How can traffic shaping help in congestion management?

- Traffic shaping is an important part of congestion avoidance mechanism which in turn comes under congestion management. 

- If the traffic can be controlled, obviously we would be able to maintain control over the network congestion. 

Congestion avoidance scheme can be divided in to the following two parts:

1. Feedback mechanism and
2. The control mechanism

- The feedback mechanism is also known as the network policies and the control mechanism is known as the user policies.

- Of course there are other components also but these two are the most important. 

- While analyzing one component it is simply assumed that the other components are operating at optimum levels. 

- At the end, it has to be verified whether the combined system is working as expected or not under various types of conditions.

Network policy has got the following three algorithms:

1. Congestion Detection: 

- Before information can be sent as the feedback to the network, its load level or the state level must be determined. 

- Generally, there can be n number of possible states of the network. 

- At a given time the network might be in one of these states. 

- Using the congestion detection algorithm, these states can be mapped in to the load levels that are possible. 

- There are two possible load levels namely under-load and over-load. 

- Under-load means below the knee point and overload occurs above knee point. 

- If this function’s k–ary version is taken, it would produce k load levels. 

- There are three criteria based up on which the congestion detection function would work. They are link utilization, queue lengths and processor utilization. 

2. Feedback Filter: 

- After the load level has been determined, it has to be verified that whether or not the state lasts for duration of sufficiently longer time before it is signaled to the users. 

- It is in this condition that the feedback of the state is actually useful. 

- The duration is long enough to be acted up on. 

- On the other hand a state that might change rapidly might create confusion. 

- The state passes by the time the users get to know of it. 

- Such states misleading feedback. 

- A low pass filter function serves the purpose of filtering the desirable states. 

3. Feedback Selector: 

- After the state has been determined, this information has to be passed to the users so that they may contribute in cutting down the traffic. 

- The purpose of the feedback selector function is to identify the users to whom the information has to be sent.

User policy has got the following three algorithms: 

1.Signal Filter: 

- The users to which the feedback signals are sent by the network interpret them after accumulating a number of signals. 

- The nature of the network is probabilistic and therefore signals might not be the same. 

- According to some signals the network might be under-loaded and according to some other it might be overloaded. 

- These signals have to be combined to decide the final action. 

- Based up on the percentage, an appropriate weighting function might be applied. 

2. Decision Function: 

- Once the load level of the network is known to the user, it has to be decided whether or not to increase the load.

- There are two parts of this function: the direction is determined by the first one and the amount is decided by the second one. 

- First part is decision function and the second one is increase/ decrease algorithms. 

3. Increase/Decrease Algorithm: 

- Control forms the major part of the control scheme.

- The control measure to be taken is based up on the feedback obtained. 

- It helps in achieving both fairness and efficiency. 

Explain about demand paging and page replacements

These are two very important concepts of memory management strategies in the computer operating systems namely demand paging and paging replacements. 

About Demand Paging

- Demand paging is just the opposite concept of the anticipatory paging. 

- Demand paging is actually a memory management strategy developed for managing the virtual memory.

- The operating system that makes use of demand paging technique, a copy of the disk page is made and kept in the physical memory whenever a request is made for it i.e., whenever a page fault occurs. 

- It is obvious that the execution of a process starts with none of its page loaded in to the main memory and follows by a number of page faults occurring one after the other until all of its required pages have been loaded in to the main memory. 

- Demand paging comes under the category of the lazy loading techniques. 

- This strategy follows that only if the process in execution demands a page, then only it should be brought in to the main memory. 

- That’s why the strategy has been named as demand paging. Sometimes it is even called as the lazy evaluation. 

- Page table implementation is required for using the demand paging technique.

- The purpose of this table is to map the physical memory to the logical memory. 

- This table uses a bit wise operator for marking a page as valid or invalid. 

The following steps are carried out whenever a process demands for a page:

1. An attempt is made for accessing the page.
2. If page is present in the memory the usual instructions are followed.
3. If page is not there i.e., is invalid then a page fault is generated.
4. Memory reference to a location in the virtual memory is checked if it is valid or not. If it’s an illegal memory access then the process is terminated. If not the requested page has to be paged in.
5. The disk operations are scheduled for reading the requested page in to the physical memory.
6. Restarting the instruction that raised the page fault trap.

- The nature of this strategy is itself of great advantage. 

- Upon availability of more space in the physical memory, it allows execution of many processes leading to a decrease in the context switching time.

- At the time of program start up, less latency occurs during loading. 

- This is because the inflow and outflow of the data between main memory and secondary memory is very less.

About Page Replacement

- When less number of real memory frames is available, it leads to invoking a page stealer. 

- This stealer searches through the PFT (page frame table) for pages to steal. 

- This table stores references to the pages which are required and modified. 

- If the requested page is found by the page stealer, it does not steal it but the reference flag is reset for that page. 

- So in the pass when the page stealer comes across this page, it steals this page. 

- Note that in this pass the page was flagged as un-referenced. 

- Any change made to the page is indicated by means of the modify flag.

- If the modify flag of the page to be stolen is set, then a page out call has to be made before the page stealer does its work. 

- Thus, the pages that form a part of the currently executing segments are written to so called paging space and the persisting segments are in turn written to the disk. 

- The page replacement is carried by the algorithms called the page replacement algorithms. 

- Besides this, these also keep a track of the faults. 

Explain the single and multiple partition techniques?

There are a number of allocation techniques available and all have different properties and allocate memory based on different principles. One prominent type of allocation is the partitioned allocation. 

- In partitioned allocation the primary or the main memory of the system is divided into a number of contiguous memory blocks which are commonly known as the memory partitions. 

- Each of these partitions consists of all the information that might be required for carrying out a specific task. 

- The task of allocating these memory partitions to various jobs and processes and de-allocating them after use is the duty of the memory management unit.  

- But partitioned allocation cannot be carried out by the help of software alone. 

- It requires some hardware support. 

- This support prevents interference of the various jobs in to each other and with the operating system as well. 

- For example, a lock and key technique was used by the IBM system/ 360. 

- Some other systems made use of the registers called the base and bound registers containing the partition limits and these were also used for flagging if any invalid access was made. 

- Limits register was used by the UNIVAC 1108 having separate base and bound data and instructions. 

- A technique called the memory interleaving was used by this system for placing so called I banks and d banks in different memory modules. 

Partitions are of two types namely:

Ø  Static partitions: These are defined at the boot time or IPL (initial program load) or sometimes by the computer operator. An example of system using static partitions is IBM system/360 operating system multi-programming with MFT (fixed number of tasks).

Ø  Dynamic partitions: These are created automatically for the specified job. An example is of the IBM system/ 360 operating system multi-programming with MVT (variable number of tasks).

- The hardware typed memory such as the base and bound registers (GE – 635, PDP – 10 etc.), Burroughs corporation B5500 etc. is used for relocating the memory partitions. 

- The partitions that can be relocated can be compacted to form larger contiguous memory chunks in the main memory. 

- Some systems allow for swapping out the partitions to the secondary storage and in turn to some additional memory.

The partitioned allocation offers two types of allocation techniques namely:

1. Single partition techniques
2. Multiple partition techniques

- Single partition techniques are the ones that are used for the single time sharing partition for swapping in and out the memory partitions. 

- These techniques are used by the IBM’s TSO (time sharing option). 

- The multiple partition techniques are used in the multiple time sharing partition. 

- In DOS systems when the disk is partitioned, each of the memory partitions act as if it is an individual disk drive. 

- Partitioning is useful for the systems where there are more than one operating system. 

- Partitioning techniques are meant for increasing the efficiency of the disk. 

- Hard and soft partitioning is used on the apple Macintosh computers. 

- The creation, relocation and deletion of the memory partitions can be harmful for the data. 

- That’s why it is good to have back up of the data stored on your system. 

- Several issues have to be considered if you want to install more than one operating system on your computer. 

- Day by day disks are becoming less expensive and bigger. 

- You can go for separate disks for storing data and installing Oss. 

Explain Telerik TeamPulse?

About Telerik TeamPulse

- Telerik TeamPulse has been developed by Telerik as an agile project management tool in the year of 2010. 

- One of the characteristic features of the TeamPulse is that it can be integrated as well as hosted as local Microsoft team foundation server 2008, 10 and 12 services. 

- However, it cannot be integrated with the Microsoft visual studio.

- This Telerik product is available under commercial license. 

- The features of TeamPulse have been mentioned below:

1. Bug tracking
2. Integration with the telerik’s web UI test studio
3. Time tracking
4. Backlog management
5. E – mail notifications
6. Cross – project dashboard known as xView and developed with html5.
7. Task board
8. Storyboard with WP limits
9. TeamPulse can be integrated with Microsoft TFS (team foundation server) 2008, 2010 and 2012.
10. Requirements manager
11. Best practices analyzer

- The extension provided with the Telerik TeamPulse is the TeamPulse ideas and feedback portal which is based on html and is compatible with html5.

- Since TeamPulse is commercial software, it is not available for a hosted solution but it is to be used only on premise. 

- When you add TeamPulse to TFS the planning, tracking and collaboration improves automatically.

- With the real time project intelligence of Telerik TeamPulse you can improve decision making power. 

- It provides you with up-to-date views of the status of the project. 

- By using TeamPulse, you bridge the boundaries between the team members and their geographical location i.e., the communication is improved. 

- This tool has been exclusively designed for scrum and kanban teams i.e., any of these either kanban or scrum or scrumban can be used.

- It has been designed to reduce the delivery time, eliminate the waste and improve the work flow. 

- It also provides you a convenient way for collecting and managing the customer feedback. 

- It lets you create products that your customer actually needs. 

- TeamPulse lets you manage project well with the following:

1. Work burn down
2. Velocity
3. Cycle time
4. Iteration delta
5. Agile best practices and a number of other reports. 

- Telerik TeamPulse favors most of the agile projects.

- It lets one plan, manage and monitor the results thus improving the overall process. 

- TeamPulse has got a rich interface with in–context guidance making the integration with TFS faster. 

- Its other features include:

1. Automatic notifications
2. Bug tracking
3. Gantt charts
4. Interactive gantt charts
5. Privacy settings
6. Project templates
7. Reporting
8. Scheduling
9. Task feedback
10. Workload
11. Dashboard
12. Email integration
13. Issue tracking
14. Messaging or IM
15. RSS feed
16. Collaborative
17. Issue tracking system
18. Risk management capabilities
19. Web application

- The tool has not got any remote capability features. It comes with the following resource management features:

1. Time sheets
2. Compare project
3. Management software

- Teampulse has been developed with the view that all the clients, scenario and environment differ from each other.

- Large enterprises require a tool that is capable of scaling their workload. 

- Teampulse fits every scenario even though if you require some time to master it. 

- Firstly, you need to set up the project info, template, iterations. 

- Then you need to create your team and lastly take a view of the summary of your project. - It is recommended by the system to start with the stories.

- Being an enterprise tool, it has got many features which might make you feel like it might be quite complex to use. 

- But it is quite user friendly. 

What are Six Best Practices in Rational Unified Process?

The IBM Rational Unified Process is a means of commercial deployment of the approaches and practices which have been proven for the development of the software systems and applications. It is based up on the following six best practices:

1. Iterative development of the software systems and applications
2. Management of the requirements
3. Use of architecture based up on the components.
4. Visual modeling of the software system
5. Verification of the software system.
6. Controlling the changes to the software system or application.

The above mentioned practices are called the best practices not because their value can be precisely quantified but because they are quite common in the software industry by most of the organizations which are successful and reputable.

In the rational unified process each and every member of the team gets templates, guidelines as well as the tools which are found necessary for the whole of the team in order to reap the full advantage.

Basic Practices In Rational Unified Process in Detail

Iterative development of the software systems or applications:  

- Software systems and applications are quite sophisticated and therefore they make it impossible to define the problem first in sequence.

- By sequence we mean, first defining the whole problem, designing a solution of the problem, building the software system or application and then finally testing the software system. 

- In order to deal with such software systems and applications there is a requirement of an iterative approach so that an increase in the understanding of the problem can be made in a series of successive refinements. 

- This also helps in developing an effective solution in increments done over multiple iterations.

Management of the Requirements: 

The rational unified process gives a description:

- On how the elicitation, organization and documentation of the constraints as well as the functionality is to be done, 

- how the trade-offs and decisions have to be tracked and documented and 

- how the business requirements are to be captured and communicated.

Use of architecture based up on the components: 

- The focus of the development process is on the base-lining and early development of an architecture that is robust and executable as well. 

- It gives a description of how a resilient architecture can be built with more flexibility that can accommodate the changes easily, can be easily understood and effectively promotes the reuse of the existing software artifacts. 

- The rational unified process provides a great support to the component based development. 

- By components we mean, the sub systems and non – trivial elements for a clear function.

Visual modeling of the software system: 

- The rational unified shows you exactly how a software system or application can be visually modeled and can be used for capturing the behavior and structure of its architectural components. 

- This further enables you to hide the details and develop the code with the help of the graphical building blocks. 

- With such visual abstractions, communication can be established between the different aspects of the software system or application.

Verification of the software system: 

- Poor reliability dramatically cuts down the chances of a software system or application from being accepted.

- Therefore it is important to review the quality concerning the factors namely functionality, reliability, system performance and application performance etc.

Controlling the changes to the software system or application: 

- The management and ability to track the changes are critical to the success of any software system or application. 

- However, the rational unified process helps you to cope with these issues also.

What is meant by Business Process Reengineering?

Business process reengineering or BPR is a very important concept when it comes to achieving the business goals centred on the development of a software product. This article is all about the same concept. Let us define the business process re-engineering process formally.

"The process that involves analyzing and designing of the processes and workflows within the organization which is developing a particular software product is called business process re-engineering". 

Business process re- engineering has got many other names like:

1. Business process redesigning
2. Business transformation
3. Business process change management

What is a business process?

- A business process can be thought of as an aggregation of tasks that are logically related to each other and are meant to achieve a pre-defined business outcome. 

- Re-engineering eventually led to many changes in the management processes for the good. - The best example that can be given is of the cross functional team! 

- The concept of cross functionality came in to existences because of the need for re- engineering of the functional tasks which are separately developed in to the processes that are completely cross functional. 

- The concept of business process re engineering is gaining popularity worldwide since there are so many management information systems developments which aim at achieving a wide integration of a large number of business functions.

- Few of those management information systems are:

1. Supply chain management
2. Enterprise resource planning
3. Knowledge management systems
4. Human resource management systems
5. Groupware systems
6. Collaborative systems
7. Customer relationship management and so on.

- This technique emerged in the private sector to help the organizations fundamentally, so that they can improve up on their customer service to a large extent. 

- This technique also helped in reducing the development cost and gain the world class competitive edge.

Key Aspects of Re-engineering Process

The following are the two very important key aspects of the re- engineering process:

1. Deployment of the sophisticated information systems and
2. Continual development.

Details about Business Process Re-engineering

- The leading organizations of the world which are known to support the innovative business processes are used to deploy this technique instead of refining the current methodologies of doing work. 

- Business process re-engineering involves rethinking and then radically redesigning the already existing processes and resources of the organization.

- The business process re- engineering cannot be called as a mere business improvisation technique rather it is a technique using which the whole way in which the work is done can be redesigned for the better. 

- A high level assessment of the mission of the organization, its customer needs and strategic goals marks the beginning of the business process re-engineering. 

- The business process redesigning invokes the question, “does the (aspect) needs to be redefined?” 

- During the implementation of the business process re- engineering technique, an organization may feel that till now it has been working up on the assumptions that are questionable. 

- On implementing this technique, they are forced to think what exactly they should be doing. - The primary focus of the business process re- engineering is on the business processes of the organizations that govern the usage of the resources to develop software products and services to cater the needs of the customers. 

- Business process re- engineering works on the philosophy that “a business process can be broken down in to several short and simple processes which then can be individually measured, modeled, and improved up on”.   

- Apart from this, all the processes can also redesigned altogether.

- With business process re- engineering, the whole business process is optimized in such a way that the organization and the customers reap only benefits. 

Sometimes requirements change very quickly, what can be done in those cases?

There is an expectation that the requirements should be determined early and should remain stable. Some approaches can be followed if these expectations are reasonable:

- Understanding how the requirements might change early in the stage can be done by working with project stakeholders early.
- The application should allow some adaptability to the changes that can occur in the requirments later.
- The code should be well documented and wriiten and commented. It makes notification of changes much easier.
- Rapid prototyping can be used to minimize changes.
- Some extra time should be taken into consideration in the case of changes.
- The new requirements should be moved to different phase while the original requirements should be in the original phase.
- The requiremnts that can be implemented more easily should be incorporated in the project first keeping the difficult requirements for future versions.
- The management and customer should keep in mind the effects that the changes in the requirements can incorporate.
- Automated test scripts should be made flexible.
- Test cases should be designed to be flexible.
- Ad hoc testing should be in focus more instead of detailed test plans and test cases.
- Minimize regression testing methods.

If the application has the functionality that was not in the requirements and if the functionality is not necessary, then it should be removed because it can have some unknown impacts and dependencies in the application which were not taken into account
by designer or customer. The management should be aware of the added risks as a result of unexpected functionality.

Requirements Traceability Matrix (RTM) - A tool for managing requirements

The Requirements Traceability Matrix is a tool for managing requirements. It is not only used in requirements engineering but through out the software engineering process. The white box approach refers to the development of system requirements without
considering the technical implementation of those requirements.

Components of Requirements Traceability Matrix

- RTM ID: A unique identification number for a specific requirement.
- Requirements: This is a structured sentence describing the requirements in a "shall" format.
- Notes: These are additional notes of requirements.
- Requestor: This is the person who requested the requirement.
- Date: This is the date and time the requirement was requested by requestor.
- Priority: This is the priority given to the requirements.

While the above elements are the initial RTM, one can customize the matrix to tie the requirements with other work products or documents. It can be done by:

- Relative to RTM ID: It specifies if the current RTM is directly or indirectly related to other requirements.
- Statement of Work (SOW): This is a description that relates the requirements directly back into a specific paragraph within the Statement of Work. It is a document that specify the nature of the engagement of the development team with their clients.

The components and the use of the RTM should be adapted to the needs of the process, project and product. It grows as the project moves along.

What are different tasks of requirement engineering - Elaboration,Negotiation,Specification,Validation,Management

Elaboration involves the information that is obtained from team during inception and elicitation is expanded and refined. It focuses on defining, redefining and refining of models. It tries to model the "WHAT" rather than the "HOW".
- Requirement is created using methods that capitalize on user scenarios.It describes how the end-users and actors interact with the system.
- The analysis model is derived from the requirements model where each scenario is analyzed to get the analysis classes.
- The requirements model and the analysis model are the main workproduct of this task.

Negotiation involves customers, stakeholders and software development team reconcile conflicts. The purpose of negotiation is to develop a project plan that meets the requirements of the user while reflecting real-world constraints such as time,people and budget. Negotiation includes:
- always remember negotiation is not completion.
- always have a strategy.
- always listen effectively.
- always focus on other party's interest.
- never make it personal.
- always be creative.
- be ready to commit.

Specification is the final artifact or work product produced by the software engineer during requirements engineering. It serves as the foundation for design and construction of software.

In Validation,the work products produced as a consequence of requirements engineering are assessed for quality. It checks whether inconsistencies, omissions, and errors have been detected and corrected. The
review team that validates the requirements look for errors in content or interpretation,areas where clarification is required, missing information, inconsistencies,conflicting and unrealistic requirements.

Management is a set of activities that help the project team identify, control, and track requirements and their changes at any time as the project progresses.

The Risk Mitigation, Monitoring and Management (RMMM) Plan

The Risk Mitigation, Monitoring and Management, RMMM, plan documents all work performed as part of risk analysis and is used by the project manager as part of overall project plan.
The goal of the risk mitigation, monitoring and management plan is to identify as
many potential risks as possible.It is the organization’s responsibility to perform risk mitigation, monitoring, and management in order to produce a quality product.
Every phase of this plan is of equal importance. More focus is maintained in the initial phases i.e. the identification and assessment of possible risks.
Once RMMM has been documented and project has begun, risk mitigation and monitoring steps commence.
Once RMMM has been documented and the project has begun, risk mitigation and monitoring steps commence.
The measurement of effectiveness of these mitigation / contingency plans should be well carried. It must ensure that after the execution of such plans the risk exposure is reduced or preferably eliminated.

- Risk Mitigation covers efforts taken to reduce either the probability or consequences of a threat.
- Risk monitoring and control is the process of identifying, analyzing, and planning for newly discovered risks and managing identified risks.
- Risk management is the identification, assessment, and prioritization of risks.

High-level Best Practice One(1) in Software Configuration Management

Software configuration management (SCM) is a set of activities that are designed to control change by identifying the work products that are likely to change, establishing relationships among them, defining mechanisms for managing different versions of these work products, controlling changes that are imposed, and auditing and reporting on the changes that are made.
Software Configuration Management Best Practices are the techniques, policies and procedures for ensuring the integrity, reliability and reproducibility of developing software products.
When implementing SCM tools and processes, you must define what practices and policies to employ to avoid common configuration problems and maximize team productivity. There are six areas of SCM deployment, and some coarse-grained
best practices within each of those areas.
- Workspaces: It is the area where the engineers edit source files, build the software components they’re working on, and test and debug what they have built. The best practices for workspaces include:
. Don’t share workspaces.
· Don’t work outside of managed workspaces.
· Don’t use jello views: A file in your workspace should not change unless you
explicitly cause the change. A “jello view” is a workspace where file changes are
caused by external events beyond your control.
· Stay in sync with the code line.
· Check in often: Integrating your development work with other peoples’ work also
requires you to check in your changes as soon as they are ready.

International Standard Organization ISO 9001:2000 Clause 8

Clause 8: Measurement, Analysis and Improvements

Clause 8.1: General
Metrics for product quality and process quality has to be defined by the management as they play a very important role in process improvement. The process effectiveness and improvement can be checked by the use of these metrics.

Clause 8.2: Monitoring and Measurement

Clause 8.2.1: Customer Satisfaction
The management has to define the metrics to measure the customer satisfaction as it is the most important objective for any organization.
Clause 8.2.2: Internal Audit
For the proper implementation of the quality management system across the organization, an internal audit has to be formed. Necessary training has to be provided to the internal audit team on the auditing process.
Clause 8.2.3: Monitoring and measurement of processes
Using metrics, each process that is defined in the quality management system has to be monitored and its effectiveness is measured.
Clause 8.2.4: Monitoring and measurement of product
The information obtained from the metrics for each product can be analyzed to study the effectiveness of the product's processes.

Clause 8.3: Control of non-conforming product

Appropriate action needs to be taken to ensure that the product that is found to be non-conforming is not delivered to the customer.

Clause 8.4: Analysis of data

To ensure the effectiveness of the quality management system, the management has to collect the data that can be obtained from customers, suppliers, process metrics, product metrics etc for the study.

Clause 8.5: Improvement

Clause 8.5.1: Continual Improvement
For continually improving the organization's performance, the quality management system should be continuously improved based on the inputs such as customer feedback, external and internal audit reports, supplier's feedback etc.
Clause 8.5.2: Corrective action
The corrective action is to be taken to remove the defects when a product has non-conformities.
Clause 8.5.3: Preventive action
Potential non-conformities are identified and preventive action is taken. Records of corrective action provides good inputs to take preventive actions.

International Standard Organization ISO 9001:2000 Clause 5

Clause 5: Management Responsibility

Clause 5.1: management Commitment
The measurable quality objectives that are meant to meet customer requirements should be defined and communicated the quality objectives to employees.
Clause 5.2: Customer Focus
The management has to ensure that the customer's requirements are well understood and the customer is well satisfied with the product.
Clause 5.3: Quality Policy
The quality policy reflects the commitment of the management. The quality of the policy has to be signed by the Chief Executive Officer of the organization.

Clause 5.4: Planning

Clause 5.4.1: Quality Objectives
Quality objectives such as increasing productivity, reducing defects etc. has to be defined by the management based on the quality policy of the management.
Clause 5.4.2: Quality management system planning
A quality management system has to be planned by the management to meet the quality objectives. The details of the processes are to be defined.

Clause 5.5: Responsibility, Authority and Communication

Clause 5.5.1: Responsibility and Authority
The quality management system makes it compulsory that a proper and a clear organization chart is drawn, indicating the reporting structure and the responsibilities and authorities of each individual.
Clause 5.5.2: Management Representative
The management representative should be appointed who has the responsibility and authority to implement the quality management system.
Clause 5.5.3: Internal Communication
To avoid lack of communication among team members, a proper procedure for internal communication should be established so that all the employees are in unison.

Clause 5.6: Management Review

Clause 5.6.1: General
Quality policy, quality objectives and quality manual should be periodically reviewed to discuss the effectiveness and possible improvements.
Clause 5.6.2: Review Inputs
The inputs have to be obtained from customers, external auditors, and internal auditors.
Clause 5.6.3: Review output
The outputs will be the action points needed for effective quality management system implementation. This is done after the management review.

Quick Tech Tip : Metropolitan Area Networks - MANs

A metropolitan area network, or MAN is basically a bigger version of LAN. MAN is a computer networks usually spanning a campus or a city, which typically connect a few local area networks using high speed backbone technologies. A MAN supports both data and voice. A MAN just has one or two cables and does not contain switching elements.
A MAN is optimized for a larger geographical area than a LAN, ranging from several blocks of buildings to entire cities. MANs can also depend on communications channels of moderate-to-high data rates. A MAN might be owned and operated by a single organization, but it usually will be used by many individuals and organizations. MANs might also be owned and operated as public utilities. They will often provide means for internetworking of local networks. Metropolitan area networks can span up to 50km, with the devices being used such as modem and wire/cable devices.
The standard that has been adopted for MANs is called DQDB (Distributed Queue Dual Bus). DQDB consists of two unidirectional cables or buses to which all other computers are connected. Each bus has a head-end which initiates transmission activity.
There are three important features which discriminate MANs from LANs or WANs:
1. The network size falls intermediate between LANs and WANs. A MAN typically covers an area of between 5 and 50 km range. Many MANs cover an area the size of a city, although in some cases MANs may be as small as a group of buildings.
2. A MAN, its communications links and equipment are generally owned by either a consortium of users or by a network service provider who sells the service to the users.
3. A MAN often acts as a high speed network to allow sharing of regional resources. It is also frequently used to provide a shared connection to other networks using a link to a WAN.

Properties of a test / QA / QE Manager

Testing is a vital and critical part of the overall software development process, and is very important that the overall testing environment have the right mix of aggression and thoroughness. A large amount of this attitude comes from the person who leads the testing team. So, what makes a good QA or Test manager?
There are many attributes that a good test, or QA manager should have. Here are some of them:
• The test manager should be very familiar with the software development process. This is the only way that the rest of the testing team can develop the feel for when they should be doing what activity.
• The test manager has be able to ensure that the overall enthusiasm of the team remains high, and promote a positive atmosphere, despite what is a somewhat 'negative' process (e.g., looking for or preventing problems). People should be made to feel that they have an important role in ensuring that customers get a software that works well.
• The test manager should be able to promote teamwork to increase productivity. Teamwork between the members of the testing team is critical, given that each of them may handle a separate area, and may have several elements of intersection. In addition, each person can have a different field of specialization, and together they can cover a large area.
• The test manager should be able to promote cooperation between software, test, and QA engineers. This is not so easy sometimes, but is very critical. It is a close interaction between dev and QE that results in a deeper understanding of where software can go wrong.
• The test manager have the diplomatic skills needed to promote improvements in QA processes. Sometimes software and hardware can be expensive, and management may not really understand or appreciate the need for such, and it is in such cases that the test manager can better explain.
• The test manager must have the ability to withstand pressures and say 'no' to other managers when quality is insufficient or QA processes are not being adhered to. It is the test manager who is responsible for quality.
• The test manager must have people judgement skills for hiring and keeping skilled personnel
• The test manager must be able to communicate with technical and non-technical people, engineers, managers, and customers.

Product Development - Requirements Planning - Template

In the previous 2 posts, I have been talking about the process leading to a presentation, right at the beginning of the project, where product management presents their plan of feature implementation, revenue and pricing figures, competition analysis, and so on. The objective of such a meeting is to ensure that management / executive sponsors know the direction that the product will take, are able to satisfy their doubts, and then can either bless the direction taken by product management or send the team back to the drawing board for re-making the strategies OR do some slight tweaking.
For this information to be presented to management, it has to be packaged in a proper template where the information is arranged in logical order. I have tried to find templates that can meet these needs on the internet, and some of them are below. You may need to modify or tweak them slightly to suit them as per your needs.

1. Startup business plan at score.org (link): This is a template more for a business plan, but it contains some very relevant questions that you need to answer for the purpose of creating a new product; you can take the relevant questions from this template and adopt for your own need.

2. A sales forecast plan (link): This entire page is very useful for the purpose of building and forecasting a sales plan, and can help you build up the figures required for doing your revenue forecasting.

3. Product Development Schedule Template Syn1.0 ($ 59) (link): a detailed list of activities and tasks for planning and managing product concept, design, development, test, launch and release.

4. VSD Template (link): Has a lot of steps that you should be logically taking if you are defining a new product

5. SWOT analysis template (link): Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, Threats - a useful analysis that you should carry out for your new product development

6. Marketing Plan Template (link): Very useful for preparing the marketing and product management plan that will help you to prepare for the presentation

7. Product development planning from Microsoft (link): This template outlines a strategic approach for product development. By working with your business position in the marketplace, establishing product infrastructure, and leveraging knowledge of your targets and competitors, this template establishes a framework to begin product development. This is a Microsoft Project 2007 template.

8. Individual templates for efficiency during the product planning process (link)

9. Alta Advisor product creation plan (link): Helps you collect the information you will need to prepare a proper plan, as well as provide you many points that you can use to present to management.

10. Product Manager's Toolkit (link): Many tools such as MRD, PRD, Business Case, etc, all that will help you prepare for a new product plan.

11. Product Definition and Launch Plan Template (link): A Word document that acts as an MRD

12. Six free templates (link): Product Management Life Cycle Model, Product Strategy Outline, Ten Step Marketing Plan Outline, Marketing Dictionary, Guideline for Managing Product Team Meetings, Strategic Marketing Planning Model

13. Sample Marketing Requirements Document (MRD) (link)