Postcards from the Revolution

Saturday, February 16, 2002

Posted by Mike Tarrani 11:20 PM
Friends, Files & Folly. Earlier today in Notes from the Field I extended the topics I started here yesterday and turned the focus on quality. If you're interested in advanced SQA or web usability metrics you'll want to read that entry.
In this entry I am going to provide more files that will augment the four core skills I discussed yesterday.
Friends. Today is Marcia Hopkins' birthday. Marcia is a close friend and a talented IT professional whose wide range of skills and commitment to professionalism epitomize everything this weblog is about - improving the IT profession. Happy birthday Marcia!
Files. Yesterday was about four core skills and how risk management was a common denominator. Today I am going to provide documents that will be useful in each of the core skill areas, as well as point you to a collection of risk management artifacts and articles. You'll also want this Information Systems Risk Management Manual if you're actively involved in IT risk management and/or want to improve your knowledge and skills.
The skill-specific documents are:
Project Management:
collection of IT project templates
full project and life cycle management documents
Analysis and Assessment:
an article on the implementation of Kepner-Tregoe's Analytic Troubleshooting System at Sun Microsystems
discussion of converting system failure histories into future win situations (see the software error analysis document cited in today's Notes from the Field for additional advanced analysis techniques)
Preliminary Analysis Guide that Linda Zarate and I developed (MS Word format)
Measurement and Metrics:
A Software Metrics Primer by Karl E. Wiegers
Lessons from Software Work Effort Metrics by Karl E. Wiegers
Definition of Metrics from a model service level reporting framework. This is another document that Linda and I developed and is in MS Word format.
Security: A collection of security pubulications and a collection of security document drafts from the National Institute of Standards and Technology Computer Security Resource Center.
Folly. If you want to see folly read David Courtney's 14 February 2002 article in ZDNet Tech Update.
Enjoy the weekend ...