently many of us have Word or Excel files on our computers. Some of us are better than others at managing our file systems,…
How the Internet of Things is Changing the Definition of Product
The Internet of Things (IoT) has been one of the hottest topics in the tech world recently: we’re seeing wireless-enabled TVs, agricultural equipment and even refrigerators – but why is it such a big deal, and how does it affect product developers and manufacturers? Following up our talk on this year’s Embedded World, let’s investigate…
Hardware development with Waterfall/V-model
In most cases hardware components are still developed by Waterfall/V-model, while software components are developed by using an Agile approach. Let’s have a quick insight into the Waterfall/V-model. Basics of Waterfall/V-model development model The Waterfall methodology (V-model) is widely accepted as being the first comprehensive design methodology (framework) and has been in use since the…
Ovum Analyst White Paper: Intland codeBeamer Realizes the Benefits of ALM
UPDATE March 2016: Ovum have released their latest report on ALM solutions and vendors in March 2016. The report, titled Ovum Decision Matrix: Selecting an Application Lifecycle Management Solution, 2016–17 evaluates 12 vendors in the ALM space, and recognizes codeBeamer ALM as a market leader in the field of Application Lifecycle Management. Intland is proud…
DevOps Part 2: Methods, Practices and Tools
In Part 1 of our DevOps series (Agile Operations: The Evolution of DevOps), we traced back this fairly recent approach to its roots, identifying the factors that led to its emergence and increasing popularity, and found that DevOps has a lot to do with the Agile movement. In Part 2, we will look at some…
Agile Operations: The Evolution of DevOps
Even though it’s considered a buzzword that has been discussed extensively in recent years, it seems like even experts struggle with understanding the complete meaning, let alone the significance of DevOps. As the portmanteau of Development and Operations, DevOps denotes a modern approach to these converging roles (along with QA) that is commonly associated with many…
Dark Agile Manifesto: Is the Criticism of Agile Development Fact or Fiction?
An Anti -Agile movement has formed, its signature can be found on blog posts and comments across the net, downplaying the value of Agile, criticising aspects of its design. We look to the truth of the criticism found, specifically within the Anti-Agile Manifesto and the Dark Agile Manifesto. On the face of it, the Anti-Agile…
Implementing an Agile-Waterfall Hybrid Solution
In our series of blog posts exploring the use of the Agile-Waterfall hybrid approach, this article focuses on the benefits that combining these methodologies could yield. To learn more about the basics of using a Hybrid solution, see our earlier post titled Agile-Waterfall Hybrid: Cure for Failing Software Development?. Agile, the modern methodology focusing on developing software…
Why is Git better than Mercurial?
Which of the two main distributed version control systems (DVCS), Mecurial and GIT, is better and why? This is an old argument, with forum posts galore about which is better; with users of both arguing their case, however this argument never seems to be resolved. This is because the feature sets are so similar, and…
Lessons Learned from the Failure of Agile Development
There has been much written about the strengths of Agile Development and it is heavily promoted as a solution for software development woes. However, there are some high profile failures from which there is much to be learned. High profile failures such as the UK governments welfare reform project – Universal Credit, are so high profile and…
Facing Criticism: Is SAFe® the “Fast Food” of Agile?
Scaled Agile Framework (SAFe®), the standardized framework for the adoption of Lean and Agile practices in large enterprises, has had to face criticism from various sources, most importantly from famed experts such as Neil Killick (Agile and Lean thinker and trainer), Ken Schwaber (one of the founding fathers of Scrum and Agile), and Ron Jeffries (one of the…
Are you ScrumBUT? No excuses!
ScrumBUT teams have one common attitude, namely that they seem to be engaged in using Scrum… BUT… they have various excuses as to why some elements of the method have not been implemented. This approach can be a really risky for all concerned, from the Management’s, the Product Owner’s and the team perspective. The Agile…
Using Root Cause Analysis to Drive Process Improvement
RCA (Root Cause Analysis) is a deductive safety engineering method used to analyze a problem, identify its causes and the measures that could be taken to prevent it from occurring again (with this latter step, the method is extended to Root Cause Corrective Action, or RCCA). Originating from aeronautical engineering, this technique is applied in…
PLM+ALM: Millions of Product Recalls Without ALM?
We have seen that PLM (Product Lifecycle Management) and ALM (Application Lifecycle Management) solutions have grown apart from each other during recent years. Today’s products are more complex than ever. They often contain microchips, embedded systems and diverse mechanical components. Manufacturing products today often requires software and systems specifically built to manage software and as a…
JavaForge Earns a Place in Top 45 List of Source Code Repository Hosts
Christmas and New Year’s Eve weren’t the only two events last December that we celebrated: we’re proud to announce that JavaForge has earned a place on ProfitBricks’ list of the 45 Top Source Code Repository Hosts! ProfitBricks, an infrastructure as a service (IaaS) cloud provider based in the US, has assembled an end-of-the-year list of the…
Convenience and Security: Single Sign-on in codeBeamer
Single sign-on (SSO) is a way to control access to multiple independent pieces of software. Basically, SSO lets you use separate tools that require user authorization (logging in with a username and password) without having to sign in to each of them: SSO takes care of the user authorization process, so you only have to…
Agile-Waterfall Hybrid: Cure for Failing Software Development?
Can Agile Development, the method that enables teams of various disciplines to develop software simultaneously, and continuously revise all aspects of development, be harmful for your business? Can the Agile-Waterfall Hybrid method help you repair damage done by Agile? Agile, the software development method that enables teams to break down their development into iterations to…
Complete integrability: codeBeamer with REST API
Users don’t only love codeBeamer because it’s a complete, fully integrated end-to-end ALM tool that offers great functionality at affordable prices. They also love it because it’s a flexible system that fits snugly into their preexisting workflows. codeBeamer itself can be configured to suit the needs of any organization, but if that wouldn’t be enough,…
How to Scale Scrum Effectively
When looking for guides and strategies for Scaling Frameworks for Enterprise use, Scaling Scrum is by far the most commonly talked about with numerous Enterprise adoption case studies documenting the benefits. These case studies usually promote one or another of a growing number of strategies for Scaling Scrum. Despite Scrums popularity there seems to be…
Is there a single ALM solution that covers everything for the automotive industry?
Working with companies that produce components for the automotive industry we learnt that they often face the challenge to be compliant with certain standards and deal with the exchange of requirements to achieve the required SPICE level. Working with OEM’s is not always easy for them while they usually send requirements in PDF format that can…
Risk Management in Agile and Waterfall Environments
Risks are inevitable in your software development lifecycle. Regardless of the specifics of your projects and whether you are using a Waterfall or Agile method, your team is sure to face some unforeseen or less expected issues during development. Preparing for these risks is essential in ensuring your project’s success and avoiding overhead. codeBeamer’s…
Tips and Tricks to Make the Most of Your Retrospectives
Retrospectives are short meetings held by project teams (not necessarily, but more often than not, working under the Agile framework) at the end of each project or process, whether it’s just an iteration or an entire release. The aim of retrospectives (or “retros”) is to discuss the reasons of success and the issues experienced during…
Roadblocks to Enterprise Scrum Adoption
In Part 1 of our Enterprise Scrum Series, entitled ’How to Adopt Scrum at Enterprise Level’, we talked about the additional Roles and Responsibilities required when scaling up Scrum for Enterprise use. The Enterprise Scrum Master has a difficult job requiring a global (in the enterprise sense) perspective. With this in mind, and to facilitate…
How to Adopt Scrum at Enterprise Level
Is Scrum an Agile framework with simple rules? Can we use Scrum for multi-team, multi-location and multi-project environment? What are the roles and responsibilities within companies using Scrum? Since 1999, we have pioneered the use of Agile from small teams to large enterprises with many teams. From our considerable experience we have established what works…
How to Manage Conflict in an Agile Environment with PM Tools?
The benefits of using Application Lifecycle Management tools are diverse and in some cases, a versatile tool can help out in areas you wouldn’t expect. Conflict management is one such topic: this article argues and explains how using an advanced ALM software with built-in Project Management (PM) functionality could be helpful in resolving conflicts in…
The First Step to Agile Requirements Change Management
We often hear from Executives that the “Agile Methodology is a software development model for managing changing requirements” or perhaps just “changing requirements”. However if we go a little deeper and ask about their understanding of changing requirements or how to manage changing requirements, then we would not expect to get such a concise answer.…
How to Overcome Challenges of Effort Estimation in Software Development Projects?
Software development project managers won’t have to be reminded of the challenges of effort estimation. Despite the importance of the estimation process in project planning, trying to value the costs and efforts of software development projects beforehand is still an extremely difficult task, and overruns are not unheard of. However, it’s obvious that improving the…
Traceability Browser: How To Efficiently Manage Dependencies Throughout the SDLC?
Managing dependencies in the application lifecycle is a difficult task. There may be numerous relationships between several types of artifacts in trackers, and in complex projects, hundreds or thousands of dependency relations may need to be managed. With bigger projects, the sheer volume of data renders issue management difficult to handle. In structures as complex…
Efficient Project Management with the Project Browser
Project managers probably won’t have to be introduced to the difficulties of managing multiple parallel software development projects. From defining user stories and translating them to requirements through all the processes that pave the way to testing the piece of software, managing a single project can be challenging enough in itself. The more projects you’re…
The Change Management Role of the PMO in Large Enterprise
The role of the PMO (Project Management Office) is responsible for enterprise program and portfolio cost management, and training related to project management. It is for this reason that the PMO is vital for change management and facilitating Agile adoption throughout the enterprise. Historically the PMO has taken a Waterfall style approach to project management, a…
Capability Maturity Model Integration (CMMI) Achievement Quick and Lean with codeBeamer!
Capability Maturity Model Integration (CMMI ) achievement quick and lean with code Beamer! CMMI for Development at Level 2 and 3 can be achieved by SMEs easily. Capability Maturity Model Integration (CMMI) is a process improvement and appraisal program implemented by Carnegie Mellon University. The certified level of Capability Maturity is required by many US and European customers especially in government or elsewhere in…
How To Increase Transparency in Your Agile Planning Processes?
Flexibility and responding to change are two of the substantial values of the Agile approach, as proclaimed by the principles stated in the Agile Manifesto (‘responding to change over following a plan’). Basically, this flexibility is what adds the ‘agility’ to Agile, and codeBeamer is an effective solution to implement those values in real-life processes. That said,…
Scrum, Scrumban and Extreme Programming
We have talked alot about Scrum, Scrumban and Agile Software Development methodologies lately but less about Extreme Programming. What are the similarities to Scrum? There is much confusion about Extreme Programming in that it is often thought of as an alternative to Scrum, Scrumban or Kanban Agile methodologies. Of course XP is most certainly an…
Benefits of Applying an Appropriate Risk Management Lifecycle
Risk management is especially important for safety critical industries such as healthcare (with the design and manufacturing of medical devices), aviation & aircrafts, transportation, as well as the automotive industry due to the risks associated with the design of cars. Increasing complexity of such safety critical products increases risk for manufacturers as serious injuries or death could…
Buying ALM Software – Does it provide Collaborative Lifecycle Management?
The idea of providing a collaborative working environment for all those personnel collaborating on application development projects is nothing new since the whole Agile Methodology, is based on collaborative working. Many of the Agile software solutions available are relatively straight forward, with core modules providing first and foremost project management capability with documents management, and…
Embedded Software Development Differs from Enterprise Applications
Nowadays chips, tags and applications are all around us, embedded into cars, medical devices and home appliances, all to ensure a more comfortable life. As users we enjoy the increased functionality and how it makes our lives easier, providing entertainment possibilities, power saving features or even features that can save lives. Behind the scenes, these…
Why Switch from SVN to GIT and DVCS?
…and why the compromise in functionality is no longer necessary. There is a lack of understandable information on the benefits of GIT and Distributed Version Control (DVCS) over Version Control with Apache Subversion (SVN). While there are always those happy with the features of SVN, this is usually where the more advanced features of GIT…
The Needs that Version Control Systems Serve
Version control systems are divided into two groups: “centralized” and “distributed”. Centralized Version Control Systems (CVCSs) and Distributed Version Control Systems (DVCSs) serve different needs. Comparing Centralized Version Control Systems to Distributed Version Control Systems is like comparing hammers and screwdrivers. Centralized Version Control Systems (CVCSs): The One True Source Centralized Version Control Systems (CVCSs)…
German Automotive Inventions: The Secret of Their success?
It’s Summer time and hot, many people are on holiday or are planning to go on holiday soon, the less lucky are already returning from holiday. During holidays you have time to read funny stories on entertaining websites they are not strictly related to your work. I was reading a great website during my holiday…
Agile Release Planning in a Nutshell
Initial release planning determines what product requirements listed in the product backlog should be prioritized and entered into the release backlog. Task estimation and development tasks are entirely the responsibility of the developers whereas the feature prioritization is the decision of the customer. In combination it is these decisions that determine which features will be…
Building a Case for Requirements Management Investment
Convincing business leaders of the need for investment in a Requirements Management Software or a more comprehensive ALM Software Solution is not an easy task and this is despite the overwhelming evidence of its value. Key to success is to identify the economic benefits of improved requirements management for the business model in question and…
The Benefits of Traceability Within the Application Development Lifecycle
Traceability as a phrase is used across many industries for example, within Supply Chain Management where transparency on processes, and ability of accurate tracking of changes is essential. In the software development lifecycle (SDLC) traceability primarily means the traceability of requirements throughout application development, ensuring that the delivered software fulfills all requirements and therefore prevent…
Industry 4.0 – Automation, Electronics Governed by Software Is the Future Set for ALM Solutions?
The new buzzword for industry in Germany is Industry 4.0. This term is used for Germany’s high tech strategy, subtitled “the success of the German economic performance”. Deutsche Bank recently published a research report with the title “Upgrading Germany’s industrial capabilities on the horizon”. The report begins with the fact that Germany has been and will remain…
Success with Agile and Kanban
Adaptability and Experience are key to success with Agile and Kanban. In a survey among experts carried out by Intland Software, the following question was asked. How much depends on a team experience and adaptability in achieving efficiency and higher productivity with Scrum or Kanban? One of the commenter suggested the question be tackled in two parts:…
What is Agile Requirements Management?
Historically, to software developers the idea of Requirements Management is considered as necessary administration, required documentation, a painful process, traditionally done at the beginning of any software development project and preferably completed as soon as possible and out of the way, allowing developers do what they prefer to do, the development work. The realization that…
A Blended Agile Methodology Combines Agile with an Alternative
The term Blended Agile can be used interchangeably with Hybrid Agile and is used for scenarios where companies merge Agile with a non Agile, traditional development model. However, once an Agile blend is adopted, the question always remains as to when or if they should to go further and switch to pure Agile alone. Compared to traditional…
7 Tips to be More Efficient in Requirements Management
In 2014 Intland Software executed a survey among its clients and partners to collect feedback regarding Maturity levels of Requirements Engineering. Based on an analysis of responses, Intland gives 7 tips for requirements engineers and managers on how to increase efficiency and solve the most common problems of software requirements management. 1. Integrate the evaluation of requirements quality…
Kanban for IT Operations
Issue management, tickets on Kanban with escalation status IT Operations teams have to manage several parallel IT applications internally within the enterprise, or alternatively by providing IT application management services to external customers (ISPs). The main issue for those teams that have an easy to use monitoring and controlling system for issue tracking, is how to…
Scrumban: Better than Scrum or Kanban?
Scumban = Prescriptive Qualities of Scum + Continuous improvement of Kanban. Choosing between Scrum or Kanban is not an either / or question, there is a best of both option known as Scrumban. So what features of Scrum and Kanban are kept in Scrumban and why? Individually Scrum is more productive, so why use any part…
Maturity Levels of Requirements Engineering
Requirements Management and Requirements Engineering have a vital role in the development process. Requirements are the starting point of all projects, since they define what features should be in the product. The importance of Requirements Management and Requirements Engineering has increased significantly in the past few years to minimize and eliminate potential failures of the…
Is It Realistic ? – Continuous Improvement with Kanban
Kanban was originally implemented in production, but today it is widely used in other business areas including software development where its benefits have been realized improving efficiency and productivity. Kanban is based on the principles of a pull system, pioneered in Lean manufacturing. Lean thinking helps to refine and improve development in areas such as process flow,…
Adopting Requirements Management Tool
Work Culture is essential when adopting a new Requirements Management tool. Every enterprise already has systems or mechanisms in place to manage documentation, this includes the creation, review, approval, storage and distribution of, and the subsequent modification of documentation. The very idea of updating documentation handling suggests that there should be an improvement and simplification…
How Requirements Management Increases Efficiency and Revenue
Requirements Management is often described as a solution that helps software development teams to define and elaborate requirements; – with other words Requirements Management provides answers to the question “why” that every project starts with. The answers that Requirements Management provides are vital since they determine the goals and the future development processes of our projects.…
Requirements Management is a key to success in the medical industry
Requirements Management is key to success in many industries, however it is even more so the case with the medical industry. This is due to the exponentially growing complexity of medical devices, with many of the medical devices produced today applying high technology including: nanotechnology, advance electromechanical and robotics elements. These medical devices all have…
Benefits of Requirements Management
A Requirements Management solution is vital to translate and transform business needs into products. Before buying a Requirements Management tool you should analyze your working environment to determine your tool requirements, it is important to note and accept that to make a tool, and maintain it – is far harder and expensive than it is to…
Every Software Development Failure is Requirements Management Related
Regardless of errors made during Software Development, the final failure of an entire project is a Requirements Management failure. Failure is a either a final product that does not meet expectations (does not meet clients requirements – a failure of requirements management) or the cancellation of a project due to escalating costs, usually the direct…
Managing Complexity – Embedded Software Industry Has No Other Choice!
Nowadays, the real added value of engineered products is the embedded software. Software development complexity is a new experience in the engineered product world. Businesses that were quick to adapt have gained a clear advantage over competitors, however it is not too late for the rest. What does complexity mean in the embedded industry? Complexity…
When-Why-How to use the Hybrid model
Plan with Waterfall, execute with Agile, and speed up the whole process. Hybrid model is mentioned as a marriage of Agile and Waterfall methods. At the first look it might seem that these two methods are fundamentally so different that they could not possibly used together within in the same project. Although there are fundamental…
Big Data: A False Hope or Real Value to Business?
The Internet of Things is all about high technology gadgets, connecting the real world to the digital world through sensory data, – the demand for such products is driving the exponential growth of structured and unstructured data – Big Data. According to Mark Beyer at Gartner Symposium “the total volume of data is growing at…
How to use Story Points? – Get Insight Into the Practice
There are always discussions about how to use Story points to compare or measure performance. Is it better than effort based performance evaluation or not? Can it replace effort based performance management or not? In a recent blog I demonstrated the practice of using Story points for comparing and measuring performance. Simply put, using Story…
Kanban Techniques and Bubble Charts in Demand Management
Demand Management Systems are on the front end of Project Management or Project Portfolio Management. Therefore, they are usually the first automated, workflow based solution that goes into the business value chain. Demand Management Systems are focused on demand – capturing ideas and managing the evaluation and approval process by providing support rating, vote ranking…
Scrum + Kanban = Scrumban
What are the benefits of Scrumban + What Kind of Work is Agile Scrumban Best Suited For? The Agile Scrumban approach combines the use of Scrum and Kanban and is commonly used in development and maintenance projects. It contains the best features of both methods with the fundamental elements of Scrum’s Agile working in combination…
Key Reasons to Implement Scrum Project Management Software
Scrum is an Agile Project Management framework that is often used for software development for managing projects and the development of applications and software products. Where software development is concerned, Scrum helps teams to complete the most valuable work to create a potentially deliverable product at the end of the project. Scrum Project Management software also…
Understanding Software Development and Application Lifecycle Management (ALM)
codeBeamer ALM software is the Orchestra of ALM software solutions in that it provides a holistic approach to Enterprise software development. In a musical orchestra a conductor co-ordinates groups of professional musicians who play in unison, separated by section (brass for example) and specialty, – the type of instrument (such as trumpet). In the world…
ROI elements of requirements management tools
Requirements Management tools can increase staff productivity, decrease operation costs which leads to better sales performance. Those are general statements but let’s look at the ROI elements of Requirements Management tools. How Can Requirements Management Tool Pay for Itself at Your Company? Return On Investment (ROI) is a popular method of measuring the success of…
Increase Test Efficiency with Parametrization
In advanced Test Management solutions, parametrized testing supports the re-use of test cases and the importing or defining of test parameters for test runs with many different parameters. Parameters are attributes with different values that describe the live environment. Without parametrization, users need to replicate test cases with each and all parameters, which requires a…
Agile-Waterfall Hybrid Requirements
Requirements Management solutions enable companies to define and elaborate requirements and manage them throughout the development lifecycle and testing phases. Requirements are usually „owned” by clients and are typically determined by the marketplace, an external force constantly changing along with customer expectations. Since market demands and customers expectations change rapidly these days; requirements and requirements…
Webinar Summary: Demand Management, Requirements Management, and DevOps
Our latest webinar on handling Demand Management, Requirements Management, and DevOps with codeBeamer ALM software, addressed the core issue of Demand Management within the software development life cycle, from the initial concept to realization.We introduced participants to the importance of managing demand effectively for Requirements Management to be successful, more specifically how to define…
Kanban: Comprehensive Collaborative Task Management Tools
Kanban is a very popular for collaborative task management and the Kanban Board is widely used task Management tool in all areas of business, including front and back office activities. The Kanban method comes from production, and was first deployed in project management, then later many other areas of business explored the added value of Kanban…
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Vintage ALM
Building an Agile Marketing Team
The shift towards social media communication channels and user generated content has created a challenge for marketing professionals, how to respond quickly enough to this trend and generate sufficient relevant content. Can Agility help marketing teams to handle this challenge? Download our case study and learn how we built a successful agile marketing team. Building an…
How ALM Supports Risk Management?
Risk Management is a top priority in the medical and automotive industry, where malfunctions in software can cause recalls and serious injuries or death of users. Software embedded in cars and medical devices is one of the most critical parts of functional safety. Application Lifecycle Management tools therefore has to support risk management and measurement, risk…
ALM Software + Automotive Suppliers – Avoid Recalls
Are You Ready for the Autonomous Car? Gear up with ALM Software for Automotive Suppliers to avoid recalls and software failures. The Autonomous Car, otherwise known as a Driverless Car or Self-driving car will be in mass production by 2020, – that is if Google has its way. At the beginning of 2013, Anthony Levandowsky,…
Mature enough for requirements re-use?
Requirements Engineering is a process that aims to define, document and maintain software requirements along the entire application development lifecycle. When working with the Waterfall method, it is usually done at the beginning of the development, whereas with Agile method requirements’ definition and subsequent changes are continuously occurring throughout the incremental development process. Requirements re-use…
Agile is More than Just a Software Development Methodology
To ’be Agile’ in business is to be able to react to the unexpected, to be able to adapt to a changing market environment and respond to consumers needs quickly. This also applies to software development. The Agile software development processes used today address not only the needs of developers and development but also can…
Why + When to use Kanban in Software Development?
Kanban as a method has its roots in production and is an important element of both Kaizen and Lean production. Kanban is focused on the pull strategy, with resources allocated based on where and when they are needed to support just-in-time delivery. But how can Kanban be applied in software development and what are the…
codeBeamer ALM: Easy Export and Import from Microsoft Word and Excel
Today we can choose from a wide range of ALM solutions to manage the entire application lifecycle. However, there are not many ALM solutions on the market that offer all of the important modules and functions fully integrated in a single ALM solution, and fewer still from a single provider. No third party plugins and…
Feedback: Agile Practices in the embedded industry
At Embedded World 2014 in Nuremberg we not only exhibited but collected useful feedback from people about their use of Agile practices. We asked the embedded industry to share their views about how Agile increases productivity and reduces time to market and about version control system and what importance the different modules (Requirements Management, Software…
Success at Embedded World 2014! – Embedded Solutions
Intland Software demonstrates codeBeamer ALM at Embedded World 2014 We exhibited at embedded world 2014, the largest tradeshow in Germany dedicated to embedded solutions. Thousands of exhibitors and visitors attended the expo that took place between 25th until 27th February in Nuremberg.
Being Agile: Switching from Scrum to Kanban
When companies go Agile for the first time they tend to adopt Scrum. For enterprise the key benefit of using Scrum in software development projects is to be flexible enough to manage changing requirements and develop better products faster. Scrum enables teams to package the development work into short periods called sprints and include the…
Our Experience at AgileMed + AgileCars
Intland Software exhibited and introduced codeBeamer Medical ALM solution at the two days conference and exhibition AgileMed + AgileCar in Munich 19-20 February 2014. The two day conference was dedicated to discussion about Agile practices and to share experiences of the medical and automotive industries. It was nice to see hundreds of experts from both…
Improve Your Scrum Meeting, 15 Minutes to Heaven
Since Agile and Scrum revolutionized the software development, the daily Scrum meeting has become a ritual in the lives of many teams. Daily Scrum meetings should be organized to energize and motivate the team. You might think it is easy to organize a Scrum meeting, however there are several common problems that often arise during…
AgileMed 2014 – Dedicated to Medical Device Development
The Medical industry is highly regulated with standards to manage risk and ensure quality and safety of equipment and thereby provide the highest level of patient safety. Medical Device development teams are faced with increased software complexity today when developing high quality devices. AgileMed, the conference dedicated to Agility in Medical Device Development, was a…
Track Your Agile Project: Burndown Chart, Devil in the Details
The Agile Manifesto was introduced in 2001 and since then Agile software development, or let’s call it the “Agile Movement” has received a lot of attention, growing year on year. According to the 7th Annual State of Agile Development Survey, more than 84% of the companies surveyed had adopted Agile for software development. One of…
GDP Growth Generated By Technology Innovation
Learn more about the industrial internet, the new turbines of sustainable growth.
Industrial Internet: New turbines of sustainable growth
“Internet of Things,” – IoT is the buzz word of the last few years in innovation and technology research. IoT is focused on intelligent devices, equipped with RFID tags, wireless sensors connected via wireless network, or over the internet. Understanding how it effects industries and ensures economic growth is essential in the new era of…
Agile for small and giants
Is Agile better fit for fast growing, small development companies or is it for software giants? The answer is of course both, but implementation happens differently. In the case of Spotify it seems that successful implementation of Agile lead to quick and manageable growth. Scrum is mentioned as the key for success in competition with technology giants…
Quick Insight into Managing Hybrid Software Development Methods
The purpose of adopting a hybrid software development approach is to create a more effective, efficient method of software development. Hybrid software development approach might be a solution for companies that have multiple teams using different methodologies for different purposes. Unfortunately there is no one single methodology that is best for all situations. Agile-Waterfall Hybrid:…
How ALM escalation management feature supports SLAs
The ITIL – ISO 20000 standard describes all the procedures that must be in place for highly predictable, reliable IT service provision. ITIL is usually referred to as a robust, but complicated standard that requires a lot of training and implementation effort. Regardless of how the ITIL ISO 20000 is viewed, this standard is required…
Challenges of Development and IT Operations in Aviation
Airlines and the aviation industry as a whole are heavily reliant on large scale, robust, mission – critical applications. Fierce competition among national airlines, charter companies and cheap carriers has resulted in extreme cost reduction pressure on all areas of airline operations including IT. Although cost cutting is a must, both safety and security still remain…
How DevOps Makes Companies More Agile
Development and Operation are separate departments in many medium and large organizations. Development is driven by customer requests, whereas Operation is driven by revenue and IT cost efficiency. Without constant collaboration between Development and IT Operations, continuous delivery can become impossible to maintain resulting in system failure. The IT Operations team is responsible for providing…
How to implement the Agile-Waterfall Hybrid | V-model vs Waterfall
The Agile-Waterfall Hybrid model is most commonly associated with product development when product is constituted by hardware and software parts. In this case the hardware components are developed by the traditional Waterfall/V-Model approach, and software development teams are using Agile/Scrum. Ask what is right for your business and compare, V-model vs Waterfall Processes How should…
Are You Agile, or Are You an Agile Slave
We are surrounded with military conflicts; natural disasters and a global financial crisis. These are just a few examples of events that can have a huge impact on business. To be Agile is to be able to adapt to a changing business environment. Companies that work in a constantly changing environment can’t neglect “Agile working”…
Why Requirements Management Tools are Vital for Software Development?
What is the most frequent cause of failures in software development? It’s the lack of definition and change management of requirements. This is what causes most of the catastrophes experienced in software development. Most IT practitioners are aware of this, but achieving a well-managed system of requirements is difficult. The most common cause of requirements management failures is the inadequate…
IEC 62304 compliance with codeBeamer ALM
Customized development support tool for Medical Software Development Intland presenting at AgileMed 2014 – 19th February Munich Intland developed a project template for Medical Devices Producers, to support the embedded software development process by customized ALM functionality. IEC 62304 standard requirements can be fully cover by codeBeamer medical ALM. codeBeamer Medical ALM contains specific medical trackers for requirements…
ALM support for Intelligent Transport Systems Complexity is growing!
Intelligent Transportation Systems solution addresses the challenges associated with planning, development, deployment, and lifecycle management of transportation software and solutions. Project teams develop and deploy their software successfully when they manage requirements, design, changes, quality assurance, operations with the traceability and are compliant with the standards (eg. ISO 26262) of the transportation industry. The increased…
Agile ALM: Slash Administration for Software Developers
Software development was always difficult and risky for business; however the ability to manage risk and avoid potential failures before they arise is greater than ever before. When working with Waterfall, teams collect product requirements before the development process and they often can’t adapt to changed requirements as quickly as they should. It can result…
Agile vs. Waterfall – Agile won the game?
Statement: „Agile projects are successful three times more often than non-agile projects, according to the CHAOS report from the Standish Group.“ The statistics define success, when software development projects are implemented within the given timeframe, on-budget and with the requested features. Does it mean that agile methods are the universal key to success? Is Agile better than Waterfall?…
My Agile Marketing Manifesto
3 months ago, when we started to use Scrum in marketing, I set up my agile marketing manifesto after reading many gurus’ recommendations: Short time planning Rapid iterations Test/Do/Change Performance I expected quickly tangible results, full transparency, having a happy and motivated team. My recommendations to other “agile marketers”: Apply an agile support tool! With…
Medical Device ALM + PLM integration
Life expectancy is continually increasing and due to general wear and tear throughout life more people require implants. The demand for implants is greater than ever before and it drives the healthcare industry to find new solution to manufacture individual (shaped to fit) and affordable implants. In the past the manufacturers were unlikely to produce…
Benefits of Scaling Agility
Dean Leffingwell released the Scaled Agile Framework® (SAFe®) in 2012 as a publicly available framework for implementing Lean|Agile practices at enterprise scale. Agile methods are widely applied in software development at the team level, SAFe® defines how to take Agile principles above team level into program and portfolio level. The main objective of SAFe® is…
Software Revolution: Integrated Solutions for Smart Production
After steam engine and mechanization, the assembly line of Henry Ford and the revolution of the first computers, the 4th Industry Revolution called “cyber-physical systems” (CPS) is on the corner. CPS is about merging the physical world with the virtual one and in which embedded hardware and software systems play an important role. Companies that…
Agile Software Development: The Future of the Healthcare Industry
Healthcare is a complex industry and healthcare organizations often face great pressure to meet regulatory and data management requirements. According to International Data Corporation (IDC) the total amount of data has grown to 2.7 billion terabytes in 2012. The growth of data volumes is unlikely to slow down in the future and it brings various…
ALM in the Cloud is Great for Agile Development
Fast changing requirements and expectations “push” companies to find ways to increase revenues and decrease the costs of software development. Agile development has been around for more than a decade since at its core it is designed for changing requirements. Agile software development has been adopted by most software developers to some degree to improve…
codeBeamer Medical ALM Supports IEC 62304
The engineering of medical devices requires compliance with intentional standards. Medical devices often contain software-controlled applications, the failure of which to function correctly could result in death or serious injury to the patient treated by them. Despite this increased danger, medical software standards still continue to reflect only the rigor of low-risk applications with potentially…
Agile-Waterfall Hybrid: Smart Approach or Terrible Solution?
Project managers often face long development cycles, constantly changing priorities that disrupt the product development process, and consequently, a final product that does not meet expectations. Traditional project management methodologies are often blamed for being unable to adapt to the changes which often makes testing products or changing alterations quite impossible. An Agile approach is often…
ALM for traceability + ISO 16949 and Automotive SPICE standards
Automotive SPICE compliance is required along the automotive supply chain. The standard covers all aspects of software development quality, and requires full traceability throughout the application lifecycle. At large embedded software providers, developers need the proper support tools are required to implement and maintain their standardized procedures and are necessary to produce high quality automotive…
Scaled Agile Framework (SAFe®) in a nutshell
In the early days, Agile development was used for pilot projects at the enterprise level. Developers worked in small teams experimenting with making “lean and Agile” methods work in their environment. The pioneers noted what worked and what didn’t, and went on to develop various frameworks and strategies for scaled Agile adoption. Scaled Agile adoption by enterprises…
PLM or ALM, who will grow faster?
Embedded systems are one of the fastest growing technology areas in the world today. Cars, aircrafts, medical devices are equipped with software applications, providing more features for comfort and safety. A significant part of these applications are mission critical, especially in healthcare and aviation industries. Software for industrial products require even more complexity, the increasing…
ALM for Agile Marketers
Do you feel that you are an agile marketer? Below I highlight some similarities between how software development and marketing teams work. You might find these insights to be true for your own teams as well and help you identify if your team are agile working or not. My statements are in reflection upon reading…
Kanban Board: Good or Bad for Agile Creativity and Efficiency
Agile is all about “Individuals and interactions over processes and tools” just as the Agile Manifesto describes. We believe it is important to give creative people Autonomy-Mastery-Purpose as was described by Daniel Pink. Teams often see Kanban board (Agile Planning board) as a “necessary evil”. They consider it as an administration tool instead of “an…
Agile Adoption by Enterprises is Ramping Up
Agile is used widely by software developers’ and Scrum teams for more than a decade. Now Agile which is in an alternative to Waterfall seems to be the “new standard’ for enterprises. Today more and more enterprises are realizing the benefits of Agile and the implementation of Agile is ramping up; – especially in the…
What Are the Main Benefits of Using Scrum?
Benefits of Using Scrum: Agile Scrum Benefits Overview Scrum certified trainer Kenny Rubin, author of the best-selling book entitled “Essential Scrum: A Practical Guide to the Most Popular Agile Process” published his blog post highlighting the main benefits of using Scrum method. Kenny highlighted the main benefits of using Scrum processes and tools in development, which means…
Apply Agile Principles in Marketing
I’m in marketing. I recognized that SCRUM is not only for software development project managers. I’m also using it. Do you have a similar experience? I’m a coordinator of a small marketing and business development team. Initially, when I first met with SCRUM methodology I was sure it was only applicable for software development. The…
Issues that Demand Management Solutions Solve
The new version of codeBeamer has extended features focusing on demand management. Before designing a support tool for demand management, it’s important to define the critical issues throughout the demand management lifecycle. Intland collected the following issues that usually need to be tackled by a demand management tool and are necessary to support both demand…