testingReflections.com - development methodology

The short and the long of IT: two videotaped presentations

Tue, 14 Oct 2008 17:28:09 -0500

Since the middle of the year, I’ve presented and facilitated about 12 hours of sessions at 2 traditional and 3 open space conferences, plus a Googleplex visit. Two presentations are now on video, both filmed on the other side of the world from my usual location of Melbourne, Australia.

A lightning talk (at the functional tools workshop held before Agile 08 in Toronto, Canada) called Shades of Green discusses how the “green” passing tests of functional automation may not be as green as they seem. Note the static pose to stay within camera range, compensated for by the wildly waving arm. And yes, the audience was not limited to a leg and a foot.

An order of magnitude longer at around 50 minutes, a Google Tech Talk (filmed at the San Francisco Googleplex) called 80:20 Rules! Building Software Smarter looks at formal and informal ways to get significant improvements in creating software, including various puzzles and questions for viewers. I had looked at some tech talks by other people I know, and they had been watched around 1000 times over a year or so. It looks like I may hit that mark only a few days after the video was posted which is great. I hope my talk inspires people to build their software smarter. Can I turn “shades of green” into a similar talk? Probably not!

Testing Lessons From Civil Engineering

Sat, 21 Jun 2008 01:13:14 -0500

Below is the paper I submitted as a prologue to an experience report, discussion, and (hopefully) additional research that I'm presenting for the first time during:

Performance Requirements

Sun, 06 Jan 2008 17:08:27 -0600

My performance requirements paper was published in the January issue of Software Test & Performance (pp.18-24).

It was simple: I just sent a draft – and now I am reading it printed. With a new name - or even two: it is referred as You Can Gauge Performance Without Requirements in one place and Gauging Performance in The Absence of Measures in another. Not to mention other minor improvement.

From the Mailbox: Software Development: Art or Science?

Thu, 18 Oct 2007 14:47:12 -0500

Here’s a question that I didn’t realize I had much to say about until I read my own response.

The Question:
Software Development: Is it an art or a science? An age old question I know, but what do you think and why?

My Response:

I refer to new software development as a scientific art. I've seen some maintenance work, platform porting, etc. that has been almost entirely mechanical -- I'm not sure what that counts as, but I certainly didn't witness anything "artistic".

What Skills Performance Testers Need and How to Get Them?

Mon, 15 Oct 2007 09:31:39 -0500

From time to time I see questions on different forums asking what skills are necessary for performance testers. There were pretty interesting discussions. Looks like most experts agree that performance testing requires more skills than just knowledge about how to create a script for a particular load testing tool. While it is still possible to imagine a performance tester in a large corporation with deep specialization who only creates scripts and mechanically runs them while other performance experts monitor the system and analyze results, I don't see many perspectives neither for this person, nor for the approach. Systems become so complicated now that the sum of specialized expert views doesn't give the whole performance picture.

RealSoftwareDevelopment - a new methodology?

Tue, 26 Feb 2008 09:57:24 -0600

At XTC this evening I was on my soap box about how I am fed up with the strict adherence to generic methodology and the abuse of the term "Agile".

There must be some way of reflecting reality... So, I wrote in my notebook - RealSoftwareDevelopement - a methodology.

(Interestingly, I notice the words 'real' and 'reality' mentioned by Jonathan Kohl from 7000 miles away at around the same time as me standing on my soap-box - we must be in ESP communication with each other).

As I took the journey home, I sketched out the idea...

CMG 2007 Call for Paper

Sun, 11 Mar 2007 10:58:19 -0500

This year performance (load, stress) testing will be a focus track at the CMG 2007 conference. It is the best conference, by my opinion, about performance-related topics. Below is the official text:

The Computer Measurement Group (CMG) calls for papers and presentations for the 33rd International Conference to be held in San Diego, California, December 2nd through 7th, 2007. The 2007 CMG conference will cover load and stress testing, benchmarking, performance optimization, software performance engineering, resource management, capacity analysis, simulation and analytic modeling, and cost management with special emphasis on Virtualization, System Oriented Architecture (SOA), IT Service Management and IT Infrastructure Library (ITIL), and the technology implications of globalization.

Movie tickets and bugs in agile

Sat, 23 Dec 2006 21:45:05 -0600

I've been thinking about the way agilistas handle bugs recently. Several years ago, I was the editor of an internal IT newsletter for a large Australian financial organisation. Every month, I'd include a critical thinking puzzle, and I select a correct entry to win 2 movie tickets. I was able to give these out to my Australian readers, but I used to get some entries from our Indian IT shop as well. I arranged to have them win 2 movie tickets as well, if they were chosen as the winner. I thought this was a comparable prize, then I discovered that movie tickets are very cheap in India. In Australia, the prize would pay for a weeks public transport, but in India it would be only a day or two.

What Best Practices really are. -- CIO Article

Thu, 09 Aug 2007 08:52:21 -0500

Of all the places I expected to find an article supporting the fact that Best Practices is nothing more than a square on someone's buzz-word bingo card, CIO wasn't it. The highlights are these...

Using celebs for endorsements has become such best practice that everyone does it. So what is best practice about it? Nothing. The phrase is simply a demonstration of how cliched business language dresses up the concept of copying something someone else has done. And when lots of companies copy the copier, it becomes dull, intellectually stagnant and offers no competitive advantage. It's just a me-too strategy executed by the cynical, the lazy, or the lazy cynics.

Waterfall2006: I'll be there!

Fri, 10 Mar 2006 18:20:36 -0600

Who is going to this exciting event?

After years of being disparaged by some in the software development community, the waterfall process is back with a vengeance. You've always known a good waterfall-based process is the right way to develop software projects. Come to the Waterfall 2006 conference and see how a sequential development process can benefit your next project. Learn how slow, deliberate handoffs (with signatures!) between groups can slow the rate of change on any project so that development teams have more time to spend on anticipating user needs through big, upfront design.

[Audio Interview] Randy Miller on MSF Agile and software modeling techniques

Fri, 05 Aug 2005 14:08:21 -0500

I chatted with Randy Miller, the guy who practically wrote MSF, for a very interesting half hour (due to technical difficulties we had to stop early). The interview revolves around MSF- the Microsoft Solution Framework for creating software processes, its origins, its main goals and benefits and how it fits in with Microsoft Team System. We also talk a little about how it compares to other processes such as the Rational Unified Process. The conversation also turns into the fascinating topic of software modeling today and the use of "Personas" to capture design requirements. more stuff: MSF vs. CMMI, empowering developers in the development process, and the future of MSF. Go Download (36 minutes,MP3) (as always, there are many other interviews on the download page which you may find interesting.)

Randy Miller (also known as Granville Miller) is author of Advanced Use Case Modeling and A Practical Guide to Extreme Programming. He has spoken at many national events including OOPSLA, Web Services Edge, Software Development West, Microsoft TechEd and others. He has also spoken for SPIN in the past (http://www.rtpspin.org). You can find out more about Randy's work from his blog at: http://blogs.msdn.com/randymiller. You can learn more about Visual Studio 2005 Team System at: http://lab.msdn.microsoft.com/teamsystem. And specifically about its plans to support the Agile methodology at: http://blogs.msdn.com/team_foundation/archive/2005/02/07/368599.aspx .

Heavyweight process and dishwashers

Thu, 09 Jun 2005 19:50:39 -0500

I read this post months ago and I am just now getting around to adding a link to it. Pat McGee has a great post on Heavyweight process and dishwashers. Check it out.

Agile Performance Testing?

Wed, 25 May 2005 21:42:17 -0500

Neill,

You touched two very interesting points here. I have formulated them in a different way for myself, but probably it is the same (if I got it correctly).

The first point, as I got it, perhaps can be named “start performance testing early”. Everybody talking about it, but not much done. Mainly, the only thing that a performance tester (as it is usually defined now) can do until some functionality will work is to collect requirements/use-cases/scenarios.

Creating a test plan with minimum red tape

Tue, 22 Feb 2005 09:04:36 -0600

When working with one of those apps in an iterative methodology, having releases so often can become a Test Plan nightmare, specially when providing the best coverage possible is the top priority in response to valuable end-user feedback.

I have been working with several templates over the years, but this time I have the challenge of creating one that minimizes the details to a minimum, is tota

Agile Programming and the CMMI: Irreconcilable Differences?

Thu, 17 Feb 2005 00:58:39 -0600

On paper, the Capability Maturity Model Index seems about as different from XP and other agile programming disciplines as it can be. This is true to some degree in practice, too, because CMMI and agile adherents typically approach software development from decidedly different viewpoints. At the same time, experts say, they are complementary to a surprising degree, and there's very little, if any, irreconcilability, between the two prominent paradigms.