Take the ‘Crappy Work’ Litmus Test
We’ve placed a ban on crappy work within my test team. From now on, we declare that the testing team will refuse to do crappy work. The challenge is in knowing how your doing good work or crappy work?...
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“Nobody — calls me — chicken.”
One of the morals of the Back to The Future series is be able to walk away from a fight. It took three movies for Marty McFly to learn this self control. Biff Tannen calling Marty “chicken” in 1955....
View ArticleA Developer’s Ode to a Tester
Oh tester why dost thou despair? The code is right of this we are aware! We verify. We know what we do know No need to doubt and think of all this woe! Instead be bright and bring us certainty, Let...
View ArticleHi, my name is Done and I’m conflicted
If there is ever one word that highlights the difference between a tester and a developer’s mindset it has to be the word done. Developers¹ tend think of done as a form of sign off. A story is done...
View ArticleHow’s your signal to noise ratio going?
It’s not only engineers that need to deal with S/N (Signal to Noise Ratio). Test Managers have to deal with lots of noise, in managing projects, dealing with stakeholders, identifying potential future...
View ArticleBobbing for Embedded Apples
One of my first recollections of physics is the image of Archimedes running down the street, dripping wet from his bath and shouting: “Eureka I found it!” on discovering his principle of fluid...
View ArticlePaying Attention to Paying Attention to Detail
One question I often ask a tester in an interview is what they believe are the essential skills that differentiate a good tester from a great tester. One of the common replies is “Paying attention to...
View ArticleNice girls don’t get the Keynote
Keynotes are something to be earned and rightly so. Typically a keynote comes from someone who likes to speak, who is good at speaking, and has something interesting to talk about. I know many women...
View ArticleAgile Australia and Intent based Leadership
Today I went to Agile Australia as an attendee. That’s a first for me, usually, I’m speaking. It was wonderful to go with a different purpose, which is to learn from others. Typically, if I’m speaking...
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No women speakers? No Bother!
That might surprise you if you listened the Eurostar Webinar last week where Fiona Charles and I explored the numbers of women speaking at software testing conferences. If you didn’t hear it you can...
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Testing Microservices – what do you want to know?
The following is an outline of blog post on Testing Microservices. Does it sound interesting? Vote below to get me to write it or focus on something else Testing Microservices 1) Microservices is a...
View ArticleThe Base Camp Heuristic
The ‘Base Camp’ heuristic is the work required to find any bug. Typically ‘Base Camp’ bugs tend to be low lying fruit and can be found quickly, especially if a tester is experienced. In the world of...
View ArticleLeave the testing to the experts!
Why is it that in a company almost everyone has an opinion and knows the best way to test? What makes so many of these people feel they know how testing ought to be performed? Business people tell me,...
View ArticleNuance on leaving testing to the experts
Yesterday I wrote a blog post entitled “Leave Testing to the Experts” to which Maaret quickly reacted online and by a post where she strongly disagreed with the sentiment. Disagreement is a very...
View ArticleBuilding the Quality Inn
Building Quality In integral part of moving to a DevOps culture, at least according to the State of DevOps 2016. But what exactly does that mean? Sure, the report cites Deming, in particular “Cease...
View ArticleWhat Teenagers and MVP have in common
Teenage children can be the classic MVP’s (Minimal Viable Products) in action. Here’s why: They tend to be self deterministic They tend to experiment constantly They don’t attempt to predict the...
View ArticleQuality Workshop
One sure way to liven up a meeting is to ask attendees for a definition of quality. My experience has been that this is most entertaining particularly if you have both devops and testing in the room....
View ArticleTest Leadership is here to stay
In his article “What leaders do”, J.P Kotter makes the following distinction between management and leadership: Managers promote stability, leaders press for change For example: Management involves...
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