testingReflections.com - project management

More Sharks and Delaying Critical Mass

Tue, 19 Jan 2010 15:37:02 +0000

In a previous post I talked about Critical Mass of software. I showed how an ever-increasing cost of change resulted in it becoming more economical to completely rewrite the system than to enhance and maintain the original.

I explained how this could be avoided by using practices that sustain a consistent and flat cost of change. I also mentioned that you could defer reaching critical mass. Some teams find it difficult to get the time to do this because "the business" always has "more important" or "higher-value" things on their backlog.

Sharks, Debts, Critical Mass and other reasons to Sustain Quality

Mon, 18 Jan 2010 19:06:48 +0000

A while back I tweeted about critical mass of software:

Critical Mass of Code - past which the changeability of the code is infeasible, requiring that it be completely rewritten.

An elaboration of this might be:

Critical Mass of Software: the state of a software system when the cost of changing it (enhancement or correcting defects) is less economical than re-writing it.

This graph illustrates a hypothetical project where the cost of change increases over time (the shape of which reminds me of a thresher shark):

MARTA - Risk Management... beyond mitigation

Sun, 01 Nov 2009 20:08:05 +0000

In a previous rant about the misuse of the term mitigate in the context of risk management I listed the following strategies (I call them MARTA) for managing a given risk:

Mitigate - Reduce the severity of its impact

Avoid - Don't do the thing that makes the risk possible

Reduce - Make the risk less likely to happen

Transfer - Move the impact of the problem to another party (e.g. insure such as paid insurance or outsource with penalties for failure)

Accept - Do nothing or set aside budget to cope with the impact

I recently found myself having to explain this and used the analogy of crossing a busy road with fast-moving cars. What's the risk? Well, you might get hit by a car.

CAST 2009 Early Bird Rates Extended until May 1

Thu, 16 Apr 2009 06:42:40 +0100

The 4th Annual Conference of the Association of Software Testing (CAST) 2009

Colorado Springs, Colorado, July 13-16, 2009

Serving Our Stakeholders

Opening Keynote by: Dr. Jonathan Koomey

Closing Keynote by: Robert Sabourin & Tim Coulter

Invited Speakers: Mike Dwyer and Kevin Brennan

CAST 2009 Early Bird Rates Extended until May 1

Thu, 16 Apr 2009 06:36:14 +0100

The 4th Annual Conference of the Association of Software Testing (CAST) 2009

Colorado Springs, Colorado, July 13-16, 2009

Serving Our Stakeholders

Opening Keynote by: Dr. Jonathan Koomey

Closing Keynote by: Robert Sabourin & Tim Coulter

Invited Speakers: Mike Dwyer and Kevin Brennan

A misleading benchmark...

Tue, 03 Mar 2009 04:13:12 +0000

No further commentary needed.

--
Scott Barber
President & Chief Technologist, PerfTestPlus, Inc.

Great Art: Speaking likenesses and Visual Facilitation

Mon, 10 Nov 2008 11:11:21 +0000

On my last trip to the USA a month ago, I went to the Getty Center in Los Angeles and to Gap Corporate Headquarters in San Francisco, and saw great art at both. At the Getty, I had heard there was an Bernini exhibition, which I didn’t think would be that interesting not knowing much about Bernini. When I got to the Center, I realized there was some amazing sculpture in it. I joined a guided tour, all high tech with the tour leader having a microphone headset and the particpants all with headphone headsets. The tour was truly from the guide’s context: we started by entering a side door into the last room to see some masterworks, then jumped around from room to room but all linked with an fantastic narrative, The sculpture was truly amazing, not just for the detail in cloth, lace, hair and skin that looked like real people covered in marble dust, but also for the amazing “speaking likeness” as if they were just about to talk. A truly amazing cultural treasure, and returning soon to Italy. There are some pictures here and then this article has pictures with audio narrative from Getty staff (click the link).

I flew up to San Francisco for Agile Open California, hosted by Gap at San Bruno. While there was some interesting modern art including a life size giraffe (in a 3 story high atrium) that you could view from various angles as you climbed a staircase next to it, one attendee was an artist called Elizabeth McClellan who is a traditional artist, but who was using her skills in an fascinating way as a visual facilitator. Elizabeth created half a dozen visualizations of sessions and discussions capturing key ideas and images in what were truly modern works of art, but with a strong practical focus. On an IT project, I could see key planning meetings or other sessions being captured in this way, and the posters remaining as reminders of project culture that could be displayed both as art and project statements.

Oh, and there was some other very tasty LA art, a magnificent gigantic blended iced mocha I consumed for brunch while sitting al fresco opposite the Spanish styled clock tower in Westwood

Latest Column -- Inspired by taking AST's Bug Advocacy Class

Wed, 06 Aug 2008 07:18:53 +0100

Software testing is improved by good bug reporting

I recently completed (successfully, I might add) the second of the Association for Software Testing's all online, free to members Black Box Software Testing course. Each of these courses is four weeks in length. I've been involved with this program since years before it became a program, and I am an instructor for the first course in the series, called Foundations. For this course, called Bug Advocacy, I was a student.

Qualities of Quality PMs

Thu, 01 May 2008 13:15:52 +0100

I’m enjoying being technoratified . I have more than 50 blogs as favorites. I noticed a note on one announcing a reissue of a project management book, with the opportunity to win a copy. The book is “Making things happen”, by Scott Berkun. You had to post on the qualities of a quality project manager. I was one of 50 posters while the competition ran, and was lucky enough to win one of the 10 books. I’ll reserve my opinion on the book till I read it, but it will have to be excellent to outdo Johanna Rothman’s Manage It which won a 2008 Jolt award. If you follow the link you'll find a podcast from Johanna to listen to, then search further and you'll also find a video interview as well.

The PM qualities list makes interesting reading, and there is even a synthesized audio track of the original blog post (but sadly not the comments). You can also read an Q&A interview with Scott on PM from the book’s original release.

Training for Performance Testers in Brighton UK, May 08.

Mon, 07 Apr 2008 04:14:39 +0100

Scott Barber has teamed up with Rosie Sherry of DrivenQA to bring PTSS Training to Brighton & Hove, UK.

Sign-up now for Performance Testing for Managers or Performance Testing for Software Systems; A Heuristic Approach.

AST Update: Smart Stuff for Career Software Testers

Fri, 22 Aug 2008 18:44:02 +0100

December Issue of the Association for Software Testing Newsletter Now Available

Performance Testing Guidance for Web Applications book

Tue, 18 Dec 2007 05:08:21 +0000

Some time back, I blogged about a book I’d been significantly contributing to being available as a free .pdf download. (see the entry here)

Well, the book quietly appeared in “dead tree format” (as Stuart Moncrieff put it in his blog post about the book) a couple of weeks ago and I’ve been getting light heartedly scolded by some of my friends and readers for not making a big announcement, so here’s my “big announcement.”

Performance Testing Guidance for Web Applications

by: J.D. Meier, Scott Barber, Carlos Farre, Prashant Bansode, and Dennis Rea is now available on Amazon.

From the Mailbox: Software Development: Art or Science?

Thu, 18 Oct 2007 20:47:12 +0100

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".

Presentation tip: a tree stand out of bushes

Mon, 17 Sep 2007 15:40:31 +0100

I just realized one of the biggest mistakes I’ve made while creating presentations (for conferences and workshops). I want to share the mistake and the solution that I plan to apply in future – comments on my solution are welcome as I’m not 100% sure about it.

Classify Performance Tests: IVECTRAS

Sat, 25 Aug 2007 23:45:02 +0100

This is the second installment of a currently unknown number of posts about heuristics and mnemonics I find valuable when teaching and conducting performance testing.

Other posts about performance testing heuristics and mnemonics are:


I have struggled for over 7 years now with first figuring out and then trying to explain all the different "types" of performance tests. You know the ones:


Well, I finally have an alternative.

IVECTRAS