Pretend for a moment you are a new development manager or director. You hired a programmer to lead a test automation effort. Gave the programmer time, resources, and attention. The programmer has no responsibilities outside of the tooling. The automation has had time to mature. It was supposed to speed you up. Now imagine this […]
Continuous Testing: Defined
If you check Wikipedia, or google, you’ll likely come to the Consensus-version definition of Continuous Testing. That definition is fine, I guess, as far as it goes. What it does not do in my book is provide enough of a litmus-test to say “Yes, this is, or is not, Continuous Testing.” So I am proposing […]
On Remote Work – For TechRepublic
Long-time Excelon fans probably remember that back in 2008-2011 I was working from-home for Socialtext. That was some of the most intense, high-functioning time of my career. We hired the man who invented the spreadsheet, Dan Bricklin, and I got to test his web-based collaborative spreadsheet. If you averaged my time since, about 80% of […]
Individuals and Interactions
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 […]
A Real Interview Result
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 […]
Announcing WhuTTT at the KWSQA Conference
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.
Excelon At CAST2016
Can you believe it’s only a week to TestRetreat and CAST? It’s time to talk about some plans. Excelon Development, along with a few friends, is renting a small condominium for CAST; it is roughly two blocks from the Conference Center for CAST. TestRetreat will be at the Best Western Plus Chateau Granville Hotel & […]
Make Software Testing Great … Again?
Yesterday, as I was attending James Bach’s course reinventing testers, I took a picture of a slide that I knew would be contentious in the Software Testing world … and still tweeted it. The responses were as acrimonious as the original text, and my response, which boiled down to “hey man, it’s not my slide” […]
“Must have Agile/Scrum Experience”
Recently, someone asked me what “Must have Agile/Scrum Experience” in job descriptions and advertisements actually means. It got me thinking, so I wrote it up for Medium.com What’s medium, you ask? It’s a relatively new website designed for shorter, more personal writing. There are no ads on it, writers are not compensated; I’m using it […]
TestRetreat at CAST2016
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, […]
Valid 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 […]
When 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.
Interviews 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 […]
Saving 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 […]
The more things change …
“We value responding to change over following a plan” – Some guys in Utah, 2001 It’s been fun posting at “Testing at the Edge of Chaos”, over at Software Test Performance Magazine, and also fun contributing to a monthly column with Chris McMahon. At the same time, the magazine is changing. I’m happy about the […]