Information Technology Reference
In-Depth Information
the same time, your particular needs will dictate which particular tools from which
vendor should be selected. One more important angle is that you should select tools
that are familiar to your team so that each tool can be effectively used by everyone
on the team. This will also reduce training needs for learning new tools.
...
Methodology Selection
There has been a lot of work on defining and refining software project manage-
ment methodologies so that productivity, efficiency, and quality can be improved
in software projects. In this respect some of the pioneering work has been done by
the Software Engineering Institute at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh,
Pennsylvania. They introduced Capability Maturity Model standards for software
project processes for the entire software development life cycle (SDLC). These process
improvement techniques have helped software development processes mature signif-
icantly and thus have helped to produce software systems with excellent quality.
But these standards have never touched upon processes that are used in software
testing. For some time now, effort has been made to establish a similar standard for
testing. It is currently known as the software testing life cycle (STLC). Here paral-
lel and similar processes are defined compared to SDLC. Using it, organizations
can improve upon efficiency and quality of the software.
... Sample Project
A sample project is described here. Names of customer and testing service provider
have been changed to protect their identities.
The client Super Nova Corporation is engaged in developing software appli-
cations for retailers, manufacturers, logistics service providers, and distributors.
Using their application, clients could plan, execute, and monitor their entire sup-
ply chain systems in real time. Some of the major features of the system include
appointment scheduling of trucks for delivery and receiving, yard management,
warehouse management, transportation management, GPS integration for track-
ing of in-transit trucks in real time, truck load planning, route optimization, 3PL
service provider management, inventory management, inventory visibility across
the entire supply chain, forecasting, automatic order generation, order manage-
ment, supplier management, cross-docking, vendor-managed inventory, drop
shipment, individual calendars for all entities, and so on. For government regula-
tion compliance as well as for business use, audit trail features maintain a history
of all transactions.
Their application is being used by major U.S. and European companies as well
as by some government departments. Using their application, organizations are able
to manage their distribution centers, transportation of goods, retail outlets, and so
