Mike Harris' Testing and Quality Blog
“The ability to work and deliver in small batches is especially important” [1], which is why many development teams work in small batches. Scrum teams work in small batches by limiting the work they plan to do in a sprint. Kanban teams work in small batches by limiting the work in progress. Working in small …
Continue reading “Why we should work in small batches – a story from Japan”
W. Edwards Demings’s System of Profound Knowledge (SoPK) is a valuable framework for leadership. SoPK provides a view, which Deming called a lens, “by which to understand the organisations we work in”[1]. The SoPK is “a framework for applying best efforts to the right tasks”[2]. There are four parts to the SoPK: The theory that …
Continue reading “First Thoughts on a System of Profound Testing”
When I gave the talks on “What is quality” I found it was not possible to provide a definition of quality on which everyone would agree. I recently read a book by Kaoru Ishikawa which included him describing quality using a cause-and-effect diagram[1]. It occurred to me that using a cause-and-effect diagram to describe something …
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To illustrate how the use of theory leads to learning W. Edwards Deming told the story of Chanticleer the cockerel[1]. Chanticleer crowed every morning, and after he crowed he saw that the sun rose. This led him to develop the theory that the sun rose because he crowed, however, one day he forgot to crow …
Continue reading “The Theory of Knowledge helps us learn from our work”
Many teams, create a definition of done to clarify what putting a card in the Done column on a scrum or kanban board means. A good number of teams also have team agreements or ‘ways of working’ which define ways in which the teams work. Also, some teams have checklists of items that need to …
Testers and developers can use the Deming Cycle to improve the quality of their testing. The Deming Cycle was initially used in the manufacture of telephones and has had a big influence on software development. The cycle has four steps: The cycle should be repeated with the knowledge accumulated. The Deming Cycle can be described …
Continue reading “Using plan-do-study-act to improve testing”
Cause-effect diagrams are a useful technique that can be used to improve quality. Glenford J. Myers wrote that “a weakness of boundary value analysis and equivalence partitions is that they do not explore combinations of input circumstances”[1]. A technique that can be used to explore and describe combinations of inputs to an issue is a …
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The Five Whys is a technique for finding the root cause of a problem. Toyota developed this technique and it is now widely used, including in software development. I was introduced to the Five Whys by Tom Gilb as part of a course he ran on Lean QA and have used the Five Whys in …
I enjoy working in an organisation where we are learning from the work we do. An example of this would be using retrospectives to enable the team to learn from their work and taking this knowledge forward to help the team. Until recently I have called this approach continuous learning. It sounded right, as it …
I have worked in lean or agile teams for a number of years and developing my knowledge of lean and agile has helped me. The Deming Cycle is something I have found helpful to understand because it is a part of agile and lean and it is also about continuous improvement of quality. Engineering teams …
What does it mean when a card is put into the Done column? Done can mean that the coding is completed, it can also include that the code has been reviewed, that it includes unit tests and many other things. Teams sometimes create a “Definition of Done” to state exactly what “done” means and this …
Continue reading “Three short stories about the Definition of Done”
I am looking forward to speaking about my story in the ebook Testing Stories at the BCS SIGiST webinar on the 12th October because I want to show how Test Lead’s have an important role to play in making agile transformations successful. I will be speaking with three of the other testers who contributed stories …
Continue reading “Testing Stories: Test Lead in an agile transformation”
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