… What would your test policy be? Is an interesting question posed by Annie-Marie Charrett on the SoftwaretestingClub.com Site. It turns out that Annie-Marie is contributing to an IEEE council […]
Community Support, Love and Beauty
Clay Shirky gave a talk that covered community support at SuperNova 2007. During part of the talk he covers the value of community support – things like this blog, or […]
Interview with Software Quality Engineering
Software Quality Engineering recently interviewed me for it’s Grey Matters podcast, about career management for testers and the use of social software for software engineering. The podcast went up on […]
It’s all zero-sum – or – more Peter Drucker
The growth companies of the fifties and sixties promised both more sales and higher profits indefinitely. This alone was reason to distrust them. Every experienced manager should have known that […]
On Vacuous Documentation
If you read this blog, you know I’m no fan of vacuous documentation. In my experience, “comprehensive” documentation is often not comprehensible, and likely to get stuck in a drawer […]
When to automate a test?
Along the lines of the previous post, I’ve just re-discovered a classic – Marick’s Paper on When To Automate A Test. Oh, it’s from 1998, and it’s showing it’s age, […]
Testers Taking Too Long?
We had a question on the Michigan Agile Enthusist’s list – the team was doing Scrum, four devs and a tester, and the testing was taking too long. In some […]
And More from Brian Marick
In sum: compared to doing exploratory testing and TDD right, the testing we’re talking about has modest value. Right now, the cost is more than modest, to the point where […]
Tech Debt Workshop – Update
I’m pleased to report that the tech debt workshop is full up. Aside from people who have already been in contact, I won’t be accepting any additional applications. So let […]
Be /Good/
Phil Graham recently put out an essay called Be Good. As usual, it is brilliant and insightful – and the challenge to “not just don’t be evil, but actually be […]
So, what’s next?
I could continue to explore the tech debt metaphor, or tell you what it’s like to plan a peer conference of it’s size. I am continuing to read Peter Drucker, […]
My position on Tech Debt – II
Michael Feathers recently wrote on the tech-debt yahoo group:I think there’s a couple of different ways that we can approach all of this. One is to see technical debt as […]
What does "Broken" mean?
“The foo feature is Broken”“Widgets are completly Horked”“Gadgets are FuBar under IE7”“FF3 and the wiki no work-ey” If you talk to any developer, any PM, or read the testing literature, […]
I read the news today, oh boy …
This month’s Software Test and Performance Magazine has a new monthly column by Chris McMahon and myself. “ST&Pedia” is an encyclopedia for software testers. You can download the issue here. […]
Management and Metrics – II
After the previous post, I literally said out loud “I have to blog about this”, marked the page, and put it down. I should have kept reading. Here is the […]
On Management And Metrics
Speaking of Management: Peter DruckerPeter Drucker analyzed how General Motors was run in the 1940’s, essentially defining management as a term. He wrote a number of books, published an incredible […]
An update from Matt’s day job
My last company was really top flight. I enjoyed my time at Priority Health; it’s a good company. Toward, the end though, I had this odd experience. I struck up […]
On Neogtiation
If you want to get good at negotiation, you could go to your library and check out every book on the subject, then practice by doing low-risk negotiations like bartering […]
A typical response to a typical day
Chris McMahon pointed me to this, and I thought it was worth sharing here:
Best Practices?
Let’s say you invite an Olympic marathon competitor and the Olympic Gold-Medal Winner in 100 yard dash over for a late afternoon lunch. (Did I mention – while winning the […]