ONC Interop Forum Highlights Data Quality, Testing

Last week, several of us from the AEGIS team attended ONC’s third annual Interoperability Forum at the Renaissance Hotel in Washington, DC. We were pleased to see the level of excitement and even optimism about the industry’s progress toward achieving true interoperability among systems using electronic health information. We continue to see the involvement of […]

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Why Software Testing Needs Independence

We all know at least one person – who may or may not be considered a hypochondriac – who self-diagnoses his or her own health maladies. We sometimes know them well enough they will admit that, when they go the doctor and the doctor runs her own tests, the diagnosis is quite different. I’ll be the […]

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AEGIS Retains CMMI ML3 Ratings

We are very happy once again to announce that our recent CMMI SCAMPI Class A appraisal results are now official. We were appraised as continuing to operate at Maturity Level 3 in two constellations – Development (DEV) and Services (SVC) including Service System Development (+SSD). This was our third ML3 appraisal for SVC+SSD and our fourth […]

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Dammit, Jim, I’m a Doctor Not an EHR Software Tester!

Have you seen ONC’s latest challenge? I was all ready to ease into a long Memorial Day weekend when I saw the news, now I’m annoyed. The Office of the National Coordinator for Health IT has identified a problem with end users of EHR software needing to report concerns they observe while using the system. […]

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CMMI 2.0 Brings Big Changes

The CMMI Institute’s annual conference, Capability Counts, was held this year on May 1-2 in Reston, VA. The major news that I anticipated was the formal rolling out of CMMI 2.0. The new version of the model – the first major release since the original version 1.1 debuted in 2002 – is also the first […]

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Ensuring the right people for the job

The Homeland Security and Defense Business Council recently released The Business of Homeland Security report authored by Grant Thornton that’s part of the 20/20 Project on the Homeland Security Enterprise. The report is based on a survey conducted last summer (2017) of current and former DHS officials as well as industry representatives. The report listed […]

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Latest Lessons from Japan on Agile

Warning to IT – the Japanese industry that gave us the seeds of modern software development methodologies (Lean, Agile) are seeing their models fail. Why? In part, they reduced testing, cut skilled, experienced personnel in favor of less expensive labor, and essentially rubber-stamped inspections (or worse). Lesson: modern methods don’t change human nature. Quality assurance […]

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Kanban: Not Just For Making Cars

Rewind back to 2015. My manager walks in and asks us to gather round as he announces excitedly we’ll be using kanban. “Kanban … isn’t that a manufacturing scheduling system?” I was slightly confused. I studied the concept in college. But I work as an automation tester, how is this relevant to what I do? […]

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Test Like You Mean It

Tonight begins the second round of the 2017 NHL Stanley Cup playoffs for our hometown Washington Capitals. They have no doubt spent the past few days furiously practicing in preparation for facing the reigning champs, the Pittsburgh Penguins. It occurs to me that as they have practiced, their coaches didn’t just set up orange cones […]

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Questionable Assumptions Threaten Federal Contracting Reform

There’s no question that federal contracting for technology services is finally achieving significant momentum toward innovations that are long overdue. To be clear: the acquisition techniques themselves are innovating in order to allow, in turn, for the end result of what the government receives to be technologically innovative. That’s a good thing. Nowhere in the […]

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