This article presents a methodology for ensuring that proper risk management techniques are included in software development projects. It reviews the key benefits of risk management and focuses on common risk management mistakes.

Testing is not closely integrated with development. This prevents you from measuring the progress of development- you can't tell when something starts working or when something stops working. Using JUnit you can cheaply and incrementally build a test suite that will help you measure your progress, spot unintended side effects, and focus your development efforts.

A few things in IT remain true, despite the best efforts of vendor marketers, management gurus, industry analysts and Computerworld pundits to make everyone believe otherwise.

New lightweight XP methodology stresses teamwork, testing, planning and simplicity; uses real-world experience as design patterns for a new generation of software developers.

This article discusses testing in light of the new "extreme programming" genre. The emphasis of the article is on improving code maturity by developer testing.

Businesses spend huge amounts of time and money developing software. But one of the dirty little secrets of the software world is that many firms do not put nearly the same effort into testing their applications.

Although objects make testing simpler, the distributed aspect makes it more difficult. The good news is that there is a new generation of tools that promises to make the process less burdensome. Still, there is no substitute for good design and modeling right off the bat.

Sending data over optical fiber for long distances normally requires electrical amplification along the way. But that regeneration hurdle and the costly maintenance associated with it may finally have overcome. Last week, officials at Broadwing Communications Inc. in Austin, Texas, said they had successfully tested a 10G bit/sec. all-optical network that looped 4,000 kilometers, from Phoenix to Fort Worth, Texas, and back. The trial, according to Broadwing, proves the viability of an ultralong-haul fiber-optic transmission system from Corvis Corp. in Columbia, Md.

RAMIdle is a memory clean-up and defragmenting utility. Many times when an application closes it will leave modules in memory (the so-called dynamically linked libraries [DLLs]). RAMIdle waits for some spare CPU cycles and reclaims and defragments the physical memory so that your applications load faster and are more responsive.

The registry is sort of the "heart and soul" of Windows. Without the registry (and a good one at that!), you couldn't do much in Windows. Therefore, it's important to make sure that the registry stays in good shape. Windows 95B includes the Registry Checker utility that will verify the contents of the registry and then create a backup of key registry files. This can be useful if an application install messes up the registry or if you just want to be able to restore the system to a known configuration. To use the utility, choose Start | Run and enter scanregw in the Run dialog. The Registry Checker will scan the registry and, if no errors are found, prompt you to create a backup. Backups of the registry are saved in the C:\windows\sysbckup directory with the name rbnnn.cab, where nnn = 001, 002, etc. If you are unable to boot the Windows 95 GUI, at the command prompt, you can use the extract utility to restore a previous version of the registry:

Listening to Dennis Miller's commentary on Monday Night Football is either enlightening or annoying. There's just no middle ground with this guy! If you need some help with some of the more esoteric references that he makes, check out these two sites. They are updated each week for the previous game. If you want the short version, check out the Shadowpack site. (It's even WAP-enabled in case you want the info on your cell phone!) For more detailed "analysis", see the Brittanica.com site.