Articles

Changing the Ground

We need to test infrastructure upgrades carefully to avoid disruptions to our applications—whether still under development or running in production. A good regression test suite can do most of what’s needed, but what if you don’t have one? You can take the time to create a new regression suite, but consultant Fiona Charles recommends an alternative: Use a cross-functional team approach to identify and target upgrade risks directly.

Throughput or Productivity?

I’m tech-editing an article for the Agile Journal. I’m having a discussion with the author about the words “productivity” and “throughput.”

I believe that what we measure in agile teams is throughput, the number of features through the team over time. I don’t think we measure productivity, the number of features per person or per team over time.

In kanban, it’s quite clear. We measure throughput. To me, it’s clear in iterations, too. We measure throughput.

Belgium Testing Days Slides Posted

I posted my slides from my keynote from Belgium Testing Days 2012 at slideshare.net. The keynote was “QA or Test? Does it Matter? You Bet it Does!”

I hope you enjoy it. “This person has more stories and may be funnier in person than the slides appear to be.”

Patterns and The Storytelling Animal

I had the good fortune to be involved in the early days of the Software Patterns. In brief, patterns are about capturing solutions that people have developed organically over time, which have proven to be the best ones for the context at hand. What's interesting about patterns to those who are used to more academic approaches to learning about software, is that a good pattern isn't novel. If you've been working in a domain for a time you are likely to recognize solutions you have used before.

Heard and Valued: Three Short and Useful Bits of Advice for Improving Your Leadership Skills

Yogi Berra famously said, “You can observe a lot just by watching.” In this article, Payson shares some of what he’s learned about leadership just by listening. Learn how transparency and iterative improvement can maximize the results of great leadership.

Dear Customer: The Truth About IT Projects

In this personal and direct letter to customers, Allan Kelly pulls no punches and explains why IT projects don't always pan out for all of the parties involved.

Before You Create Your Next Presentation

Before beginning work on creating work on your next sales presentation, try to imagine what you and your audiences' reactions will be after it's over. By asking yourselves some crucial questions regarding your audience's takeaways, you'll help create a memorable presentation.

Make Time for Accessibility Testing

Ten percent of the world's population lives with some sort of disability. So, is your software product optimized accessible to these people? Rajini Padmanaban takes a look at the different types of disabilities out there and the ways to ensure your product works well with as many of these needs as possible.

Tripped Up on Timezones!

I just posted Managing Timezones in Geographically Distributed Agile Teams. I have a funny story to tell about it. I’m in Belgium, getting ready for Belgium Testing Days. This weekend, the US changes to Daylight Savings Time. But Europe doesn’t. So, when do I talk to my husband?

Book Review: I’m Working While They’re Sleeping

Erran Carmel and Alberto Espinosa have written a gem of a book for anyone trying to work in a geographically distributed team: I’m Working While They’re Sleeping: Time Zone Separation Challenges and Solutions.