Tina Toucan provided extra diversity and fun!

Diversity in conference speakers == new ideas, more learning

I attended my first testing conference back in the early 90s. I can only remember one woman speaker, and she made such an impact on me, I still remember the session well – it was about how to test requirements. I have used those ideas ever since! Thanks in large part (in my opinion, anyway) […]

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mabl

Continuing my learning journey

I’ve had such an exciting time the past year and it has led me into an amazing new opportunity, I’d like to share my learning journey so far! Modern testing and data science For the past year, I’ve been inspired by Alan Page and Brent Jensen’s A/B Testing podcast discussions of their “Modern Testing” principles. […]

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Mob all the things!

Mob all the things!

I’m so excited that I get to participate in the Mob Programming conference next month- April 12-13 –  in Burlington, MA. Check out the program and registration details. This is an amazing opportunity to work in small groups with leaders like Lisi Hocke, Woody Zuill and Llewellyn Falco. An even better way to learn about […]

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Courage to coach

You might notice that my posts here aren’t necessarily about actually doing testing activities. For the past several years I’ve been one of only three testers on a team of 25 or more coders. Currently, I’m the only tester spread across several mini-teams that add up to around 17 coders. I can’t possibly test every […]

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Ways to improve listening skills

Retrospectives for large teams with many sub-teams

My team has 40+ members, distributed into seven or so “pods” and across several locations. It’s a challenge to communicate information among the multiple pods. In addition, we often face obstacles that cross over multiple pods. We usually have a “cross-pod retrospective” once a month. It’s typically in the “Happy/Puzzler/Sad” format. We collect items in […]

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