testing

agile, MPD

How Agile Architects Lead

Lisa, Vin, and Derek in their comments on Agile, Architects, and Programs were concerned about how an architect might lead the test architecture work. They have good reason to be concerned. I hadn’t expressed how I see architecture working in an agile program, and they haven’t been to my talks, where I have discussed it.

agile, MPD

Agile, Architects, and Programs

When I was on vacation, I realized that lots of people already know that we need development architects on complex programs. And, lots of people forget that we also need test architects on complex programs. The more complex the product, the more you need integrated testing, so the more agile makes sense for your product.

management, MPD

The Challenge of a Lightning Talk

I’m at Belgium Testing Days, and in about 90 minutes, I’ll be giving a lightning talk as part of a keynote. I  love lightning talks because I love to talk and I love the challenge of a 5-minute, go-for-broke, get-it-organized, and do-it. And, it’s an excuse to drink a lot of cold caffeine in preparation.

management, MPD

Raúl Curbelo Remembrance

Last night, the New England Society of Applied Spectroscopy had an evening of remembrances for Raúl Curbelo. Raúl was a pioneer in the development of spectroscopic instrumentation. I worked for Raúl  at Digilab from 1978-1982. I spoke last night. Here is an excerpt of my comments: I can’t speak to the breakthroughs Raúl developed in

MPD, program management

Starting Agile with a Program

The good news is that agile has name recognition. The bad news is that a number of organizations are trying to start agile in a big-bang way, especially on programs. Program management is hard enough without throwing a new approach to projects into the mix. Since so many of you are emailing me about this,

agile, MPD

Architecture and Programs: Incremental Progress Not Big Bang

I’ve been working on agile program management and a colleague emailed me about his program. He’s having trouble seeing how to do agile on a large program. The customer wants to see a working system before they add the features, so the customer thinks the program need to provide “all” the architecture, with some hard-coded

agile, MPD

The Value of a Demo

Some teams don’t do demos at the end of their iterations. Many of the teams who don’t do demos also have trouble finishing all the stories they committed to at the beginning of the iteration. They continue, iteration to iteration, not always finishing, not getting to releaseable at the end of the iteration. And, sometimes,

MPD

Learning Through Simulation

In June, I taught PSL with Esther and Jerry. We had a blast. So did the participants. Part of why PSL is so much fun is that we use simulations. With a simulation, you create a safe environment in which people can experiment with learning a new skill or seeing how they operate. There are

Scroll to Top