In the comments to our rapid test of IMVU, Elisabeth Hendrickson said, “Great list of issues. However, I suspect that these issues don’t really interfere with the core value to the target users.” That might be true. I think it might be more accurate to suggest that the issues don’t interfere with the core value to the existing users. That is, IMVU might be hitting the dartboard, but not the … Read more

Well, that generated some comments. Interesting. People talk a lot about testing, but nothing gets ’em fired up like test results. I really appreciate the feedback, and I’d like to respond to it here, over a couple of posts. I don’t mind Blogger’s Compose feature but (as far as I know so far), it has a pretty clumsy method for editing comments. Like, none that I can see. Sai Venkatakrishnan … Read more

There was much rejoicing on Twitter this afternoon over a blog posting. Apparently, IMVU is rolling out fifty deployments each and every day, and they’re doing so by the magic of Continuous Deployment. “The high level of our process is dead simple: Continuously integrate (commit early and often). On commit automatically run all tests. If the tests pass deploy to the cluster. If the deploy succeeds, repeat.“ Some more details: … Read more

Conversation, whether in person or online, is one of those marvelously unpredictable things. Real conversation a fundamentally exploratory activity. When assisted by a good encyclopedia, dictionary, or reference library—or the Web, it’s even more fun. Good conversation, like good exploration, takes us to interesting places. Tonight, Ben Simo and I were griping to each other, in Skype, about Skype’s horrid new chat window. My complaint was the way in which … Read more

I’ll be giving a keynote presentation at STAR East this year: What Haven’t You Noticed Lately: Building Awareness in Testers. (Credit where credit is due: The title is strongly influenced by Mark Federman and his work, and comes from a now-rare book by Terence Gordon about Marshall McLuhan called McLuhan for Beginners. It’s not clear from Gordon’s book whether “What Haven’t You Noticed Lately” is McLuhan’s quote or something that … Read more

In the Agile-Testing list, Kevin Lawrence says “I share in the fantasy that my business people will write tests and am jealous of those who have turned fantasy into reality but, alas, I have not shared that experience.“ Wanting business people to write tests, to me, feels like a cook wanting the restaurant’s patrons to sauté their own mushrooms. Dear Madam Business Person, I don’t want to stop you writing … Read more

“Quality is value to some person.” —Jerry Weinberg In the agile-testing mailing list, Steven Gordon says “The reality is that meeting the actual needs of the market beats quality (which is why we observe so many low quality systems surviving in the wild). Get over it. Just focus on how to attain the most quality we can while still delivering fast enough to discover, evolve and implement the right requirements … Read more

Arianna Huffington, on the Daily Show, suggested that one point of the blog was to work out nascent ideas without being overly concerned about completeness. There are a bunch of things that are rattling around at the moment, from all kinds of different sources. One is The Sciences of the Artificial, by Herbert Simon—a book that James Bach has been recommending to me practically forever. I’m finally getting around to … Read more

With apologies to James Taylor, I’m going to Carolina, and not merely in my mind. The Triangle Information Systems Quality Association (TISQA) will present Agile Testing In The Carolinas, March 16th and 17th, 2009, at The Friday Center, Chapel Hill, North Carolina. The first day is a day of keynotes, conference sessions, and networking; the second is dedicated to half- and full-day workshops. Featured speakers include Shaun Bradshaw, T.R. Buskirk, … Read more