Articles
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Slim Down Your Test Plan Documentation Test plans are essential for communicating intent and requirements for testing efforts, but excessive documentation creates confusion—or just goes unread. Try the 5W2H method. The name comes from the seven questions you ask: why, what, where, when, who, how, and how much. That's all you need to provide valuable feedback and develop a sufficient plan of action. |
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The Apocalypse Plan: What to Consider before Things Go Wrong Undoubtedly, your organization has disaster plans in place for recoverable situations. But what about for going out of business? Thinking about your obligations to clients, users, customers, and partners before the worst happens can make the transition easier for everyone. Here are some people and things you should incorporate into your apocalypse plan. |
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Crowdtesting: A Personal Account When you have a project with a lot of moving parts but not a lot of time, crowdsourced testing may be the way to go. But how do you manage many people in varied locations when you haven't even met them? Yaron Kottler gives his account of finding and leading eighty testers for an international campaign—the challenges and his solutions. |
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5 Ways Testers Can Mitigate Practical Risks in an Agile Team Testers who analyze quality in every aspect of the team’s deliverables also have a responsibility to mitigate risks and practical issues that are bound to come up, and help the team succeed in their product as well as at being agile. Here are five such issues that testers can help the team alleviate or avoid. |
Better Software Magazine Articles
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The Secrets of High-Performance Software Teams Of all issues that impact getting quality products out on time, the team should never focus on simply managing costs. To minimize the risk of perpetual product delivery delays, define what “done” really means. |
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You Get What You Tolerate We’ve all worked with a talented developer who can be a frustrating challenge to manage. First-time managers may unknowingly encourage bad behavior. There are several innovative ways to resolve the situation. |
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Achieving Continuous Improvement and Innovation in Software There is tremendous pressure on software development teams to deliver software faster, better, and cheaper. Quality engineering with a focus on innovation is the answer |
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10 Things You Must Do to Become Truly Agile Agile is not a state of doing; it’s a state of being. Adopting business models on value and learning how to make teams autonomous are both necessary steps to reap the benefit of agility. |
Interviews
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The United State of Women Summit: An Interview with Tania Katan
Video
In this interview, Axosoft evangelist Tania Katan, who is also the creative instigator of the international viral campaign #itwasneveradress, reports on being invited to the White House’s United State of Women Summit. She talks about agile project management, activism, and Michelle Obama and Oprah. |
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STAREAST 2015 Interview with Julie Gardiner on Applying Emotional Intelligence to Testing
Video
Julie Gardiner discusses her experience at STAREAST 2015 and her different presentations at the conference. These include "Applying Emotional Intelligence to Testing," "Getting Your Message Across: Communication Skills for Testers," and "Testing in the Digital Transformation Age." |
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The Four Transformational Intelligences Approach: An Interview with Valeh Nazemoff
Podcast
In this interview, Valeh Nazemoff, senior vice president and co-owner of Acolyst, discusses her four transformational intelligences approach. She digs into why she decided to create this concept, the best way to handle a single day's tasks, and her support from the government. |
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The Importance of Communication in Today's Software Teams: An Interview with Ken Whitaker
Podcast
In this interview, Ken Whitaker, vice president of engineering at Datalight, discusses how to best lead software teams. He talks about time prioritization, how to avoid getting overwhelmed on a daily basis, and the importance of communication in today's software teams. |
Conference Presentations
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Tear It Down to Build It Up: Using Agile in Construction Project Management
Slideshow
Operating on the philosophy that one must thoroughly know the rules before one can break them, a global company developed its own delivery model that is still as true to the agile mindset as is possible. Join Arjay Hinek in this lively session as he deconstructs his company's experiment in melding agile with construction project management to create a hybrid delivery model. At first, the teams were struggling with clear ownership, timely communication, and clear follow-through on work in progress. From modifying the user story mapping model in order to improve project initiation to dissecting and rewriting the values and principles of the Agile Manifesto, Arjay stretched agile practices to the limit to help his teams strive and grow through iterative and incremental delivery. Arjay will share the struggles, failures, and successes of this innovative experiment. |
Arjay Hinek
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Test Management in Agile—What Happened to All My Testers?
Slideshow
Substantial confusion exists about the roles and responsibilities of test management when using an agile software development process. Agile seeks to streamline project management and leadership under the role of a ScrumMaster, but what does this mean for test managers? How do they stay... |
Jeffery Payne
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Testing at 43,000 Feet: Reporting Risk That Matters
Slideshow
Testing dashboards can give stakeholders the false impression that projects are under control. But are they really? As a tester, you can see a counter indicating a high percentage of passing tests but know that you may still have critical failures in the product. Alexandre Bauduin will... |
Alexandre Bauduin
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Behavior-Driven Development: Real-World Mind Reading
Slideshow
Imagine this scenario: Business users are excited to finally get their hands on an implementation delivery that is on schedule, (mostly) on budget, and passed rigorous testing with flying colors. Unfortunately, when working with the new app or feature, the users realize that the way they described their needs didn’t translate into what they actually needed. Sound familiar? While she may not be able to offer telekinetic mind-reading tools, Kim Tatum is convinced that leveraging a behavior-driven development (BDD) approach helps bridge the gap between domain experts and technical teams. Join Kim to discuss how natural, human-readable language ultimately creates shared accountability and reduces misunderstandings. Review how this framework is implemented on a variety of delivery projects and walk through an implementation approach and leading practices. |
Kim Tatum
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