February 20, 2010 by mensming.

Software Engineering Radio some time ago had a great podcast covering the basics of continuous integration with Chris Read. Highly recommended for both the beginner and the experienced needing a reminder of the basics. Recommended. The episode can be found here.

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January 23, 2010 by mensming.

Even if you are not working on the Microsoft platform, the December 2009 MSDN Magazine has some articles which can be of use to all testers.

In particular, Pairwise Testing with QICT by James McCaffrey provides enough insight into the QICT tool that it can be easily ported to any platform. While Automated Unit Tests for Legacy Code with Pex by Nikhil Sachdeva is specific to Microsoft technologies, Pex is a tool that all testers should become familiar. Finally, Using Agile Techniques to Pay Back Technical Debt by David Laribee has tips that are useful to most test organizations.

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September 7, 2009 by mensming.

One of the things I love is being able to see presentations from conferences I was unable to attend. A coworker passed on a link to this video (55 minutes) from the Business of Software conference. In the talk, Jason Fried of 37Signals, makes of Ruby on Rails and Basecamp, speaks on many aspects of running a software company and keeping teams working effectively.

Here are some of the slide titles, topics and items Jason discussed:

• Planning is vastly overrated - no roadmaps, specifications, projections. Get rid of distractions. Functional specification does not reflect reality and leads to an illusion of agreement.
• Decisions are temporary - optimize for now
• Red flag words - need, can’t, easy, everybody, nobody. These are the words that cause projects to be late
• Interruption is the enemy of productivity - the closer the team is physically, the less you get done. Interruption is not collaboration. A fragmented day is not a productive day.
• Underdoing - target non-consumption
• Find the right size - imagine the software as a physical item
• Follow the chefs - what is your cookbook?
• Always be questioning - Why are we doing this? What problem are we solving? Is this actually useful? Are we adding value? Will this change behavior? Is there an easier way?
• Give up on hard problems - there is an abundance of easy problems
• You’re an editor - Curate your product. Say no to more things than you say yes.
• Work Less
• Q&A - Starts 28 minutes into the video

An enjoyable video, especially the first half before the Q&A session.

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March 22, 2009 by mensming.

In show 146 of Hanselminutes, Scott interviews agile coach Scott Bellware.

It is an interesting conversation about whether test driven development is a misnomer, the misuse of the word testability, test smells, etc. A valuable conversation for testers to consider when discussing ways to improve the quality of a product. (Especially if someone asserts that additional testing is not required since "we use test driven development".)

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March 25, 2007 by mensming.

I attended a breakfast presentation by Steve McConnell (http://www.construx.com) entitled “Legacy of Agile Software Development”. A phrase that caught my attention was “creating opportunities to incorporate change”.

As we all know, The Agile Manifesto (http://agilemanifesto.org/) states valuing “responding to change over following a plan”. Steve’s presentation summarizing agile values had “responding to change” struck out and replaced with “creating opportunities to incorporate change. This struck a chord with me. I have seen many teams that call themselves agile (although I would argue that they were not…) who were resistant to responding to customer requests. Usually, they delay the request stating some rule of the methodology they are following. Almost always, the methodology would allow them to respond to the change — “create the opportunity to incorporate change” — yet the team resists. You can lead a horse to water but can’t make it drink.

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March 23, 2007 by mensming.

Last week, I attended an ASQ dinner meeting where the speaker was Izzy Gesell (http://www.izzyg.com/). The title of the talk was “Tools for Transformation”. I think I would have named the talk “Lessons from Improv”. Izzy is a former improvisation artists and he applies the lessons and techniques from improvisation to the business world.

Izzy’s talk was dynamic and interactive. I took away 3 items which can be applied to a software (or any other) team:

1. Acceptance - Accept what is given and move forward
2. Focus - Concentrate on the essential
3. Trust - In the process and the people

The idea behind acceptance is instead of complaining or trying to change the unchangeable, it is more productive to take what is given and move it to the next level. This does not necessarily imply agreement. Concentrating on the essential - Focus - I believe is a key attribute of all the successful teams I have been a part of. In the case where the team was not performing well, a lack of focus was definitely a component. And finally trust. Once again, the best teams operate in a an environment of trust.

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March 16, 2007 by mensming.

I came across a reference to a Google custom search engine focused on process improvement and software engineering created by Gupta Boda.

PRISE - PRocess Improvement and Software Engineering (alpha)

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