Welcome to the Software Process and Measurement Cast 83! The interview in the SPaMCAST 83 is with Gary Gack. We discussed his new book "Managing The Black Hole". The book and the discussion centered on how organizations can improve their effectiveness. Lots of great ideas for orgnaizations at all levels of maturity. Gary Gack, is the founder and President of Process-Fusion.net, a provider of e-Learning, Assessments, Strategy advice, Training, and Coaching relating to integration and deployment of software and IT industry best practices. Mr. Gack holds an MBA from the Wharton School and is a Lean Six Sigma Black Belt. In addition he is an ASQ Certified Software Quality Engineer (CSQE), a Certified Scrum Master, a Visiting Scientist with the Software Engineering Institute (2006) where he co-authored the "Measuring for Performance Driven Improvement 1" course for which he is an authorized instructor, and he holds the ITIL Foundation Certification. He has more than 40 years of diverse experience in the software and IT industry, including more than 20 years focused on process improvement. He is the author of numerous articles and a book entitled "Managing the “Black Hole”: The Executive’s Guide to Software Project Risk. Contact information:Email: [email protected] Website: http://www.process-fusion.net/ The essay examines the the software measure / metric: Size. Size really is important and the type of size measure you choose will expand or constrain what you can do with the data. We will define physical, functional and relative measures of size and where they are useful. Contact information for the Software Process and Measurement Cast Email: [email protected] Voicemail: +1-206-888-6111 Website: www.spamcast.net Twitter: www.twitter.com/tcagley Facebook: http://bit.ly/16fBWV The SPaMCAST's production schedule is on the Software Process and Measurement Facebook page. Yell at me if you have ideas for future interviews or essays. Your thoughts, comments, suggestions and ideas are welcome. Conferences and Speaking Engagements in 2010 (To Date) Quest Conference in Dallas April 21 - 23. I will be talking on "Process Improvement in a Multi-Model World". The conference includes two days of workshops. The website to get more information is http://www.qaiquest.org/dallas/index.html Next! The interview in the SPaMCAST 84 is with Ricardo Valardi. We discussed software cost estimation and behavioural economics. THis was a great interview that anyone working in the IT field will find immeadeatly usefull and thought provoking in the long term.