Agile Testing with Lisa Crispin

In my latest Techwell blog post, I tell the tale of our most recent estimating meeting, where the product owner brought us a user story that was written as a technical implementation. We had to get him to back up and tell us the purpose of the story, so that we could determine the appropriate technical implementation.

I have been doing some writing in the past six weeks, in addition to rehabilitating my broken-and-now-healed ankle. But it’s all been published elsewhere. Here are some links:

Software Quality Connection, “How to Improve Communication between QA and Development“

SearchSoftwareQuality.com, “Agile development: The whole-team approach”

Also on SearchSoftwareQuality.com, “The whole-team approach to Agile development: Examples and benefits“

I’ve got a bunch of tips and Ask the Expert Q&A on SearchSoftwareQuality.com, please check them out! I’d appreciate feedback.

My interview with Simon Baker was posted on Stickyminds and Techwell today. There will also be highlights in the next issue of Better Software.

My summary of the WAT2 conference this past May, in Durango, appears on the SearchSoftwareQuality.com website (you have to register to see content, registration is free, I apologize that it’s a bit of a pain to have to register). I was inspired by this year’s theme of style and grace, as well as the amazing participants, leading testing practitioners from the U.S., Europe and Israel.

I just posted our team’s recent experience in taking a different approach when presented with an unusual problem: one theme that needs to get out the door, and another that will be hard to “hide” but will take multiple sprints. Please check it out on my Techwell/Stickyminds blog. How does your team handle unusual situations?

My teammate Nanda Lankalapalli and I have an article in StickyMinds on how we use technical debt sprints to keep our technical debt to a manageable level. There are lots of approaches to managing technical debt – what works for your team?

I’m honored and grateful to be the first interviewee in Yves Hanoulle’s “Who is…” series. Do any of my answers surprise you?

The Real Me, with Chester and Ernest at the Brewpub

I’m looking forward to learning about lots of people in this series!

My teammate Nanda Lankalapalli lives in India. We combined our experiences working as and with remote team members in an article, “Making Tele-Teams Work“. I’m extremely proud that it’s the cover article for the May/June issue of Better Software! Please share your experiences working on “tele-teams”.

If you think conferences aimed at programmers are only for them, think again. I wrote about my experiences at ACCU 2011 on TechTarget. Take a chance and try a conference that doesn’t seem tailor-made for you!

My first blog post on the new Techwell site (a site provided by the same people who bring you Stickyminds) tells the story of how my team recently tried an experiment to get the business and the Product Owner to give us requirements, mock-ups and other information about user stories before we do our sprint planning. Part of this experiment was inspired by our use of MercuryApp (itself another experiment, to improve our ability to learn from our retrospectives). Read more on my Techwell blog.