This is my third post sharing my biggest takeaways from Agile Testing Days. OK, I’m pretty slow, and, I hope my learning might inspire someone else’s. I first got to know Bruce (the legend) on social media and via Ministry of Testing. She was an amazing host for an online TestBash. Bruce makes awesome videos […]
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Looking for joy
Lately, I’ve noticed lots of evidence of our donkeys playing hard. Their toys, such as the rubber Wellington boots, the cotton tug ropes, Jolly balls and plastic downspout connectors are in new locations and have new signs of chewing and bashing every time I go out to see them. There’s evidence of much running and […]
Read MoreThose checklists
I had the luxury of working on a terrific team at a financial services startup from the early 00s to the early 10s. Though we jelled as a self-organizing agile team with expert domain knowledge, we occasionally made some really dumb mistakes when deploying to production. The operations VP, Anne, wagged her finger at us […]
Read MoreCourage 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 […]
Read MoreRetrospectives 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 […]
Read MorePodcasts!
I’ve been honored recently to participate in two different podcasts. I talked with Ryan Ripley and on Ryan’s Agile for Humans podcast. We talked about pairing for various things, including presenting and writing, and discussed common challenges we see today related to testing. I’m a big fan of the Agile for Humans podcast, I learn […]
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