What am I really saying here?

I recently re-read (skimmed) Steve McConnell’s Software Estimation, Demystifying the Black Art. When I met with Microsoft Press to pitch HWTSAM, they gave a hot-off-the press new copy, and while some of the book feels “old school”, it’s still filled with foundational estimation knowledge. I work at home, and absolutely need a quiet PC –…

I’ve had a few conversations on twitter over the past few weeks about tester titles. My conclusion is that test titles are meaningless, but let’s look at why I think that, and why it doesn’t matter. Let’s say you’ve been testing for eight years, given a conference presentation or two and wrote a bit about…

I’ve been thinking about how professional testers describe themselves. We have high level labels like Tester, SDET, or Quality Engineer, but beyond those (mostly meaningless) titles, many of us have our own personal missions or visions – the words we want people to associate with us. For example, my twitter bio is, “Long time software…

In 2003, Brian Marick introduced the concept of “Agile Quadrants” to describe the scope of testing[1] (later expanded on by Lisa Crispin and Janet Gregory[2]). Several people (including me) have expanded and elaborated on the quadrants to describe the scope and activities of testing. Here’s a version of the testing quadrants. One challenge I’ve seen…

We are officially in the end game of 2023, but the internet continues to supply me with interesting things to read. And now I’ve counted to five one more time, so it’s time to hit publish (or in this case, schedule the publish) and get on with my day.

I gave a talk at a meetup hosted by GoDaddy last Friday. I had a good time, and the comments afterwards were positive. More than one of the folks I talked with after the event asked why I don’t blog anymore. I have been a bit sparse in my blogging over the last few years,…