Recently, Tom Cagley of Software Process and Measurement Cast interviewed me concerning load testing. Tom's blogs and podcasts are focused on interviews, essays, facts and tips about process improvement and measurement in the Information Technology arena. INTERVIEW IS HERE

Tom is Vice President, Director of Process Improvement and Measurement at David Consulting Group, and the author of the hit book Mastering Software Project Management: Best Practices, Tools and Techniques. The book has received all 5-star ratings on Amazon.com.

Our load testing interview not only talks about web performance and stress testing, but it touches on several ancillary subjects of interest to Tom from his perspective with Agile software development. I have worked with LEAN manufacturing process, and Tom applies many of the best practices from this successful discipline in his approach to software development. One mantra of LEAN is, "You can't control what you can't measure." Tom has a keen emphasis on measurement of any metric that can help a team deliver better software.

In fact, he has written several blog posts about Seven Deadly Sins of Measurement Programs that could be quite beneficial to developers studying load testing because measurement of metrics is critical to all web system performance.

SPaMCAST's podcasts topics cover a wide range including:

• Agile Development
• Software Testing
• Project Management
• Quality Assurance
• Requirements
• Function Points
• Business Analysis
• Usability
• Web 2.0
• Architecture
• Configuration Management
• Load Testing
• Performance Engineering

Tom's contact information is included on the Software Process & Measurement Cast (SPaMCAST) site as:

Contact information for the Software Process and Measurement Cast
Email:
Voicemail: +1-206-888-6111
Website: www.spamcast.net
Twitter: www.twitter.com/tcagley
Facebook: http://bit.ly/16fBWV

I'm not sure I like the acronym SPAM, but I like Tom's breadth and depth of IT knowledge and how he shares it with other geeks like me.

Tom is also a past president of The International Function Point Users’ Group (IFPUG). From their site:

IFPUG is a non-profit, member governed organization. The mission of IFPUG is to be a recognized leader in promoting and encouraging the effective management of application software development and maintenance activities through the use of Function Point Analysis and other software measurement techniques. IFPUG endorses FPA as its standard methodology for software sizing. In support of this, IFPUG maintains the Function Point Counting Practices Manual, the recognized industry standard for FPA. IFPUG also provides a forum for networking and information exchange that promotes and encourages the use of software product and process metrics.