Author: Alan Page

I’m well over the one-year mark in writing these weekly posts. I’ve enjoyed doing them, but pleasantly surprised on the positive feedback.

In fact…

• Rainforest QA said that this blog was one of the top 6 QA blogs to read in 2019. I better step up my game and see if I can fulfill that prophecy.
• A few posts ago, I mentioned I was reading Farsighted, by Steven Johnson (it’s a book about decision making). A colleague recently forwarded me Helpful decision-making advice & frameworks from Farnam Street, and I’m finding it valuable.
• So…Microsoft is going to start using Chromium for Edge. Go fill your popcorn buckets and see how this plays out.
• Also shared by a colleague this week is a presentation from Kathryn Koehler on communication – Communicate Like a Boss is well delivered, and full of information that too many managers ignore.
• And finally, an excellent article on Hacking Google’s bug-tracking system.

Monday is an important anniversary, so if I remember, I’ll post about it then. Otherwise, see you next week.

Once again – here are five things I found worth sharing this week.

• Steve Denning investigates The Hidden Heart Of 21st-Century Management
• Dawid Dylowicz wrote a fine blog post on what it’s like Joining A Startup As The First QA
• I’m sure you’re all aware of the recent malicious dependency issue that was blazing the internet. If not – or if you want to read a good write up about package trust in general, The Problem of Package Manager Trust is worth a read
• There are a few things I disagree with in this article about A Simple Way to Map Out Your Career Ambitions, but there’s enough here that I do like (“The challenge for many of us is that we’re delusional about our actual origin and destination. “), that I’m happy to recommend it. 
• Finally, this article on monitoring at Stack Overflow is really (really!) good.

Here are some of the interesting things that passed my way this week.

• I thought this article from Hotjar on “The 10 lessons we learned launching (& killing) our $200K mobile app” was a really interesting read (thanks Perze). The learning here align quite well with Modern Testing
• I’d think this article about the making of the latest Google Halloween doodle would be interesting even if Unity weren’t part of the story.
• Money doesn’t buy happiness – meaningful work does. 9 Out of 10 People Are Willing to Earn Less Money to Do More-Meaningful Work 
• Camille Fournier (author of The Manager’s Path) posted I Hate Manager Readmes – it’s worth reading to hear her opinion, but to me it reads sort of like the articles that say Agile sucks because when you do it wrong it doesn’t work. The problem isn’t in the readme concept – it’s in some of the execution in creating these. Mine (which was written pre-readme-fad) is here.
• I posted this link a year ago, but it’s worth posting every year at this time. The Advent of Code (a fun daily programming challenge) begins December 1

I think I’m at about a year of this experiment of sharing 5 things I found interesting every week. I still like it, and hope you have found at least a few interesting links here over the past year.

• I’ve been reading Five Stars: The Communication Secrets to Get from Good to Great (I’m also reading a few other things, and I really need to stop the habit of reading several books at once). It makes the point that communication and storytelling are critical to self-development.
• Here is a highly (and sadly) accurate list of the 7 Habits of Highly Ineffective Managers.
• Interesting article from Greg Paciga on Rethinking Velocity.
• Unity won an Emmy for Baymax Dreams. I’m in no way connected to the work, but still very proud.
• As I type this, the bookshelf behind me contains hundreds of Marvel comics – most from when I read and collected in the 1970s and 1980s. As I’m sure everyone knows, Stan Lee died this week. His work remains a huge part of my life, and while I know a lot of people know him mainly for his cameos in Marvel movies, his greatest cameo is more likely his appearance in all of our lives.

Well, that

• First is that I love it when people share music with me. One of my team members introduced me to mouse on the keys, and I am enjoying their music so far. One of my favorites is ‘spectres de mouse‘ (Spotify link)
• The New York Times built a nice visualization of election results – quick and simple and tells a story – all good attributes of data viz
• I will save a link to this infographic on Scrum vs Kanban. It highlights the pros and cons of each (ftr, I have a strong preference for Kanban). The cons list remind me that no matter what model you choose if you fail to follow the principles of the model, it’s probably not going to work for you.
• I’ve taught a lot of developers how to write better tests. This article on why good developers write bad unit tests reminds me of a lot of that coaching
• I saw Bohemian Rahpsody last weekend, and you should go see it too. As a long-time Queen fan, I admit I had a bit of a hard time with the movie’s subtle and fictional strays from the history of the band, but the story and acting were fantastic

I’m getting to a stage in my career where I’m beginning to realize that some of my biggest growth happens when I’m doing nothing but thinking.

But, I did leave my head a few times this week and found a few interesting things to share.

• Quote I’m thinking about: “A creative man is motivated by the desire to achieve, not by the desire to beat others.” – Ayn Rand
• If you’re reading this in the US, please vote. If you’re not in a mail-to-vote state (or even if you are), there’s likely relevant information here. 
• This article that asks, Is it time to bring data to managing? brought back a few memories of the awful performance management at msft – along with some reasonable ideas on doing better. 
• Also on the leadership front is this article on leading with love (actual title is less fluffy). It reminds me of the care personally aspect of Radical Candor, which is something I continually try to do better.
• I love solving debugging mysteries and figuring out those WTF moments in software. I found this article on debugging an AWS issue that was fun to follow. One punchline – “Why Amazon S3 returns two different errors for the same problem is beyond me, but that’s not important here.“

• Greg Paciga talks about demoing things that aren’t done – or that don’t work. He’s right – but what’s weird is the heat he took for saying that on twitter
• Mike Cohn (of the automation pyramid fame) asks Three Questions to Determine if Your Organization is Agile
• Yet another really nice article from Jeff Nyman on hiring testing specialists 
• I’m obligated to call out posts that mention Modern Testing – especially when they’re written by Lisa Crispin
• Form your own opinion: A bot disguised as a human software developer fixes bugs

I’m preparing for some meetings with some colleagues in Europe next week and I’m a little frazzled. But this is what my frazzled brain liked this week.

• I’ve been thinking / talking a lot about culture recently. This quote from Radical Candor (which I just read for the third time) seemed relevant.
  “The most amazing thing about a culture is that once it’s strong, it’s self-replicating.
• I guess everyone doesn’t know that Do Not Track doesn’t necessarily do what you think it does.
• Nice advice here on leading with empathy and kindness.
• I liked (and agreed) with this article stating that being busy isn’t necessarily the right thing for leaders. I’m going to read it again right now.
• And finally, we lost Paul Allen this week, and Bill Gates had a few really nice words to share about his relationship with Paul.

Another Friday, another week with cool things to share.

• I’m happily working through Steven Johnson’s newest book, Farsighted: How We Make the Decisions That Matter the Most. I’m a massive Steven Johnson fan, and this book is stories and insights about decision making – but not quick decisions like in Blink (Gladwell) or Decisive (Heath bros). This book is about making big, complex, messy decisions. 
  And I’m loving it.
• Angela Riggs has this article on creating a quality culture that I liked.
• And another great article from Melissa Eaden on Subcutaneous Testing.
• I keep forgetting that Google Plus even exists. I was reminded this week they exist by their plans to shut down.
• Last thing for the list this week is this article from Jim Benson on why Open Offices are Not the Problem (I fully agree with Jim’s rant).

Here are a few (five, actually) things I saw this week and liked.

• This quote from Jim Whitehurst is good leadership advice. “People working in today’s information-rich, dynamic contexts don’t need leaders who think they know everything about prescribing the “best” paths forward. They need leaders who help them sit more comfortably (and sleep more soundly) in a more ambiguous world. “
  
• Not sure how to start on your mountain of technical debt? Start with this article on When is the time to pay technical debt?
• The Chairman of Nokia on Ensuring Every Employee Has a Basic Understanding of Machine Learning — Including Him
• Not sure how you could have missed it, but if you did, read up on the tiny chip hack.
• And finally – a game I think I have to buy (actually, I just did). Dungeons, Dudes, Dames, Danger, Dice and Dragons! Play the game where you play the role of a player playing a role-playing game!