The Agile Manifesto says to focus on individuals and interactions over process and tools. At Excelon, we go further to say that may be the single largest driver of performance. So. How. Do. You. Do. That. ? I just wrote up two quick ways to do just that. These are practices you can put into […]
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We’ve been studying lemon markets lately. HR departments simply can not understand every role in the organization, so they hire recruiters. But let’s be honest about the standard for recruiters. A good recruiter knows that JavaScript is in the browser and “not compiled” and the Java is, well, different, and is compiled. Or whatever. If […]
Read MoreI just ran facilitator’s training at KWSQAConf, where I promised the attendees to provide my slides — both of them! Here you go. They are native to keynote and will probably look best in that format. Slides in powerpoint format Slides in PDF format Slides in keynote format For a more detailed, text-based introduction, you […]
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We’ve been a little heads-down here at Excelon, working on our own projects, which we could discuss in a little more detail in a separate post. In the mean time, we’ve been gathering material to teach software testing as a skill-based activity. That turns out to be a lot harder than it sounds.
Read MoreLast night I put this advertisement up on Linkedin: Hello Folks. I’m looking to help place a mid to senior tester in the North Central Region of the USA. Relocation provided. Salary and benefits from day 1. Must be able to work in the USA, cannot sponsor visas. Must be onsite. Testing work is for […]
Read MoreImagine, for a moment, that you bought a home door lock. From your phone, you press the unlock button, and wait. Fifteen seconds pass. Thirty seconds pass. At about sixty seconds, you get a pop-up, that your unlock message failed to send. Back in the real world, fifteen seconds later, you hear a snicker-snack as […]
Read MorePerhaps the most influential, and most humbling work in my career has been on Clean Code, by Robert C. Martin, where I was “just” a reviewer. Separating software along clean lines of interface, adding the ability to swap parts out, combined with clean implementation and unit tests allow teams to make truly maintainable software. Despite […]
Read MoreNine and a half years ago I wrote a blog post, offering a black-belt test challenge. Markus Gaertner, who I knew of and was about to know well, got heavily involved and asked about the system – what does it mean to be a black-belt exactly? I got my belt from JCPenny, so Miagi-Do was […]
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After a five-year absence from the board I have decided to run again for the board of directors of the Association for Software Testing (AST). As part of that process, I dashed off a reply to a six-question interview that included a biography. That questionnaire was pretty good, but I wanted to expand on my […]
Read MoreOver the past eighteen months, the single greatest lesson I have learned about software was in the gym. That is, the human body works as a system. When you lift a heavy box, every muscle group in the chain lifts the box. The best way to strengthen those muscles is to work the body as […]
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