Vital Software Issues 'N Stuff

The Little Tester #119

These are the made up stories of a team working in an Agile environment. Their daily struggles and successes are presented in a comic/parody/satirical way. Click on the image to see it in full size.

The team members are:

• Little, the main character. The team’s tester.
• Coffee, the team’s Java developer.
• Mr. Fancy, the team’s UI developer.
• Senor, the Senior Developer of the team.
• Kitty, the Scrum Master.
• Glasses, the Business Analyst.
• And the manager.

Disclaimer

• This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events, situations presented are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons or events is purely coincidental.
• The sole purpose of this comic strip is to be humorous.
• The drawings are made by hand on paper, by means of pencils and fine liners, except for the outline, by the author. Hence their imperfection.

(Source: imalittletester)

Cyndi wants you to know: "The formatting of this article went shite due to causeless use of HTML <blockquote> tags in the original post." 🤷‍♀️

In the need of a Neuralyzer

...

(Source: Simply the Test)

The Little Tester #118

These are the made up stories of a team working in an Agile environment. Their daily struggles and successes are presented in a comic/parody/satirical way. Click on the image to see it in full size.

The team members are:

• Little, the main character. The team’s tester.
• Coffee, the team’s Java developer.
• Mr. Fancy, the team’s UI developer.
• Senor, the Senior Developer of the team.
• Kitty, the Scrum Master.
• Glasses, the Business Analyst.
• And the manager.

Disclaimer

• This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events, situations presented are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons or events is purely coincidental.
• The sole purpose of this comic strip is to be humorous.
• The drawings are made by hand on paper, by means of pencils and fine liners, except for the outline, by the author. Hence their imperfection.

(Source: imalittletester)

Cyndi wants you to know: "The formatting of this article went shite due to causeless use of HTML <blockquote> tags in the original post." 🤷‍♀️

The Little Tester #117

These are the made up stories of a team working in an Agile environment. Their daily struggles and successes are presented in a comic/parody/satirical way. Click on the image to see it in full size.

The team members are:

• Little, the main character. The team’s tester.
• Coffee, the team’s Java developer.
• Mr. Fancy, the team’s UI developer.
• Senor, the Senior Developer of the team.
• Kitty, the Scrum Master.
• Glasses, the Business Analyst.
• And the manager.

Disclaimer

• This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events, situations presented are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons or events is purely coincidental.
• The sole purpose of this comic strip is to be humorous.
• The drawings are made by hand on paper, by means of pencils and fine liners, except for the outline, by the author. Hence their imperfection.

(Source: imalittletester)

Cyndi wants you to know: "The formatting of this article went shite due to causeless use of HTML <blockquote> tags in the original post." 🤷‍♀️

Follow the Swarm

During my holidays, I  read two fantastic books about problem solving and focusing on the important stuff. "Range" by David Epstein fascinated me in that there are plenty of examples demonstrating how people without specialized knowledge in a particular area could find solutions to problems where the best experts got stuck. The book rejects the common believe one has to start and specialize early in order to really get good at something. It lists plenty of famous people in the world having demonstrated the contrary such as Roger Federer, Vincent Van Gogh, Dave Brubeck, etc. Experimenting in your career, trying out different stuff broadens the skill to look at problems from different angles and find solutions that are much more difficult to identifiy if you can't get out of your box. The other book "Simplicity" by Benedikt Weibel, former CEO of Swiss Railway Corporation (SBB"), goes into a similar direction with other and less detailed examples. He analyzes how the best chess players think in terms of patterns and how to focus on the essential stuff. Less is more. Weibel encourages to make more use of checklists and he also makes a heretical remark when he says that "without a great checklist, Sullenberger had not managed to bring down the Airbus on the Hudson savely".Big Data is an interesting tool, but it is not solving our problems and it is not free of failure (examples in the book). I am not advertizing but simply sharing my thoughts on two great books full of valuable hints and references although I know, it will be difficult to not fall back into old habits.

(Source: Simply the Test)

The Little Tester #116

These are the made up stories of a team working in an Agile environment. Their daily struggles and successes are presented in a comic/parody/satirical way. Click on the image to see it in full size.

The team members are:

• Little, the main character. The team’s tester.
• Coffee, the team’s Java developer.
• Mr. Fancy, the team’s UI developer.
• Senor, the Senior Developer of the team.
• Kitty, the Scrum Master.
• Glasses, the Business Analyst.
• And the manager.

Disclaimer

• This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events, situations presented are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons or events is purely coincidental.
• The sole purpose of this comic strip is to be humorous.
• The drawings are made by hand on paper, by means of pencils and fine liners, except for the outline, by the author. Hence their imperfection.

(Source: imalittletester)

Cyndi wants you to know: "The formatting of this article went shite due to causeless use of HTML <blockquote> tags in the original post." 🤷‍♀️

Tag submarines before they shoot

 

In the retrospective meeting it was claimed we could probably have raised some hot issues earlier. The late addressing of these items put people under pressure shortly before rolling-out. Although it was correct that we had quite some late change requests which hurt not only devs but also testers, most of the issues were not late discoveries but rather late awareness of importance.

 The tickets were raised long time back but, because of release pressure, these were parked aside in the backlog and assigned low priority. We called it the “parking-place”. At that time, a restrictive process of prioritizing tickets was needed to manage the deadlines. The limitations were accepted for a while. But over time, things changed.  What was once rated low priority for release N, all of a sudden became more important in the next release and at a very bad timing. For many stakeholders including me, these tickets came out of nowhere like submarines; and of course, all at the same time.

As a lessons learnt, we (as testers) have decided to get better by regularly reviewing parked tickets. This is to help product management become aware earlier of potential new dangerous "submarines" planning to surface on the water plane soon. There would still be enough time then to tag these before they have a chance to shoot.

(Source: Simply the Test)

The Little Tester #115

These are the made up stories of a team working in an Agile environment. Their daily struggles and successes are presented in a comic/parody/satirical way. Click on the image to see it in full size.

The team members are:

• Little, the main character. The team’s tester.
• Coffee, the team’s Java developer.
• Mr. Fancy, the team’s UI developer.
• Senor, the Senior Developer of the team.
• Kitty, the Scrum Master.
• Glasses, the Business Analyst.
• And the manager.

Disclaimer

• This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events, situations presented are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons or events is purely coincidental.
• The sole purpose of this comic strip is to be humorous.
• The drawings are made by hand on paper, by means of pencils and fine liners, except for the outline, by the author. Hence their imperfection.

(Source: imalittletester)

Cyndi wants you to know: "The formatting of this article went shite due to causeless use of HTML <blockquote> tags in the original post." 🤷‍♀️