Archive for the ‘Techniques’ Category
Posted by James King on February 14, 2012
A long time ago I used to do production support as part of my role (I was a Unix administrator/DBA/system analyst).
In those days requirements were really easy for me: people would come to my desk and ask for something, or they would email me or maybe even leave a scribbled note on my desk. There were no standard formats, no formality and (usually) no problems.
But even back then I had to work with vendors and sometimes that was when the trouble started. Some were happy with my “give me a call” approach to requirements, while others required a ticket and some even required a complicated work request form.
Now days, some production support teams are more professional that I was and they actually have real requirements or (if they are agile) stories. And most of them seem to be flooded with vendors.
So, do stories work with vendors? The obvious answer is YES. For example, if you receive a story in the following format then it should work for you and also for your vendor:
- As a coffee club member I want to be able to see a list of future coffee appreciation classes so that I can enrol in those that look interesting.
But what about complaints and bugs?
- As a coffee club member I don’t want to have my name spelled incorrectly because it is really annoying me.
Read the rest of this entry »
Posted in Agile development, Idea management, Implementation | Tagged: pieces of the puzzle, system analyst, work request | Leave a Comment »
Posted by James King on February 14, 2012
I have encountered Use Cases on several occasions, sometimes they seem like a simple tool that can be used to better understand how a system behaves from a users perspective, while at other times people describe them as terrifying monsters that have murdered people and led to the destruction of entire projects. So I am going to recommend only using the good kind.
But what is a use case? It is simply an example of how a system (or business service) could be used by someone.
Read the rest of this entry »
Posted in Agile development, Idea management, Implementation | Tagged: agile, regression test, scenario test, use case | 2 Comments »
Posted by James King on February 12, 2012
This article probably makes more sense if you have read regression testing day 1. The aim is to give you a possible way of building good regression testing on a project one day at a time, while testing as you go.
Read the rest of this entry »
Posted in Agile development, Implementation | Tagged: manual testing, Regression testing. agile | 1 Comment »
Posted by James King on February 10, 2012
Life used to be easy for managers. We had good people who delivered lots of stuff and bad people who stuffed up lots of deliverables. It was easy to tell who the good guys and the bad guys were.
But then something significant happened. We discovered that work was not just about performing a set of predictable tasks. We started to realise that:
- Work was about adding value rather than destroying value rather than just delivering stuff; and
- We started to see value as something delivered through the interaction of entire teams and not through individual achievement.
Read the rest of this entry »
Posted in Capability growth, Leading change | Tagged: leadership, matrix structure, performance agreement, tester | Leave a Comment »
Posted by James King on February 9, 2012
Everywhere I go I am starting to notice consistent problems or patterns of behaviour that hold back some of the best people in the teams I work with. I think they are starting to rank right up their with the Peter Principle as ways to stop good people from reaching their true potential and really contributing value to the teams they work with.
And they are all related to the managers in the team not having enough time to talk about succession planning.
Read the rest of this entry »
Posted in Agile development, Capability growth, Leading change | Tagged: succession planning. people leadership | 2 Comments »
Posted by James King on February 8, 2012
Regression testing is the easy part of IT development, not the horrible monster some people think it has to be.
But where do you start if you want to do effective regression testing, but you are already busy and don’t want it to be huge burden?
I hope this article and a couple that follow will turn out to be a guide to one painless way to get regression testing up and running. Let me know if it helps.
Read the rest of this entry »
Posted in Implementation, Agile development | Tagged: agile testing, regression testing, UAT | 2 Comments »
Posted by James King on February 8, 2012
Before I worked in IT and even knew what testing was, I knew people made mistakes. But I didn’t know there was an international standard you should comply with when you want to make a mistake.
Then I worked on a project with a mining company and one of the consultants explained human factor analysis to me in simple terms. He told me that mine sites can be dangerous and part of his job was to “stop people killing themselves when they are stupid”.
I suggested he stop hiring stupid people but he told me that they tried that and it didn’t work. Apparently you can be really intelligent on a mine site 800 days in a row but then be stupid for 10 minutes one day and be in an accident and then be killed.
“Luckily we have a standard for being stupid though” he said
Read the rest of this entry »
Posted in Agile development, Idea management, Implementation | Tagged: agile, human factor analysis, regression testing, testing, UAT | 1 Comment »
Posted by James King on February 6, 2012
I have been creating a couple of blogs on context recently. The idea is that if you know a bit about your users and the product that you are building. Both can take months or years, but I like to think we can even spend an hour or less to understand our project.
Read the rest of this entry »
Posted in Agile development, Idea management, Implementation, Leading change | Tagged: agile, managing ideas, project charter, project launch | 5 Comments »
Posted by James King on February 6, 2012
I was speaking to a crew who were struggling with regression testing and after interrogating them they finally admitted that a large part of the reason they were struggling was that they did not really understand what they were testing.
I was shocked and horrified so I wandered off.
Soon after I spoke to some business analysts who were struggling with an agile project. They alleged that the agile approach they were using did not allow enough time to capture the requirements properly. But guess what, they broke down under interrogation and admitted that a large part of the problem they were having was that they did not really understand the product they were building. Apparently the evil agile people had forced them to write stories about the system before they had time to understand it.
Read the rest of this entry »
Posted in Agile development, Idea management, Implementation | Tagged: agile stories, regression testing, requirements | 3 Comments »
Posted by James King on February 3, 2012
If you want to do a Phd in human psychology, then grab an IT team and ask them to do regression testing.
Regression testing is simply the idea that when you make changes to a system you should test to make sure you haven’t broken what was already there. But for reasons unknown to psychologists, IT teams fall into a strange psychological pattern whenever asked to do regression testing. This is the opportunity for someone to do a Phd – we understand that people consistently adopt the same four stage cycle of pain, but social scientists are at a loss to explain why:
Read the rest of this entry »
Posted in Agile development, Implementation | Tagged: regression testing; production suppport; agile testing, scenario testing | 3 Comments »
