It’s been four years since the Association for Software Testing ran Test Coach Camp as a two-day pre-conference event. Limited to thirty people and by-application, we ran the event using Open-Space Technology, with the attendees proposing and running the sessions they were interested. AST supported the event with a grant to cover food and facilities, […]
Read MoreValid Measures for Mere Humans
“Metrics that are not valid are dangerous” – One of the principles of Context-Driven Testing In Action Over the weekend, I got in another silly argument over the internet. Martin Burns referenced a Rally whitepaper, claiming that teams that used task hours and story points had 250% more quality than teams doing #NoEstimates. At first […]
Read MoreMaking QA Strategic – Let’s Get Real
This February, for the third time in a row, I made the trek from West Michigan to Columbus, OH, for the QA Or The Highway Conference. The show maxed out the facility, and featured keynotes from Karen Johnson, now at Salesforce.com, and Bramha Ghosh of Google. The pleasant surprise for me was the debate on […]
Read MoreWhen to lie on your resume
If you have reason to, please leave it in the comments. I’m afraid I can’t think of one at the moment.
Read MoreNYC Trip – And Periscope
I’m headed to New York this week, for a client visit and also to attend NYC Testers, which seems to be suddenly taking advantage of the lots-of-tech-in-a-small-area that is New York City. Over the next year or so, I’m going to make an effort to get out to more meetups; we’re trying to put some […]
Read MoreWe’re going to Orcas Island
“The shoemakers children have no shoes” may be a common expression, but it is common because it is true enough, enough of the time. The mechanic’s car is a beater that goes without repair, the doctor refuses to get help about his back, the trainers and consultants don’t pay for training. That might be true […]
Read MoreWhat have we been up to?
It’s been a busy few months at Excelon. The New York Trip, a brief European tour, Justin went to Boston for STPCon, thanksgiving, lots of writing – actually lots and lots of writing, just not any of it here. Let me tell you about it. Before all that happened, over the summer, Joe Colantonio interviewed […]
Read MoreTestBash NYC
Testbash New York is November 5-6th . Sadly, it doesn’t look like Excelon will be sending anyone. We won’t have any speakers, no table or booth. And yet we are coming in to the event at the full sponsor level – not a $250 micro-sponsorship, but a significant amount. Why? Because we believe in what […]
Read MoreInterviews Up!
I’ve had a fair number of interviews lately that I put up on twitter; I thought I’d share a few of them here with a little background. Last year, Carlos Ble interviewed me on general testing, while Ananad Bagmar at ThoughtWorks interviewed me on what I was up to lately. Later in the year, the […]
Read MoreSaving the Scrum – Serious This Time!
Almost exactly one year ago Markus and I met at Agile2014 and came up with a new idea, “Save Our Scrum.” We saw problems across not only our customers, but also most line employees we met at user groups, on twitter, and nearly every “Agile” event we attended. A few months later we announced it […]
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