Mike Harris' Testing and Quality Blog
We all know that speaking up and getting your point over at a meeting is important. However, I am sure that we have all taken part in meetings when everyone is so keen to speak that we do not listen to one another. It is not only important to speak, it is also important to …
Continue reading “Developing your listening skills is really useful”
It can be useful to define aspects of a product that describe the quality of the application that you are testing. I have found examples of doing this in seven different decades. Sometimes these aspects have been put into sets, lists or groups and have sometimes been called quality characteristics, sometimes quality factors and at …
Continue reading “Test using Quality Characteristics\Factors\Attributes that you create.”
What can we learn from comparing Deming’s 14 Points for Management and Crosby’s 14-Point Quality Improvement Plan? Which will help us more to improve quality? W. Edwards Deming first presented his 14 Points at a conference in 1978 in Tokyo[1] and published his 14 Points for Management in 1982[2]. Philip B. Crosby published his 14-point …
There is a discussion in the DORA Community about “the problem with DORA metrics is that they focus on maximizing outputs rather than outcomes”. Some people have argued that Dora metrics will reward teams with a high number of commits, which would be considered ‘output’ but not reward teams whose commits benefit customers, which would …
W. Edwards Deming is often referred to as the “grandfather of quality”, and this new well-researched book about him and his philosophy gives us many new and useful insights. The book’s author, John Willis, is one of the people who created DevOps, and he says that to understand the roots of DevOps you need to …
A tester’s role is not only to do the testing but also to improve quality. I visited the site of the former Hawthorne Works during a recent trip to Chicago because so many innovations in quality started there. The Hawthorne Works was the Bell Telephone Laboratories site that manufactured the hardware for the first national …
Teams whose focus includes testability are more likely to be high performing.[1] Good testability will “minimize testing costs”[2]. Testability can also be seen as one of the factors that determine quality. When the testability of a feature is discussed people often ask what is meant by testability. The clearest definition of testability I have found …
Continue reading “How can you improve the testability of your product?”
“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”
Kaoru Ishikawa was a significant figure in the development of quality in Japan. In his book Total Quality Control – The Japanese Way he describes many of the ways that Japanese businesses achieve quality. His book contains many points that are useful to testing professionals. He wrote that the very essence of Total Quality Control …
Continue reading “A review of “Total Quality Control – the Japanese Way” by Kaoru Ishikawa”
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 …
Continue reading “Use a cause-and-effect diagram to achieve consensus when defining quality”
I really enjoyed talking with John Willis on his Profound podcast. We talked about testing and the role Deming’s philosophy plays in helping me to test. I learned from the conversation. Thank you, John Willis. Please click on this link to listen to the podcast: https://www.buzzsprout.com/1758599/12422563
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”
“The Art of Software Testing” by Glenford J. Myers is a classic book about software testing and I often use it as a reference. In the book, Glenford J. Myers wrote that “test cases that explore boundary conditions have a higher payoff than cases that do not”[1]. Boundary Value Analysis is a widely used testing …
Continue reading “A thought regarding boundary value analysis”
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 …
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