Five for Friday – June 14, 2019

The background: I posted some thoughts on how I approach test strategy and what the term means to me a week or so ago. The Rat Pack had some questions on the post and I answered them. But the conversation made me realize that it may be beneficial if I take some time to talk…

Back again for another week of random crap I enjoyed from the internet. This is a wonderful article on helping your teams with burnout. My talk on Leading a Quality Culture from Testing Festival is available here – no paywall, just click play. How often do you ask someone how it’s going and they respond,…

While cleaning out some boxes my Mom had packed away, I came across a yearbook from my freshmen year of high school. I hated my freshmen photo. I had skull surgery a few months earlier (long story for another post), and needed to have my head shaved. As I remember it, by the time school…

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 –…

One thing I’ve learned in my testing career is that where there are bugs, there are more bugs. Some of my colleague Nachi’s research shows that components with a high number of pre-release bugs has a corresponding share of the post-release bugs. The heuristic works well on a smaller scale too – if I find…

Sometime around 9:00 in the morning, exactly fifteen years ago today, I parked my car in the building 4 parking lot on the Microsoft campus. An hour or so later, I was installing a recent build of Windows 95 and trying to learn the details of my new job as quickly as possible. New Years…