| Name & Link | What they do |
IEEE Software Magazine
 | is "building the community of software practitioners. Stan Rifkin of our staff was an associate editor in chief for the areas of quality and management for the magazine. He actively solicited manuscripts and reviewers, and regularly helped authors and would-be authors improve their submissions. |
Quantitative Software Management Inc.
 | Provides
the SLIM-suite of automated software project (macro-)estimating & tracking aids. Several Master
Systems staff are accomplished users of QSM's tools. |
Quantitative Software Management Associates
 | An
affiliate of QSM that specializes in financial service institutions and the use of estimation
information during
project negotiations in a novel application of the Harvard Project on Negotiation. Michael Mah, the
managing partner, was the editor in chief of IT Metrics Strategy, a respected journal on the
practical applications
of measurement. |
Galorath
 | SEER-SEM is a software
project estimation tool that is at the WBS or component level (distinct from, say, macroestimation
at the project level). Their SEER-SEM client lives inside Microsoft Project, so a project manager
never has to leave Project to generate the list of tasks and to estimate duration and resource
assignments. |
Implementation Management Associates
 | Provides
a step-by-step data-based method to plan & manage the human side of technological change. Since
improvement = change, this approach is important -- even critical -- to the success of improvement
initiatives. Several Master Systems staff members are certified in the expert use of the IMA
methods. |
Vité, now ePM
 | Provides
a means of looking inside a software project to model the relationship between tasks and actors.
Master Systems provided Vite solutions for software development projects. (On
December 31, 2002, ePM purchased the assets of Vité and now maintains the former Vité software
product, SimVision, that provides a look inside actual projects by simulating their internal
workings.) |
 | Provides an expert system for diagnosing & designing an
organization. Master Systems uses that expert system, OrgCon, to help clients diagnose and improve
organizational designs. Remember, our approach is one of mutual adaptation" the organization needs
to change to accommodate the improved processes and the improved processes need to change to
accommodate the organization. We use OrgCon to help us with the organization part. |
Empirical Software Engineering
 | A
journal of results of field experiments -- the only one for software engineering! In this sense it is perhaps the most practical scientific journal in the software engineering field. There is an individual subscription rate. Stan Rifkin of our staff was a charter member of the Editorial Board. |
NASA Goddard Space Flight Center Software Engineering
 | Experimenter &
disseminator of software engineering experience, with a publicly-accessible process asset library. |
 | Creator of the best meeting techniques & technology
available. Be sure to read about Wicked Problems, ones in which the texture of the problem changes
as solutions are evaluated. Sounds like system requirements, doesn't it? Very elegant solution to
focusing & recording meetings. We use these methods. |
 | "Scrum is an agile, lightweight process that can be used to manage and
track software and product development. Wrapping existing engineering practices,... Scrum generates
the benefits of agile development with the advantages of a simple implementation." Stan Rifkin
of our staff is a Certified ScrumMaster. |
(Barry Boehm's) Center for Software Engineering at the University of Southern
California
 | Master Systems is a
Visiting Associate Affiliate of this Center (now called the Center for Systems & Software Engineering), a leader in creating "evolving and unifying theories and practices of systems and software engineering," including the value-based approach. It is also the home of the free Constructive Cost Model (COCOMO II) software project estimation tool. |
Future Search Network
 | Master Systems is a charter member of this organization. A Future Search is a type of group work wherein goals are set, prioritized, and action plans developed and committed to ... all in three days! It has a strong theory base and numerous books have been written on the subject. |
 | "The Agile
Alliance is a non-profit organization dedicated to promoting the concepts of agile software development, and
helping organizations adopt those concepts." It is the author of the famous "Manifesto for agile software
development." Master Systems is a
member of this organization. |
 | The Systems Engineering Process Office (SEPO) at the San Diego Systems Center of the US Space & Naval Warfare agency hosts one of the best web sites, especially in terms of shared process descriptions. Beth Gramoy of our staff was the head of SEPO when it developed this site. |
 | System dynamics is a methodology for studying and managing complex feedback systems, such as one finds in business and other social systems. In fact it has been used to address practically every sort of feedback system. While the word system has been applied to all sorts of situations, feedback is the differentiating descriptor here. Feedback refers to the situation of X affecting Y and Y in turn affecting X perhaps through a chain of causes and effects. One cannot study the link between X and Y and, independently, the link between Y and X and predict how the system will behave. Only the study of the whole system as a feedback system will lead to correct results. Master Systems has been a sponsor of the System Dynamics Society. |
