(This post is here only for historical reasons. Broken links have been redacted.) So it’s after May 31, and you’re all depressed over having missed Early Bird registration for the Conference for the Association for Software Testing. So maybe you haven’t realized that there’s still a way to get the Early Bird rate PLUS an added benefit. If you become a member of the AST, that’s a scant fifty bucks. … Read more

CBC Radio is one of the things to make a Canadian proud. There’s a wealth of stuff that I find valuable, entertaining and informative–Ideas (a largely open forum for all kinds of interesting topics); As It Happens (telephone-based interviews with people, usually on the where the action is happening, on all kinds of issues all over the world); Randy’s Vinyl Tap (in which the former lead guitarist for the Guess … Read more

If anyone asks me what general systems thinking is about, I will from henceforth point them to any Jessica Hagy index card that has an X/Y chart with an -OR- in the caption. Or I may just point everyone to it anyway. This stuff is absolutely wonderful. http://indexed.blogspot.com/ and also http://freakonomics.blogs.nytimes.com/tag/indexed/ Note that I spared you the by-now obligatory reminder to register for the CAST Conference. Oh, damn!–no I didn’t.

I’ll be doing a presentation called “Six Short Talks About Software Testing” for the Toronto Association of System and Software Quality (TASSQ) on Tuesday evening, May 27, 2008. It’ll be a 90-minute session wherein I’ll give of a six set of lightning talks, with time for questions between each one and a longer discussion afterwards. I’ll be using a few of those minutes to talk about the CAST Conference, July … Read more

The Conference for the Association for Software Testing 2008 is coming up, July 14-16 in Toronto. The theme is “Interdisciplinary Approaches to Software Testing”. It’s an absolutely terrific program, featuring keynotes by Jerry Weinberg, Cem Kaner, Rob Sabourin, and Brian Fisher; tutorials by Jerry, Scott Barber, Hung Nguyen, and Julian Harty; and a dozen-or-so track sessions. You can read all about that part here: http://www.cast2008.org/Program. As usual for CAST, the … Read more

Until today, my reading of Mary Reilly’s Play As Exploratory Learning had been limited to occasional stolen glances into Cem Kaner’s library, but a copy of this out-of-print book arrived today. Browsing (that is, a little exploratory reading) yielded this (from Chapter 3, “An Explanation of Play”, page 117): “The pursuit of the rumored goodness and usefulness that play might have for man is plagued by the difficulties inherent in … Read more

Jason Gorman is an interesting guy, and has a lot to say. I agree with lots of it, especially his iconoclastic position on agilism. This time, I’d like to disagree with two paragraphs in a recent blog entry. The second one first. But I suspect in 5-10 years’ time, as test-driven development becomes more popular and teams become more ambitious in their testing efforts, test developers will be in great … Read more

Here’s a heuristic: when someone is describing (or, especially, dissing) some practice or methodology, don’t bother taking them seriously unless they know the difference between tenants and tenets. Examples abound.

Over the last few months, I’ve been wrestling with a book called Sensemaking in Organizations, by Karl Weick. I’ve got bogged down in it from time to time, but it’s fascinating. Weick describes sensemaking as having seven properties: it’s grounded in constructing or enhancing the identity of an individual or group; it’s retrospective, or based on “meaningful lived experience”; it’s “enactive of sensible environments”, which is kind of circular; it … Read more

I know little of Sir Geoffrey Vickers, but I read a quote recently that made me want to find out more. In Play as Exploratory Learning, by Mary Reilly, he is quoted as saying, In these days when the rich in knowledge eat such specialized food at such separate tables, only the dogs have a chance of a balanced diet. That’s a gorgeous reminder about interdisciplinary thinking. And that reminds … Read more