Today's testing heuristic – SEP
September 15, 2006
Having seen a number of testers posting their heuristics on Testing reflections, I thought I might chime in with one that popped into my head. I’m calling it the SEP heuristic, which is probably all you need to know about it if you are familiar with Douglas Adams’ Hitchhiker’s Guide books. It is simply this […]
Rolling your own methodology
August 14, 2006
I came across someone asking for an answer to the old “How do you test a stapler” question, and in light of my new role, I thought this was a good opportunity to start taking up James Bach’s methodology challenge, using the stapler example as a starting point. I’m starting with the meta-questions, those which […]
Personas, substruction and other trades’ tricks
July 30, 2006
Developing personas is a well-described technique (see Alan Cooper’s ‘The Inmates are Running the Asylum’ and Mike Cohn’s ‘User Stories Applied’) for considering the different kinds of users of the system we are developing. On a recent project, we began considering the different users who might want to user our product. In the process, I […]
Job hunting and domain-shifting
June 27, 2006
I was responding to a posting on usenet on the trials of transitioning from a hardware and device testing role to a software testing role. Â To me, this breaks down to creating a resume which focuses on the critical, non-domain related skills of testing. Â I think this advice is applicable to anyone seeking to move […]
Sure, it's a developer's world, but still?
March 14, 2006
One more word on XP as methodology (well, a few more actually). Any methodology seems to me to be a snapshot of a solution to a particular problem that somebody solved at some point, with a particular set of people and skills in a specific context. There are occasional statements flying around the agile-testing group […]
New home
March 13, 2006
Time to kick off my new blog at my self-indulgent, self-promotional home. You can find my old blog here. Update – 2009-08-06: In the migration to wordpress, I’ve moved some of that old content here as well.
The practice of simplicity (or Methodology perils)
February 13, 2006
Michael Bolton talks about the perils of simplicity in XP, especially when it comes to defining the word ‘work’. I’ve shared some ‘perils of XP’ conversations with Michael of late, so I wanted to consider my experiences on the topic. One thing that strikes me about software methodologies is that like many things which are […]
Tester meetup in Melbourne, Australia
December 6, 2005
I’ve been (very) slowly collecting names and email addresses of enthusiastic testers in Melbourne, and have been hoping to organise some kind of meetup or regular drinks night. Is anyone from Melbourne reading? If so, drop a comment. If there is enough interest, I will post a venue/time. Erik, you must come! Note: This now […]
Valuing early feedback – Why wait until the end?
June 7, 2005
I suspect that my boss has helped focus this thought for me.� I began wondering about why people wait until finishing something before seeking feedback.� Underlying assumptions behind checking something at the end might be – – that you’re going to get it right first time. – that nobody knows better than you do. – […]
Values
January 14, 2005
Jon Eaves was blogging about problems related to development goals not aligning with business objectives and it resounded with some thoughts I had been having on company values. In addition to goal alignment, I’m thinking at the moment that alignment of values is equally important, or at the very least it helps when the true […]