I often receive emails from recruiters that go something like this:We are looking for a talented QA Engineer experienced in /test automation|Java|C#/ for our /test automation team|agile team/. Can you refer anyone?*scream*Here's what I replied to the latest one (I really did! I've only edited a little!):Dear Recruiter,
I work as a tester on a development team for a financial services company. Our software manages all aspects of 401(k) retirement plans. Even though we've been practicing agile development for eight years, or maybe because of it, our customers sometimes fall into a trap. Rather than tell us the business problem they need to solve, they give us a user story with the technical implementation already...
I just finished reading Bob Martin's The Clean Coder. I understand why he used that title, but I would have preferred something like The Software Professional or How to Really Enjoy Your Software Career. The lessons in this book are essential for everyone involved in delivering software, not only the programmers.
I always recommend to teams newly transitioning to agile that they keep every iteration the same length. This helps them learn to manage their time, and after a few iterations they'll start to get a rhythm. Hopefully, they'll learn to work incrementally, doing testing and coding concurrently as part of one development effort, so that user stories are finished throughout the iteration, and testing...
If you asked anyone in my team what agile practice is most responsible for our success over the past eight years, I bet they'd answer "retrospectives". At the start of every two-week sprint, we spend time talking about the previous sprint, identifying areas that need improvement, and thiinking of ways to overcome obstacles. But I wonder if it's not so much the retrospectives themselves, as the...
My team is in the middle of one of the hardest projects (we call them "themes") we’ve ever tackled. We’re a high-functioning agile team that has helped our company grow and succeed over several years now (we “went agile” in 2003). Here’s one thing I know for sure: No matter how many problems you solve, new challenges will pop up.
In April, Jeff Patton (with some help from David Hussman) did a presentation for our Agile Denver group called "No One Wants Your Stupid Process." If you aren't familiar with Jeff's work, check his website at www.agileproductdesign.com, or just start Googling.
Currently there's a discussion going around the Blogosphere and Twitterverse about whether or not driving development with acceptance tests–particularly automated acceptance tests--is a good thing. Many expert practitioners have weighed in, including Gojko Adzic, George Dinwiddie, Ron Jeffries, and James Shore.
It's really important to me to be a nice person. I like to be nice to people. I help out, I smile, I answer questions without making people feel stupid, and I bring treats to work. I thank teammates when they're nice to me.
Some leaders in the testing industry continue to maintain that test teams are "gatekeepers," the watchguards for quality. This makes me sad. I've spent many years now in development organizations where everyone-programmers, architects, DBAs, system administrators, analysts, customers as well as testers-takes responsibility for quality. These teams have delivered software whose quality is many...
