Five for Friday – February 25, 2022

Some combination of fever and remnants of generic brand Sudafed from the building 30 first-aid cabinet seem to be forcing me to perform another round of keyboard pounding hoping that something close to comprehensible English will spew forth. We’ll see how it goes – luckily this is more or less a personal blog (where I…

I spent the week in Los Angeles – meeting some of my peers at Unity for the first time…which was surreal. I did manage a quick walk on the beach – but of course I’m such a bright shade of Northwestern US white, that my face is completely sunburnt. Fortunately, heading back to the shade…

I’ve been thinking a lot less about testing activities lately, and much, much more on how we to make higher quality software in general. The theme is evident from my last several blog posts, but I’m still figuring out exactly what that means for me. What it boils down to, is a few principles that…

Way back in 2008 when I wrote chapter three of HWTSAM, I briefly mentioned the HiPPO in the context of ship room (war room) meeting structure: Everyone’s voice is important. A phrase heard in many war rooms is “Don’t listen to the HiPPO”—where HiPPO is an acronym for highest-paid person’s opinion. It was a term…

Should you automate everything, or nothing? Should you test everything, or nothing? How about leadership – should you dictate every detail of what your team should do, or give them no guidance at all. The answer for all of these questions – as you’d expect, is “somewhere in the middle”. In my experience, most people…

To Automate, or not to Automate, that is the question that confuses testers around the world. One tester may say, "I automate everything, I am a test automation ninja!". Another tester may say, "I do not automate, if I automate I fail to engage my brain properly in the testing effort!". Another may say, “I…