Some of you are probably trying to plan your vacation around the project you’re on. Good luck. Every time I did that, the project was in some crucial place and my bosses asked me to consider changing my vacation. Don’t give in to their pleading. If the project is in good shape, you being […]
I’ve been working on an article for about a year now, trying to discuss how to decisions about which kinds of testers to hire when. The only good thing about working on an article that long is that I’m finally learning how to describe what I mean (I think). I’d like your feedback on these
I’ve been subjected to a bunch of team building activities that fell flat for me. My Last Word column in this month’s STQE talks about alternatives to team building. (See Teambuilding at Work.) Here’s the quick recipe: Choose a topic the team has a vested interest in solving. (If the people can’t come up with
I’ve noticed these problems with my blog, and am investigating: The comment number doesn’t seem to change with comments posted. Grrr. The last few posts *do* have comments. Bloglet is easily confused with my blog and doesn’t send email that I have new posts. Grrrrr. I suspect that if I stay logged into Bloglet, the
Many people who define requirements use some form of documentation to organize their requirements. Too often, that documentation is in the form of a text document. Because text is so bad at describing what a user interface does, the text becomes a design document for the user interface. Then the developers and testers are
I’m a fan of nightly builds with automated smoke tests, run overnight. In the morning when everyone returns to work, anyone who’s broken the build fixes it. In most cases, the developers see what they did and they fix it. The agile folks take this even further and say to build the system whenever
In Laurent’s Hiring and Testingpost, he wondered why we spend so much time in the up-front stages of hiring. Why not use the probation period that seems to be the law in France, and is part of many companies’ stated HR procedures?A bunch of reasons: as managers, we need to give substantive and useful feedback
In Measuring Productivity #3: Possible Measurements, I made an off-hand comment, “The zeroth measure of productivity is showing up.” I now think showing up is necessary, but not sufficient. I’ve been thinking about what each of us produces individually, and thinking of ways to understand and possibly measure it: How many hours per day do you
“Why Should I Hire You” means “How is hiring you going to help me?” You can prepare for this question before, during, and after the interview. Here’s how: Before the interview, review the job description. What specifics can you show the hiring manager about your experience that parallels the job description? Tell behavioral-description stories that
I just returned from my younger daughter’s fifth grade graduation. (For those of you without children, sixth grade is now part of middle school.) It was lovely, and reminded me of how important it is for us to have rituals or ceremonies for the ends of significant work. If you’re scheduling a project, schedule