In a recently published paper, researchers at Google examined the issue of failed software builds within their organization. Specifically, they wanted to address the separate questions of "How often do builds fail?", "Why do builds fail", and "How long does it take to...
The value system and practices that embody Agile Software Development have been around for well over a decade, and have been touted as having "crossed the chasm" by organizations such as the Agile Alliance, Gartner, and Forrester Research. Numerous studies indicate...
Recently, Oracle announced the release of Java 8. This latest edition has some interesting new features, most notably the inclusion of lambda expressions and the ability to do multiple inheritance through default methods. We’ll spend the bulk of this article exploring...
Automation isn’t just for manufacturing tasks. In fact, many of the grinding, repetitive tasks your engineers can’t stand can easily be automated out of existence. Any task that is repeatable is automatable. That means you can save big money on man hours, letting your...
Many of you are undoubtedly familiar with using Jira as an issue tracker. But for those of you who have been juggling issue tracking and meeting SLA requirements -- and for those of you who had the recently acquired VertygoSLA addon -- this article may be useful...
Git encourages developers to use branches during their development process as a means of coordinating and managing changes to the master branch. Git does not force any particular strategy for doing so and consequently, several popular branching strategies have...
Everyone loves a one-click installer, but setting this up can be a headache, especially when a company changes the way this is done. You can setup your installation script to install both PADS9.3 and PADS9.3_update1 with a double-click of the mouse! Here are the first...
This seems to be the age of “Big Data”. Every sector seems to have a need for it -- from biotechs doing genome sequencing, to financial providers mining market data. For many, the ability to store massive amounts of structured or unstructured data is the key to...
This week we want to cover a utility that allows users to manage the buildup of files that eat up space on your storage device. We are speaking about WinDirStat, which is a tool that presents a graphical view of your entire storage drive (or from a folder level)....
SPK and Associates routinely review warning letters to help our clients stay in step with FDA trends. One of the problem areas most often cited in company audits continue to be the CAPA system/program. This month we will take a look at some of the latest FDA...
Design Output: A Review of 21 C.F.R. §820.30(d) and FDA Warning Letter Trends
Many companies utilize static analysis tools in some fashion. However, we often find they are not leveraging them to their fullest potential. At SPK and Associates, we believe in driving quality up front, at the Engineering Desktop, and not relying solely on finding...