Hiccupps

The testers at Linguamatics decided to explore the adoption of a set of team values and this short series of posts describes how we got to them through  extended and open discussion. If you find the posts read like one of those "what I did in the holidays" essays you used to be forced to write at school then I'll have achieved my aim. I don't have a recipe to be followed here, only the story of what we did, in the order we did it, with a little commentary and hindsight. Introduction Why? Teasing Them Out Living With Them Reflection --00-- So far we've thought of a load of reasons that a team might want values , and loosely grouped them. That's the Why. Next step: the What. In a second meeting following the same lightly-facilitated format as the first , we asked ourselves what kinds of values might be good fits to each of our four motivational categories: encourage, empha...

The testers at Linguamatics decided to explore the adoption of a set of team values and this short series of posts describes how we got to them through  extended and open discussion. If you find the posts read like one of those "what I did in the holidays" essays you used to be forced to write at school then I'll have achieved my aim. I don't have a recipe to be followed here, only the story of what we did, in the order we did it, with a little commentary and hindsight. Introduction Why? Teasing Them Out Living With Them Reflection --00-- Having decided that we wanted to go ahead and attempt to sculpt a set of values for ourselves , we reviewed the data from our research into what others had done. In terms of motivation, there were some reasonably common factors for enumerating values in teams: Shared purpose. Shared approach to achieving it. A priori justification and guidance for work. Empowering staff to take action. The terminology used ...

The testers at Linguamatics decided to explore the adoption of a set of team values and this short series of posts describes how we got to them through extended and open discussion. If you find the posts read like one of those "what I did in the holidays" essays you used to be forced to write at school then I'll have achieved my aim. I don't have a recipe to be followed here, only the story of what we did, in the order we did it, with a little commentary and hindsight. Introduction Why? Teasing Them Out Living With Them Reflection --00-- Our team provides testing services to other teams in the company, in their contexts. That means we cover a selection of products, domains, and technologies across several development groups, operations, professional services projects, our internal compliance process, and more. In terms of methodology, we are in permanent Scrum teams, we join time-bounded projects set up to implement a particular feature or satisfy...

What is the right number of tests? Which tester hasn't been asked that question many times in one form or another? When will the testing be done? Can you test to make sure this works? How much effort would it be to test that? Can you show that performance has improved? We need to shorten the run time of the automated tests, can you remove some? How many test cases are passing? What is the right number of tests? According to Matalan , I found out over the Christmas holiday, the sweet spot appears to be fifteen: We check our garments at least 15 times to ensure they meet your expectations on quality.  Fifteen. It'd be easy to scoff, wouldn't it? Testing is never done, testing can never be complete, testing doesn't ensure anything, testing is brainwork, testing is an art, I tell you, it's an art! Now, don't get me wrong: I love the theory, the philosophy, the abstract. I can be as up my own backside about testing as the next person. (And I am. I cite thi...