I remember listening to the History 5 podcast a few years ago from the University of California at Berkely. One particular lecture struck me; the speaker was talking about commerce. […]
A New Software Website – and a free article
SoftwareQualityConnection.com is a new website about software, quality, process and general business, made possible by the folks at SmartBear Software. They’ve also published an article of mine, on “Four Ways […]
CASTing a Wide Net
So CAST 2011 – the Conference for the Association for Software Testing, is going to be August 8-10 in Seattle, Washington. A fair amount of the program is up, including […]
The limits of systems
Four years ago — well before crisis of fall 2008 or the housing meltdown, I wrote a little piece called Against Systems that got a little bit of press attention. […]
2011 Quality Goals
Things have been a little quiet at Creative Chaos lately — most of my blogging has been over at the Software Test Professionals Community Blog. That said, every now and […]
Budgets, Badges, and Badgers – III
Earlier in the week I introduced the Malcolm Baldridge Quality Award, and my doubts about it — yesterday I posted a quick summary of my opinion. It is a serious […]
Budgets, Badges, and Badgers – II
Last time I introduced the Malcolm Baldridge Quality Award, and my doubts about it. I wrote a serious, detailed response that I will post tomorrow. In the mean time, though, […]
Budgets, Badges, and Badgers – I
I don’t talk about politics much on this blog, but there are some interesting things going on right now with the USA Federal budget that seem relevant. Consider, for example, […]
Test Management Certification
So I’m trying to figure out my 2011 (and beyond!) professional development plan. I’ve got a lot of ideas — I like to try a lot of things at the […]
One way to transition to agile
There’s been a little bit of discussion in the blog-o-sphere lately about how to “sell” agile, or how to convince senior managers to “adopt” agile, how to get buy-in and […]
The Drake Equation of Software Testing
In the 1960’s a scientist named Frank Drake came up with a formula to predict the probability of life on other planets — specifically the chance they would evolve to […]
Types of testers and the future – I
Ok, ok, it’s not literally called boutique tester. But listen to this: You: someone who can make guesses about how a website or application is going to fail, prove that […]
CAST 2011 – August 8, 2011, Seattle Washington
If you’ve been waiting with breathless anticipation for announcements on CAST 2011, wait no more: It’s August 8-10 at the Lynwood Convention Center in Seattle, Washington. Note: I am not […]
Quality is a slogan
Some long-time readers may recall that I am a member of the American Society for Quality, one of the larger, older and more influential non-profits in the Quality Space. ASQ […]
On Skill
I just got back from the software test and performance conference in beautiful Las Vegas, Nevada – conference write-up here. Just after I got back from the conference, we started […]
Software Test Estimation – VII
So we’ve had a bit of an adventure; I’ve covered three different estimation models, each with a basis that isactually sound. And there’s a problem. The problem is simple: We […]
Interlude – About Software Engineering
(More Test Estimation to come, but first: An Interlude) By now many of us know the standard ‘barbs’ – for example, that when Winston Royce designed the waterfall model, he […]
Test Estimation – VI
So far, we have two ways to predict project outcome: First by comparing the test effort to other projects, and suggesting it is “between the six of project X and […]
Test Estimation – V
So one way to estimate the testing phase (if you have such a thing), or at least testing activities, is to compare the test effort to the development effort or […]
Test Estimation – IV
So far, I’ve pointed out various issues in test estimation, pointing out the fallacies involved in simple ‘naive’ test estimation. I also pointed out that is possible to do some […]