Five for Friday – January 26, 2018

I recently ran across this article on nytimes.com from over a year ago. Here’s the punch line (or at least one of them): “We looked at tens of thousands of interviews, and everyone who had done the interviews and what they scored the candidate, and how that person ultimately performed in their job. We found…

Last week I happened to log on to twitter just as some test folks were marveling over the the massive parallels between the video with the gorilla and the basketball players and software testing. I made some cracks about the absurdity of the hype, and more than a few testers freaked out. Somewhere in the…

Thanks everyone who played the Numberz Challenge. I’ll get the boring part out of the way first. Based on response time and completeness (and bonus points for reverse engineering the “bad” parts of the app), lixiong is the winner of either a signed copy of HWTSAM or an Amazon gift certificate. Li – email me…

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…

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 –…

As 2012 comes to a close, I thought I’d recap the year. I think this little exercise is mostly for me, but I suppose new blog readers (or people with too much free time) may find some points of interest. Some more from the non-Microsoft front follows. My most popular blog posts from the last…