Benjamin Mitchell and the Trap of False Hypocrisy
One of the puzzles of intellectual life is how to criticize something you admire without sounding like you don’t admire it. Benjamin Mitchell has given an insightful talk about social dynamics in Agile...
View ArticleHow Michael Bolton and I Collaborate on Articles
(Someone posted a question on Quora asking how Michael and I write articles together. This is the answer I gave, there.) It begins with time. We take our time. We rarely write on a deadline, except for...
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Test Talk About Trash Walks
So, for exercise, I’m picking up trash. Here is a picture of me all kitted up: Perfectly equipped for road trash collection! So far, I’ve done 37 miles of trash collecting. And I can’t help but see...
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Test Coverage Parallels in Trash Walking
First, about scope… As I began my trash walking (see here and here), I quickly found that I needed guidelines on what counts as my work space and work product. I am collecting trash along the road, so...
View ArticleRegression Test Tool for Trash Walking
My recent flirtation with trash-pickup-as-physical-exercise has led me down a familiar path. Even though it is not my responsibility to clean a public road in the first place, once I do it, I find that...
View ArticleMy Personal Source Code: Books to Learn Analysis
Occasionally people come to me and say they want to learn certain things. They ask “how do I become a good tester” or “how do I design test cases” or “how do I automate” or something specific like...
View ArticleSatisfice Website Quality Assurance
I am a tester. I like being a tester. I once was a developer but I would rather be a tester. However, when it comes to this website I have had to go into developer mode. Since I’m also the CEO of...
View ArticleThe Immaturity of CMM
Originally published in 1994, this article pre-dates “Agile” as a named thing. It was written out of a culture that was critiquing authoritarian and factory-oriented approaches to software development....
View ArticleUnclogging the Bug Pipeline
(Thanks to Michael Bolton for structural editing and for helping me develop this concept, which grew out of our recent testopsy. Thanks to Frances White and Marius Francu, on the RST Slack forum, for...
View ArticlePersuasion for Testers
This question came up in the recently Rapid Software Testing Explored online class. Donatas asks: “Let’s say you discover a problem in the application or the development process itself. However, it...
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