Evil Tester

Since I generally present myself as a tester, coupled with my relatively novice status when coding in Java using TDD. I don’t mind writing up my TDD mistakes here.

One key ‘lean’, or ‘TPS’, concept covers ‘muda’, or waste. Over my years in Software Testing I have tried to make my testing processes more ‘Agile’ or ‘Lean’, but when I started I didn’t have the concept of ‘muda’, I just had the knowledge that things weren’t working, so I changed them and got rid [...]

Joe has a problem: everyone wants more, and no-one wants to do more than the bare minimum. Joe can’t figure out what to do. He says "do a better job!" and they don’t, he says "if you don’t do a better job you’ll get sacked", they don’t do a better job, they get demoralised, and [...]

I got quite a lot out of reviewing the Responsibility Virus, but most of it not from the book. I recommend 2 papers from Roger Martin’s web page : Breaking the code of change Strategic Choice Structuring Taken together, these two papers provide a complementary view of the information in The Responsibility Virus.

Roger Martin describes the Responsibility Virus manifesting as all-or-nothing thinking when it comes to leadership and responsibility. So when a problem manifests, if the leader succumbs to the effects of the Virus then they dive in and become the "Hero" taking all the responsibility for the problem. At which point, everyone else involved in the [...]

Abstractions can put your testing in danger if you don’t handle them correctly. So some hints and tips on handling the abstraction known as an ‘equivalence class’ may help.

Should ISEB even run a certification scheme? If Industry really does have a demand for it then perhaps ISEB’s role should involve collating the Industry needs and passing them on to the Universities to provide the necessary certification mechanism. Academia generally seems to ‘get’ certification.

What an easy target ISEB makes, it comes in for a lot of criticism. And I think it should. To an outsider like myself the certification train looks like a money spinning exercise, why else keep cranking out certification levels? I wonder what they could do to change my perception…

While trawling through my hard drive on a deletion frenzy, I found my old notes on what I did to pass the ISEB foundation exam. Bear in mind that I made these notes in 2003 and the ISEB syllabus has moved on since. But I have updated all the links and someone might find my [...]

Make it free to Learn – open source implementations of languages. Don’t use a traditional programming book – too slow. Learn it to do something – be focused. Ask for help. More helpful hints and links inside…