Posted on

What has the CDT Community ever done for me?

There’s been a lot of commentary on Twitter & in the blogosphere about the Context Driven Testing (CDT) community & in particular James Bach & Michael Bolton.

I wanted to take some time to reflect on how influential the CDT community has been for me, including the help, input & advice from James & Michael.

Obviously, there are so many in the CDT community I need to thank for helping me get to where I am today, but that is not the purpose of the post.

Continue reading “What has the CDT Community ever done for me?”

Posted on

The Orchestra - Different Parts, Same Outcome

I typically use the metaphor of an orchestra with Testers across different teams/products/squads within an organisation to help the understanding of how different testers can offer value within their teams.

The idea being that the argument “I test websites & they test data” is redundant when you’re thinking of the product or system as a whole

Continue reading “The Orchestra - Different Parts, Same Outcome”

Posted on

Testing The River With Different Tools

As some of you may be aware, I like kayaking & I often like to use it as a metaphor for software development.

I realised I talk a lot about the similarities between kayaking & software testing, but it appears I’ve never written about it.

Please indulge me whilst I relate how we paddlers use different “tools” on the river to help us achieve different goals…

Continue reading “Testing The River With Different Tools”

Posted on

The Torch of Truth

This idea started out as a doodle during Richard Bradshaw’s MEWT talk & thanks to Del Dewar, it became a “thing”.

In Richard’s talk, he rightly pointed out that the ice cream in the ice cream cone anti-pattern of test automation only sits on top of the cone.

In this post, I relate Richard’s fledgeling model to that of Bach & Bolton’s idea that Testers are the headlights of a project, purposely shining the light so that others do not have to work in the dark.

MagLiteFlashlight

Continue reading “The Torch of Truth”

Posted on

Single Source Of Truth Is A Lie

This is the 2nd post in my series on Truth. It builds on the first post by hopefully demonstrating how my opinions on truth & “Living Documentation” have changed after some research into what is truth.

This research was done in preparation for the fabulous MEWT conference. Here is a link for the slides of my “Single Source Of Truth Is A Lie” talk - this post aims to follow the structure of that talk.

Continue reading “Single Source Of Truth Is A Lie”

Posted on

Musings on The Single Source Of Truth

One of the advantages of being part of the ISST is the fantastic opportunity to dig into topics & ideas with a community of critical thinkers. There is nothing like a good Skype IM chat to sharpen your own thoughts & beliefs!

The other day, the topic of “single source of truth” arose. Who had heard of it? Is it actually a thing?

For me, it is. Or at least it was. My beliefs have been challenged & now I’m rethinking what I have previously thought to be true.

This post was written immediately after that chat and is my way of trying to get straight in my head the conversation I had around “single source of truth” and what that phrase actually means.

 

Continue reading “Musings on The Single Source Of Truth”

Posted on

Cynefin & Software Bugs

I have recently finished the fabulous but grueling “BBST Bug Advocacy course” run by the AST so my head is full of ideas about bugs, including how to reproduce them & document them in such a way that those making decisions them have the information they need.

This studying came on top of a lot of work I’ve been doing into the Cynefin framework. My brain is now trying to weave the models I learned on Bug Advocacy into the Cynefin framework.

This post is where I am up to right now with it…

bug-sellotape

Continue reading “Cynefin & Software Bugs”