Warning – not software quality related, but perhaps even more important information follows. I am diligent about backups (and paranoid about losing files)…and frugal, so dumping my backup strategy here for those who may be like minded. First thing to be paranoid about is work in progress. If it’s code or text based, put it…
It’s been a pretty remarkable 2017 for me – so much so, that it’s worth (for me) a little reflection. This time last year, I had made the choice to leave Microsoft (but hadn’t told anyone yet). I went into work the week after Christmas (when nobody is there), and quietly cleaned out a bunch…
I had one of those meditative weekends, where between solving Advent of Code challenges, seeing the new Star Wars movie, and cleaning my home office, some ideas (sort of) merged in my head. One part of the recipe was yet-another-discussion on twitter over the weekend (over) reacting to the Test is Dead theme that came…
I’ve enjoyed my string of FfF posts as an easy way to share stuff I like with little need to elaborate. It *will* continue, but I’m going to take a break for the last two weeks of the year. FfF will be back on January 5, 2018. I recently read Ray Dalio’s, Principles. In the preface,…
It’s the FfF Moscow edition (I’m here for the Heisenbug conference. As I approach my one year mark at Unity (and hopefully established a small bit of credibility), I’m beginning to push a bit harder on some topics. I’m reminded of this quote from Colin Powell, who says, “…leadership is sometimes about being willing to…
Some of my favorite / most interesting thoughts and links from the week… Yet another quote from one of my heroes, Simon Sinek: “There are only two ways to influence human behavior: you can manipulate it or you can inspire it.” I half-jokingly told someone on my team this week that “leadership is manipulation”, and…
I took some time off from speaking (too much) at conferences over the past few years. I spoke at TestBash Philadelphia a year ago (and also spoke at the Online Test Conference last summer), but 2017 (and, IIRC, 2016) have been light on me in terms of external speaking. But I’m going to kick off…
The US holiday is a time for us all to reflect on what we’re thankful for. This has been a year of transition, and I’m thankful for my family supporting me changing jobs, and for Unity for giving me a wonderful place to land. Quote of the week is, “Automated user interface testing is placed…
I’m heading back into a flurry of travel after taking it light for several months. This time, I plan to take Austin Kleon’s advice on Never pay for wi-fi to heart and take the travel time purely for reading, drawing, and reflecting. I’m still reading Pragmatic Thinking and Learning and thinking a lot about the Dreyfus model…
In software testing, we use a lot of words – some well known, others less so – to describe our testing activities. For as long as I’ve been in software (which is longer than most of you), we’ve debated and argued which descriptions, and which combinations of words best describe the various activities that fall…
Had my entire team visit me in Seattle (Bellevue) this week, so I’m a little slow on this week’s share. This quote about Agile is something I think I’ll repeat frequently – “Agile is worthless unless it serves as a catalyst for continuous improvement. ” The full article (here) is also worth the read. Twitter appears…
I shared an article on rotten automation on the testproject blog here – https://blog.testproject.io/2017/11/07/somethings-rotten-test-automation/ A was also part of of Engel Jones 12-minute podcast series. My interview (very little about testing) is here – https://twelveminuteconvos.com/alan-page/
Here are five things that caught my attention this week. I created a mind-map for an article I have coming out next week. It reminded me how valuable mind-maps are for communicating information. I’ve had a lot of luck using them as test strategy docs, as the visual nature gets much more engagement and feedback than a…
Five things floating through my head this week. I’ve referred to a line from Leadership on the Line (Heifetz / Linsky) more than once this week (and hundreds of times over the years), but worth sharing again here. “Leadership is disappointing people at a level they can absorb”. I’ve frequently used “… at a level they can tolerate“,…
As promised, back again with five things I think are worth sharing this week. First off, everyone needs to read this post from Cassandra Leung. It’s a well written and haunting view into sexual harassment. It’s something we all should read, reflect, and keep in mind as we grow any community we are part of. This…
Inspired by Tim Ferris, and more recently, Marcus Purvis (Five Share Friday), I too am going to start sharing five interesting-to-me ideas or links every Friday. Until/unless I forget. Here goes this week’s list. I’ve been reading a lot (a LOT) of management books recently. Last week, I completed Debugging Teams, and recommend it. I found…
In what seems like a lifetime ago (it’s been six years), I wrote about Titles for Testers (tl;dr – they don’t matter). My wordpress stats tell me that it’s one of my most popular posts with links from a crapload of sites. The 2017 update is that titles still don’t matter. Well, they do in…
People talk a lot about how they got into testing (I was told I was a tester on my first day at a tech support job), but for those of us who have been in testing roles for a substantial amount of time, I think it’s equally important to think about why we have stayed in…
There’s been s lot reported lately on the Equifax security breach. Equifax failed to apply a security patch for Apache Struts in a timely manner, and attackers took advantage of this to get at a whole lot of customer data. What we don’t know at this time is whether this was a fluke due to a…
I stumbled across an article by Steven Sinofsky where he discusses the merits of the Functional vs. Product team (tl;dr – managers of a discipline – e.g. all testers vs. Feature teams). Although the article was published just a year ago, Steve is discussing an organizational change from a decade ago in Windows where development, test,…