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Books

Qualities of Quality PMs

books | people issues | project management

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.

Guerilla Approach

architecture | books | design & development | non-functional testing | performance testing

Mark Friedman reviewed Neil J. Gunther's new book "Guerilla Capacity Planning: A Tactical Approach to Planning for Highly Scalable Applications and Services"

in MeasureIT (free registration may be needed - I hate registrations, but this one is worth efforts if you care about performance: it is a very good newsletter).

Performance Testing Guidance for Web Applications

books | non-functional testing | other online resources | performance testing
We released the final version of our patterns & practices Performance Testing Guidance for Web Applications. This guide provides an end-to-end approach for implementing performance testing. Whether you're new to performance testing or looking for ways to improve your current performance-testing approach, you will gain insights that you can tailor to your specific scenarios. The main purpose of the guide is to be a relatively stable backdrop to capture, consolidate and share a methodology for performance testing. Even though the topics addressed apply to other types of applications, we focused on explaining from a Web application perspective to maintain consistency and to be relevant to the majority of our anticipated readers.
 
Download the guide
 
Read the guide online
 
Stay tuned for a link to purchase the print version due to be available in early Oct.

Alter Ego

books
Alter Ego written by Dave Christiansen has just been published. I was one of the reviewers for the book and I think it's an excellent read. It has (almost) nothing to do with testing, but it's a great read for geeks who like fiction with a technology twist. And it is twisted!

Read it. You won't regret it. (You can even preview the first six pages online...)

Consider: Lessons Learned in performance testing.

books | context-driven testing | performance testing | perspectives
I had an intention to blog few (~10) "lessons learned in performance testing", copying style of a book Lessons Learned in Software Testing. A context-driven approach Hoping that community could extend this with more of them. I’ve been postponing this so many times that I gave up eventually. I hope by this blog to inspirit someone (probably with wider experience in performance testing than me) to take it over.

Happy About Global Software Test Automation

books | general software testing | perspectives | project management | test management
I just posted this review for Hung Nguyen's new book on Amazon. All you testers and test managers out there, slip this book under your boss's door when they aren't looking and watch how quickly the company starts embracing and respecting software testing!

***

Happy About Global Software Test Automation: A Discussion of Software Testing for Executives is an absolute must read for any executive in a company that develops, customizes or implements software.

More on experts

books | perspectives
[textile]
To build on the idea of effortful study, I found the following in this month's FastCompany in the article The Expert on Experts: An expert guide to expertise by Christopher Percy Collier.

Conned Again, Watson!

books
[textile]
Whenever I attend a WOPR, testing guru Ross Collard always mentions how central math is to what performance testers do. I agree. Math is central to performance testing and testing. The problem is, I can never seem to remember any of it!

James Bach turned me on to a handy little pocket reference that I keep in my backpack, but while it's good for a reference, it doesn't do much to get me thinking like a mathematician. I found a great book that does just that. It's about math, and it's fun to read: Conned Again, Watson! Cautionary Tales of Logic, Math, and Probability by Colin Bruce

The book covers mathematical fallacy, logic, and lots of probability and statistics. It's a collection of Sherlock Holmes stories where Holmes and Watson solve math problems (one of the problems is a problem James Bach once gave me to solve). It's well written, fun to read, and you learn something that's useful at work. I highly recommend it for those who can't remember their college course of statistics (if you can you are a better learner then me...).