small experiments

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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Overcoming test automation challenges

Janet Gregory and I enjoyed participating in the Quality in Agile conference in Vancouver April 20-21. We paired on a keynote: “Do testers need to code… to be useful?” Our opinion in a nutshell: testers need technical awareness to collaborate effectively with all their team members, but our software delivery teams already should have expert […]

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Agile Testing Days, part 1 of ?: Brainstorming!

After consolidating my notes and photos from Agile Testing Days (so many devices! Plus sketch notes!), I realized it’s way too much for one post. I’m taking the advice of tweeps and serializing this novel. First up: the workshop I facilitated on Advanced Topics in Agile Testing. I must emphasize that I was only a […]

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