Category: Value

Answering a question…

A few weeks ago, Designer commented on Software testing, art and productivity. The question got lost in amongst the comment spam, so I thought I’d give my answer a bit more prominently than usual. The question was: …Many people who want to get a web-developed project don’t even understand the details of work. They just […]

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Software testing, art and productivity

In the Yahoo software-testing list, Shrini Kulkarni stated “…productvity as a term is “bad” for creative work like “testing” or “art”. That makes me to feel that I am a low skilled labour on a manufacturing assembly line (not that – it is a bad profession but that does not represent the kind of job […]

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Planning to make use of learning – Incremental vs Iterative

During coffee with Agile-coach and all-round excellent guy Shane Clauson, in sympathy with yet another of my what’s-wrong-with-agile rants, he pointed me to this blog post from Jeff Patton: Don’t know what I want, but I know how to get it While my opinions diverge on some of what he says must be true, I […]

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Web testing security, or Does your website help spammers?

Today I was trolling through my Yahoo mails, and noticed that a spam message had made it through to my inbox. I read through my mail, expecting to just delete the spam message when I eventually got to it. When I did, it struck me as unusual. In addition to the message body, there was […]

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The essence of goal-driven design

I work with James, and he emailed this quote around the office – “UNIX was not designed to stop you from doing stupid things, because that would also stop you from doing clever things.” (attributed to Doug Gwyn) I had forgotten about my response until I re-subscribed to his blog just now. “Unix needs an […]

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Passing and failing tests considered harmful

Alan Page of Microsoft suggests that there is a perfect world of passed and failed tests, and shades of grey that help us provide more useful information. He then asks “What else do you report as test results (to supplement test case pass/fail counts)? What do those results mean?” Read more at: http://blogs.msdn.com/alanpa/archive/2007/11/07/pass-fail-and-other.aspx I think […]

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The essence of testing on agile projects

‘Capturing the essence’, or ‘core’, has been a key theme in some of my work recently, and in several of the books I’ve been reading. So over a drink with Michael Ruschena tonight a couple of these came out as we linked ‘the core’, ‘agile’, and haiku – poetry that captures the essence. I’ve been […]

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Why is this still happening?

You would think that this kind of message would be a thing of the past, but apparently not. Or at least not when buying tickets to major exhibitions in Melbourne.

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Project Manifestos

Having worked on the trial project mentioned in Michael Ruschena’s recent blog entry on Project Manifestos, I can say it’s well worth trying out. And when I say ‘trying out’, I mean having the conversations and going through the thought processes required to figure out how you might work together as a team. I find […]

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