Lessons Learned « Test Obsessed

Virtual Training Experiment Report: Lessons Learned

November 30th, 2007

Back in August, I called for volunteers to help me experiment with online training. Many folks expressed interest in what I’m trying to do. So I thought I’d write a little status report.

First, let me summarize what I’m trying to accomplish.

Over the years I have received several inquiries asking if I have online versions . . . → Read More: Virtual Training Experiment Report: Lessons Learned

New Look (Beta)

November 28th, 2007

I spoke too soon. Last night, I wrote:

I think I’ve tested it. I think I’ve fixed all the (sufficiently important) bugs. But that’s just me wearing my developer hat saying “It works on my machine.” If you happen to notice any problems with the new WordPress theme, I’d be most grateful if . . . → Read More: New Look (Beta)

Oh, the irony…

October 16th, 2007

So I’m working on course materials for a class I’ll be teaching next week on Acceptance Test Driven Development.

I decided to try using Keynote on my trusty no-longer-all-that-new Mac instead of PowerPoint. I find PowerPoint on the Mac incredibly annoying. Whenever I want to edit a presentation on the Mac that I created on . . . → Read More: Oh, the irony…

RubyFIT and Fitnesse

October 9th, 2007

At the moment, I’m creating a little Acceptance Test Driven Development (ATDD) demo. I’m keen on Ruby these days, so I wanted to do it all in Ruby. And I wanted to use Fitnesse. And as it happens, Fitnesse supports RubyFIT. Or RubyFIT supports Fitnesse. Something like that. So I . . . → Read More: RubyFIT and Fitnesse

The "We Reframe"

January 8th, 2007

A long time ago, when I was employed at a software company, I participated in an all-engineering offsite meeting in which we attempted to figure out what we needed to do to improve.

First exercise: we went around the room, round-robin style, and everyone contributed an idea.

A Tester said the Developers should write better Specifications.

A Developer said . . . → Read More: The "We Reframe"

The Day Tim Lister Asked Me "Why Are Your Pants on Fire?" and How It Changed My Life

January 3rd, 2007

I’m in the process of migrating a bunch of content from my corporate website over here for reasons which will become apparent when I finally publish the newest version of my corporate website. But that’s a topic for another day.

Migrating all this content has me looking at stuff I haven’t really looked at in a . . . → Read More: The Day Tim Lister Asked Me "Why Are Your Pants on Fire?" and How It Changed My Life

Easily Distracted

December 28th, 2006

Jan Chong is a doctoral candidate at Stanford, studying Organizational Behavior. Jan has two CS degrees, so it’s natural that she would combines her interest in software development and organizational behavior by studying XP teams. She presented some of her preliminary findings at Agile 2005.

One of the things that Jan observed while doing her . . . → Read More: Easily Distracted

Dig First

December 5th, 2006

Late last night, I decided to change my domain record to use a different DNS server. I had good reasons, reasons that I will explain in a moment. But the thing about making DNS changes is that they take hours to propagate. Knowing I wouldn’t see the effects of my change for several hours, I made the changes then went to bed.

This morning, cradling a cup of coffee, I thought I’d do a little blogging. Imagine my dismay when I discovered that testobsessed.com couldn’t be found. “Oh crud, what did I do?” I wondered. Continue reading Dig First

Time to Re-negotiate?

December 4th, 2006

On every project, we make commitments based on negotiated agreements, even when we don’t think we’re negotiating. We agree to accomplish certain tasks by a given deadline. We agree to follow a particular process. We agree to work late one day so we can leave early another. Or we agree to work over a weekend because we want to do whatever it takes to make the project succeed.

But sometimes we discover that the negotiated agreement no longer fits for us for some reason. We need to revisit the agreement. We need to re-negotiate. Continue reading Time to Re-negotiate?

Who Carries the Risk?

December 1st, 2006

I attended Ken Schwaber’s Certified Scrum Master training in June 2005. Yup, I’m a Certified Scrum Master. But I didn’t do the training for the certification. I did it for the learning. And for the chance to meet Ken.

I got more than I bargained for. I learned a lesson that has influenced my actions deeply and that forced me to re-evaluate choices I made in the past. I learned that for years I’d been accepting risk that was not mine to accept. Continue reading Who Carries the Risk?

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