people metrics
Articles
 |
5 Key Elements for Designing a Successful Dashboard When you’re designing a dashboard to track and display metrics, it is important to consider the needs and expectations of the users of the dashboard and the information that is available. There are several aspects to consider when creating a new dashboard in order to make it a useful tool. For a mnemonic device to help you easily remember the qualities that make a good dashboard, just remember the acronym “VITAL.” |
|
 |
Does Domain Expertise Really Matter? Many job descriptions include a requirement for domain expertise to filter candidates for testing jobs. But is expertise really necessary before joining a team? Does it ensure a good tester? Justin Rohrman digs into his experiences in difficult business domains, what expertise means, and how it applies to software testing. |
|
 |
Why You Need Female Testers on Your Team There is a great deal of conversation around the lack of female representation in Silicon Valley. While striving for more equal demographics within the IT world is a worthy cause in its own right, it is actually to our industry’s detriment when we fail to actively include women on testing teams. Read on to learn why. |
|
 |
The Ethics of a Testing Job Interview When conducting a testing job interview, of course you want to ask questions to be sure the candidate has the skills necessary for the position. But what sorts of questions go too far? Is it ethical to ask a candidate to solve an actual problem your company is experiencing—even if you don't end up hiring him? This article explores some moral gray areas. |
Better Software Magazine Articles
 |
All Customers Are Not Created Equal Software developers may not think they have much to do with customers, but it is wise to consider the customer in all you do, from collecting requirements to design and implementation. |
|
 |
Saying No to More Work We’ve all been placed in the situation where a boss asks you to perform more work than you can possibly handle. Johanna Rothman knows firsthand that there is a better way to respond that benefits you and your manager. |
|
 |
Cracking the Code on Millennials Our latest generation of programmers, project managers, and testers is perceived to be uninterested, unmotivated, and difficult to manage. Jason Garber presents innovative techniques you can use to lead your next rising star. |
|
 |
Planning to Performance Test Your App? Think Again! To complement functional validation, software teams are expected to validate performance. But, according to Jun Zhuang, you must be prepared to invest time, personnel, and resources to benefit from performance testing. |
Interviews
 |
8 Ways to Ruin Your One-on-Ones: An Interview with Jason Wick
Video
In this interview, Jason Wick, senior manager at MakeMusic, discusses his STAREAST presentation about eight ways you could be making your one-on-one meetings completely useless. He discusses in depth what he feels is the number one way to ruin these meetings: holding back on feedback. He also offers advice on how you can educate your team leader to avoid the pitfalls that lead to ineffective one-on-ones. |
|
 |
Why Manual Testers Shouldn't Fear Automation: An Interview with Chris Loder
Video
In this interview, Chris Loder, automation architect at InGenius Software, addresses the misconception that the goal of automation is to replace manual testers. |
|
 |
How to Tell Your People They're Worthless: An Interview with Paul LaRue
Podcast
In this interview, Paul LaRue, creator at The UPwards Leader, discusses how you should and shouldn't lead a team. He tells a story about a colleague whose tactics made it difficult to lead a team, as well as what he learned from her many mistakes along the way. |
|
 |
Improving the Efficiency of Your Metrics: An Interview with Mike Trites
Podcast
In this interview, Mike Trites, a senior test consultant, talks about his upcoming presentation at STAREAST 2014, the future of metrics, the importance of improving the efficiency of your metrics, and even an interesting take on the old phrase that numbers never lie. |
Conference Presentations
 |
The Reality Distortion Field of Testing
Slideshow
The reality distortion field (RDF) is a term coined by Bud Tribble at Apple Computers in 1981 to describe Steve Job's charisma and its effect on the developers working on the Macintosh project. |
Lloyd Roden
|
 |
Agile Distributed Teams: Oxymoron or Viable Option?
Slideshow
Many surveys indicate that more teams work in distributed environments. But agile approaches work best when people collocate, huddle around a problem, and closely collaborate on the best solutions that will deliver value. Is collocation the only option these days? Does distributed always imply “dysfunctional”? Does technology help or hinder? Maybe the problem is how we think about the working environment. Mark Kilby will share key principles of successful distributed agile teams that help define better working environments. Understand how the principles apply to different types of distributed teams, and discover how agile practices change in distributed teams and how they may vary from team to team. You'll take back ways to assess your current distributed team environment and generate ideas for improvement. |
Mark Kilby
|
 |
Why Military Veterans Make Exceptional Testers
Slideshow
Hiring trained talent has been a challenge for IT organizations for several years now. How do you find a steady source of qualified candidates for entry-level QA and QE positions, especially considering colleges and universities don't include a software quality assurance curriculum?... |
Brenda Hall
|
 |
The Art of Software Investigation
Slideshow
Although processes and tools play an important role in software testing, the most important testing tool is the mind. Like scientists, testers search for new knowledge and share discoveries—hopefully for the betterment of people’s lives. More than sixty years ago, William I.B. Beveridge reframed discussion of scientific research in his classic book The Art of Scientific Investigation. Rather than add to the many texts on the scientific method, he focused on the mind of the scientist. Join Ben Simo as he applies Beveridge’s principles and techniques for scientific investigation to software testing today. Learn to discover and communicate new knowledge that matters; to think—and test—like scientists; and to continually prepare, experiment, exploit chance, imagine productively, apply intuition and reason, tune observation, and overcome resistance. |
Ben Simo
|
Recommended Web Seminars
Featured Resources
Visit Our Other Communities
StickyMinds is a TechWell community.
Through conferences, training, consulting, and online resources, TechWell helps you develop and deliver great software every day.