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7 habits of highly effective testers

By on September 17, 2009 in Best Practices, Management, On-Going Improvement

I’m currently reading a book by Stephen R. Covey called “The seven habits of highly effective people”, highly recommended if you need to understand how to balance and focus your life and your work. The book got me thinking about the fact that looking back over my career I have also noticed some habits that [...]

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The Value of Peer Reviews (& why we don’t use it more!)

By on June 28, 2009 in Best Practices, On-Going Improvement

I am presenting the subject of Testing Intelligence on next month’s CAST Conference. One of the things I like about the CAST approach is the fact that they promote the dialogue and (safe/constructive) discussions around the topics and sessions presented, allowing presenters and audience to gain from the experience. The other thing I like, this [...]

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Add a list with Rejection Reasons to your bugs.

By on May 21, 2009 in Best Practices, Bug Reporting, Metrics & Statistics, On-Going Improvement

A PractiTest customer was telling me about a problem they have with people not writing down their reasons when rejecting a bug, or writing unclear explanations in the Description or Comments fields. I know exactly what she meant…  I also hate this issue plus the fact that since the data is in Free Text it [...]

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When you think you’ve done enough, go for a walk and then think again

By on May 12, 2009 in Best Practices, Management, On-Going Improvement

Many times when I need to write a new Test Case, run an Exploratory Testing task, or even write a new post for this site, there is a moment when we think I’m done, but deep inside I feel that I might have missed something important. At these times I usually do a break and [...]

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Productivity Tip – Set a weekly meeting with yourself

By on April 30, 2009 in Best Practices, Management, On-Going Improvement

One of my biggest on-going challenges is managing my time, tasks and obligations. Between PractiTest’s Agile development process, overseeing the writing and executing of test cases, interacting with customers, collaborating with colleagues, and all the rest of the daily tasks, sometimes the week appears to fly-by and many things I planned to do become at [...]

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Improve your Testing Skills, take a look at your Kids!

By on April 24, 2009 in Best Practices, On-Going Improvement

I will need to give Rob Lambert credit for planting the seed for this post with a comment he left on a totally unrelated post about Company Politics and QA, when he mentioned learning from his kid how to pick his fights.  This got me thinking that we have many more things to learn from [...]

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