Start Your Fingines

Start Your Engines

I n surgery, to underscore safety processes, we love to make comparisons with other industries like flying. Recently, I found myself making a similar comparison to car racing. I was privileged to spend a weekend in a race car run by a professional race team. This crew ran an incredibly well-oiled machine, not only literally but also metaphorically. They raced at 24 Hours of Daytona, keeping a c...

Jump-Start Your Career as a Digital Librarian

The world of digital libraries is often overwhelming, and developing the skills required for a successful career in this field can be a moving target. Topics that didn’t exist in libraries until relatively recently (content management systems, web development, data curation) as well as more traditional librarian duties that intersect with developing areas (mobile reference, e-resource managemen...

Writing Your SRS – Getting Off to a Good Start

April 1999 Identifying Requirements – How Will I Know One When I See One? Requirements begin their lives when first elicited from customers or users. Elicitation may occur using any of a variety of techniques such as interviews, brainstorming, prototyping, questionnaires, and quality function deployment or techniques. Typically, requirements start out abstractly, e.g., “I need a system that con...

Jump Start Your Performance Career Using Analytic Modeling

What is the career path for a performance analyst? A capacity planner? Most technicians paid their dues in the trenches of systems programming or operations. Having done it all, there can appear to be few interesting challenges left. Move up in your industry to become a strategic planner or a systems architect. Analytic modeling is the number one tool to turn a bit-twiddling performance geek in...

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