In this article I would like to offer you a perspective on the quality of the source code and on the major influence that it has in the final value of the cost of production and maintenance of software systems. I would also like to present to you the advantages of using a platform of quality management in the process of Continuous Integration and to show you the way in which the values resulted from the static code analysis can be used in order to detect the areas from the system which have a major negative impact on its maintenance.

A very common challenge in an IT business analyst’s career is represented by the modelling of use cases, of processes, of the domain model and of the interactions among processes, systems and actors, in the projects on which he/she operates. Usually, the textual representation of functional requirements, even if it is correctly structured as epics or user stories, is not enough to understand thoroughly a certain functionality or business process. Then, functional gaps, bottlenecks, erroneous or redundant communications, functional silos or even optimization opportunities become less visible.

Habituation is a decrease in response to a repeated stimulus. Like our response to paychecks, repeated “I love you”-s, or bonus systems. Today’s magic wand is called gamification -behavior management-persuasive design-motivational design, you name it.

The idea of having communities of practice comes from the agile principle that proclaims the need of continuous improvement. One of the agile continuous improvement practices is the creation of communities of practice, on certain areas. A community has a purpose and is formed by a group of people who are passionate or interested in the same subject. For agile the objective of a community of practice is to share learning’s and experiences (the more different the better) of every participant.

The Agile Manifesto written in February 2001 has proven itself to be a powerful declaration of vision that is holding for more than a decade and guides innovation into self-organized teams. The manifesto contains twelve principles with four attributes that are referred to more often, and these reflect the essence of the spirit and vision:
- Individuals and interactions over processes and tools
- Working software over comprehensive documentation
- Customer collaboration over contract negotiation
- Responding to change over following a plan

UMT Software is the software development division of United Management Technologies (UMT) along with UMT Consulting Group (www.umt.com) and UMT 360 (www.umt360.com). With over 20 years of experience on the Enterprise Project Management (EPM) market, we are the leading Microsoft EPM partner in North America, in the last five years being twice nominated as Gartner Cool Vendor * and also twice as Microsoft Partner of the Year *. Our innovative solutions find their recognition in UMT positioning in Gartner Visionary Quadrant

Success in business, nowadays, is considered by some entrepreneurs to be pure lottery. We are looking in admiration towards the market leaders who succeed to remain on top, towards those who have managed to reinvent themselves, but especially towards the new ones who have conquered large areas of the market in very short time. What is their secret? What is their business model? Which is the innovation behind their idea? Why have they succeeded where others have failed?

Entrepreneur in technology, geek, Star Trek fan. This is how Bogdan Iordache describes himself, but his activity in the entrepreneurial domain is impressive, to say the least. Co-Founder and CEO of How to Web (the most important event dedicated to entrepreneurship, innovation and technology in South-East Europe) & Startup Spotlight (a competition and mentorship program addressed to the most efficient 32 startups from SEE), Co-Founder TechHub Bucharest, Co-Founder Tech Angels – the first network of private investors in Romania, Co-Founder TechLounge, Co-Founder Conectoo, Co-Founder of Stagii pe bune. Bogdan is a promoter of innovation and entrepreneurship in technology and he contributes to the development of the regional ecosystem, from the inside.

Whether we like it or not, we are living the transition between two eras - from the classical HTTP era towards the real-time web era. The Internet pulse has gotten faster and it’s not just a static web of documents anymore, but it’s a medium for real-time messaging which actually is a globally distributed, bidirectional, and completely real-time communication. This new type of communication has already started to change important things we know about software development, advertising, marketing, PR, and many other fields.

Users expect to see real-time information while it’s happening. When they order a product on an e-commerce website, they expect to see immediately the order being confirmed. When searching for relevant results, by using a textbox, real-time suggestions must be presented. In this article, it’s presented a real-time technique for event-stream processing generated either by user interaction or by other external systems using ReactiveExtensions libraries.

Richard Campbell has more than 30 years of high-tech experience and is both a Microsoft Regional Director and Microsoft Most Valuable Professional (MVP). He has consulted with a number of leading North American organizations. In addition to speaking at conferences around the world, Richard is co-host of „.NET Rocks!, the Internet Audio Talk Show for .NET Developers” and the host of „RunAs Radio, the Internet Audio Talk Show for IT Professionals.”

Exactly! That’s what most of the clients say when they hear about performance testing. It should be a key component in the product development life cycle. Most people focus on the functionality of the product but when the business grows and more and more users interact with the software product, it starts to work slower and slower until it fails completely. This is because performance was not one of the main targets when the project started. I strongly consider performance testing is important and should be done right from the start.