Meryl's Notes Blog

Many times in the past, I’ve researched for process improvement information as part of my day job as well as resources for writing articles. I can’t believe I didn’t come across these two valuable sites sooner: CrossTalk whose mission is to “encourage the engineering development of software in order to improve the reliability, maintainability, and responsiveness of our war fighting capability and to inform, and educate readers on up-to-date policy decisions and new software engineering technologies.” It has articles about estimating for Web projects and recommended practices for gathering requirements. Only complaint: frames. I can’t give you a direct link to the article. Well, I could, but that’s too much work.

Gantthead focuses on project management and offers templates, tools, articles, and discussions relating to project management and processes. There are resources addressing Web development types of projects. Membership is free, but you can get more if you become a premium member.

Glad I didn’t find these resources before writing the requirements chapter of the book. The chapter is too long as it stands and these sites would’ve made it worse.

Another problem with process improvement resources — too much tech-speak and too little plain English. Karl Wiegers has written several easy-to-understand articles. He is coming out with a new edition of his Software Requirements book early next year. Thanks to Karl, I bought Making Software Process Improvement Work by the folks of Dallas’ The Process Group. The book concisely explains (in plain English) how to develop, plan, and implement a process improvement plan.