In a forum on the Software Testing Club today someone asked a question whether I was a member of some testing organization. I put up a rather longish answer to that which I wanted to share on my blog as well.
Are you a member of … ?
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Category Archives: Leadership
Management 3.0
Last week I was fortunate to attend Jurgen Appelo‘s class on Management 3.0 in Hamburg, Germany. When Matt Heusser hit me to Jurgen’s Top200 Blogs for Software Developers in 2009, I sensed that Mr. Appelo had a unique view on software development. Last year he finished his book on Management 3.0, and accompanying the course we got a free copy of it. While I had read the stuff from Weinberg on Management, one of my goals was to find out what management is. Though I couldn’t achieve this goal in Jurgen’s class, I got some nice and unexpected take-aways from the training.
Best practices for “Best practices”
Last week I crossed the term “best practices” quite often. So I decided to share my thoughts on the term, and offer alternatives.
The Inbox-Zero Fallacy
On my flight to the Belgium Testing Days I noticed a pattern regarding answering and handling emails. I think there is a vicious cycle between two groups of people dealing with emails.
Thus far, I observed two kinds of behaviors when answering emails. First there are people like the one sitting in front of my row on the plane to Brussels. They take their laptop with them, open them while on the plane, move email from here to there, putting them in different folders, organizing them in thoughtful ways, in order to have everything in its place.
Then there are the guys who are like me. When they get an email, and recognize it, they work at it straight away, hitting the reply button, writing back a quick statement, sending the mail back. Or, if there is no further use, they read it, and forget about it. Sometimes I wonder whether my motivation to directly answer an email is to get the ball back to the person who sent me something – sometimes, but not often.
I don’t have problems with too many unread emails. Though, consider what happens, when I finally get a reply from one of the “move mails in folders”. I open it, read it, hit reply, write whatever comes to mind, send it back. Now, that guy might be trying to reach an Inbox-Zero state quickly working back the 20 mails from me. As he does this, he gets replies in between – often times faster than he can answer. Maybe in the end he gives up.
Do you see the problem? Well, I don’t have a problem from my perspective. But while watching the guy moving mails around on the plane, not sure what to do about them, re-opening the mail and the attachment, that guy looked poor to me. In the end I was considering whether he had a conversation with someone like me.
Of course, this is a self-reinforcing system as you might have noticed by now. But I don’t have the problem, besides I got some longer waiting times from time to time. But who should solve the problem? Well, I think I can contribute to the solution by not answering every email as quickly as I can, and leaving the other people around me some room to breathe, and eventually end up with an Inbox of zero – but let’s see.
A week with Kent Beck
In November I had the opportunity to stay a whole week with Kent Beck. it-agile GmbH invited him for two courses – Responsive Design and Advanced TDD – and one workshop to Hamburg, Germany, and I took both courses and the workshop. Today I was contacted by Johannes Link who was surprised not to find a write-up of this week on my blog. It turns out somewhere during the past year I have turned into a reporter. So, here is my summary from what I could get from my notes. Initially I planned to write it via email to Johannes, but then I though why not share those comments on my blog. Maybe others are looking forward to it.
XP Days Germany: Who is going to be our next ScrumMaster?
At the XP Days Germany I attended Markus Wittwer’s session on consensus-based decision making in teams. During the session we made the decision that I should come up with a write-up of the session within the next two weeks. To fulfill my duty, here it is. You can find his presentation in German on Prezi.
XP Days Germany: Resolving resistance to change
At the XP Days Germany, Rachel Davies talked about how to resolve resistance to change. Davies said that she faces this resistance often as a coach, and what to do about it.
What you always wanted to know about Testing and Quality Assurance – Automation
Continuing the series of questions from the CONQUEST 2010 conference in September, this is the last piece we’ll take a closer into. Today is on test automation.
What you always wanted to know about Testing and Quality Assurance – Doing
Continuing the series of questions from the CONQUEST 2010 conference in September, we’ll take a closer look on questions regarding actually testing software.
Agile Testing Days: Alternative Paths for Self-Education in Software Testing
Last week, I attended the Agile Testing Days in Berlin. I presented on Wednesday afternoon on how to self-educate yourself in Software Testing. I uploaded the slides to slideshare.
Alternative paths for self-education in Software Testing
View more presentations from Markus Gärtner.
In early September I did a webinar on the same presentation. You can access and download the webinar at the EuroSTAR pages.