Ken Schwaber, co-creator of Scrum and author of several Scrum books, has an interesting talk “Canary in the Coal Mine” about the impact of a degrading codebase on project velocity. […]
Redundancy?
There’s been an interesting little discussion on the Test-Driven-Development list about redundant tests that goes something like this: A) I have a unit test called “UpdatesDatabase” in my database-connector object […]
The Unit Test Unit
Remember the bru-ha-ha when I asked to define unit test? Well, it’s published. 🙂 Chris McMahon and I co-wrote “The Unit Test Unit”(*), which updates Meyer’s 1979 definition for today […]
Testing Service Oriented Architectures
I sent an article off to CIO last week on Testing Service Oriented Architectures.They printed it. I guess that means they liked it?
Testing is overrated
Words are funny things. Take for example, the word ‘testing.’ It seems at first that word is pretty obvious – checking the software to find out if it works or […]
Going to Boston in the Fall?
I went to Software Test and Performance Conference last spring in California and had an absolute blast, met some really interesting people, reconnected with some old friends, and learned a […]
June Issue of AST Newsletter is out –
For those who don’t know, I am a paid member of the Association for Software Testing. Yes, my own pocket. No work reimbursement; I spent real money. The AST puts […]
If you were a CIO …
… 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, […]