July 31st, 2014
Let’s assume you already have a good defect tracking system, A test management system, release management, automation, etc... The whole DevOps suite. What are you missing? Read More
July 29th, 2014
Sometimes I am at the cutting edge of technology, (I had a Creative Labs digital music player when they were still the size of CD players and my HDTV is 15 years old) but sometimes the newest gadget or latest trend scares me a little (I’m not about to stop using FedEx in favor of my own personal delivery drone.) This year, while I find myself fashionably watching shows on Crackle, I am not ready to switch out my personal hard drive for the cloud. When I say ‘the’ cloud what I really mean is ‘a’ cloud. While there may only be one Internet, (despite what a certain previous POTUS might think) there are multiple clouds, at least for now. Amazon has a cloud, Google has a cloud, Microsoft has a cloud; in fact, anybody who is anybody in the Internet business is seeing the future as decidedly ‘cloudy’.
Read MoreJuly 24th, 2014
Is it a "BUG"? We call them bugs because of that time so long ago, when a moth made its presence known in an early computing device. Bug has come to be known as a generic term for anything that does not work correctly. We say it is buggy. This is a bug. But it is not really a good indicator of what is happening unless we have an agreed upon lexicon, and even then, staff new to the process would require training. Read More
July 21st, 2014
Extreme Programming (XP) is one of the more popular Agile Development methodologies, and for very good reason. It advocates short, rapid iterations, constant customer contribution and frequent testing. But let us consider the foundation of Extreme Programming, which is to identify all the positive aspects of software programming techniques and take them to their extreme; the idea being that you can’t have too much of a good thing. For example, if tests help find defects, why not test all the time?
If we consider Agile methods generally, (not XP specifically) to also be a combination of good ideas, XP would tell us to take those ideas to their extreme; could we do that and create “Extreme Agile Programming (EAP)”? Or would we be trying to swallow our own tail? Let’s consider some Agile principles and find out.
Read MoreJuly 17th, 2014
A few months back, I was training a group on test management using SpiraTeam. All was going well until I mentioned the ability to design a work-flow. Instantly I heard the sighs and groans. WHY? Read More
July 15th, 2014
It is quite a popular notion that there should be formally recorded associations or links between defects and software code configuration items. This can explain why a piece of code has later been modified and also helps individuals find their way back to the ‘fix’ should the defect be found to still exist upon re-testing. But there are other ways to achieve this and so the question is: can the relationship between the defect and the code really be the most important one? Read More
July 10th, 2014
I knew a QA director, this was a dedicated guy. He worked day and night to make sure they released quality code to their customers. He understood the value of QA on making a company shine. The company had a scheduled release on Monday; it was major and had been promised. This guy worked all weekend to QA the new release and found several stopper defects - Severity 1, the really bad kind! Read More
July 8th, 2014
The Product Manager role (unlike that of the project manager) is arguably the least well understood of all the software project development disciplines and varies greatly in definition and implementation from one organization to another. This blog discusses how the role of the product manager has been changed by the move to agile methodologies such as Scrum and Kanban. Read More
July 1st, 2014
I have often been presented with the argument that QA is not cost effective. It seems like a throwback to years past, but it happens all too often. With the advent of Agile, and other rapid development cycle methodologies, the mindset of "we will fix it once it is reported" has made a comeback. I know the MVP process, and it does include a specification, and can therefore be tested.
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