I previously wrote about being intentional , but focused mostly on intentionality in execution.  Being intentional is also important in planning.  When planning a new product or the implementation of a feature, it is important to explicitly consider all aspects.  It can be a temptation...

This came out of a conversation I had today with a few other test leads.  the question was, “What are the top 5 books you should read if you want my job?”  My job in this case being that of a test development lead.  At Microsoft that means I lead a team (or teams) of people whose job it...

Interesting musings on a subject I can attest to be true. Why is it we get so much done when we're on a tight schedule but then fail to get anything done when we have a long vacation? The same applies to work too. Give someone a long time to get a project done and it will still come in late. Give them...

There are many ways to conduct a code review.  Here are a few ways I've seen it done and the advantages and disadvantages of each. Over-the-Shoulder Reviews Walk over to someone's office or invite them to yours and walk them through the code.  This has the advantage that the author can talk...

Code reviews are an important part of any project's health.  They are able to find and correct code defects before making it into the product and thus spare everyone the pain of having to find them and take them out.  They are also relatively cheap.  Assuming your team wants to implement...

Interesting article about using scrum to manage game development. Many of the pitfalls are true beyond games development. The article is well balanced and has advice for how to overcome the pitfalls. I don't agree with all of the advice, but it is thought provoking. For example, the article makes a good...

A while ago I took a class on Scrum and Agile Project Management. During the discussion on Scrum, it became apparent to me that there are several unchallenged assumptions in many peoples' minds that make accepting Scrum difficult. People assume that Scrum/Agile takes away something they have, but in...

I was recently listening to an interview with Joel Spolsky . The main subject is interviewing and hiring, but in the course of the interview Joel touches on an interesting point. He says that there are two major types of software: Shrinkwrap and Custom (listen around the 40 minute mark). These have very...

Let me recount a story from the television show Babylon 5 . In one episode there is the description of guard posted in the middle of an empty courtyard. There is nothing there to protect. When one of the characters, Londo, questions why, he finds that no one, not even the emperor, knows why. After doing...

Year ago one of our Software Test Engineers was tasked with documenting our smoke* process. It should have been something simple like: Developer packages binaries for testing Developer places smoke request on web page Tester signs up for smoke on web page Tester runs appropriate tests...

Jeff Atwood at Coding Horror has a good post about how " F5 is not a build process ." In it, he explains how you need a real centralized build process. F5 (the "build and debug" shortcut key in Visual Studio) on a developer's machine is not a built process. At Microsoft, we have a practice of regular...

or What to do when you aren't in control but neither is the leader. A while back I wrote about providing clarity as a leader. As part of that essay I mentioned some techniques for keeping groups on track. Those are well and good if you are the leader, but what if you aren't? What if the leader of your...

Most of us have found ourselves in situations where we need someone’s approval to get something done, but we can’t seem to get them to respond. It would be okay if they said no. It would be better if they said yes. We just need an answer yet we can’t get one. One tactic is to just go ahead and do what...

A year and a half ago I talked about how I was running scrum meetings with my team. Since then, we've refined the process but have consistently held scrums on a regular basis. Note that I'm not running a full Scrum system with sprints and product backlogs and such but rather just adopting the scrum meetings...

Good advice for all project managers. Hofstadter's Law : It always takes longer than you expect, even when you take into account Hofstadter's Law.

Lots of interesting quotes in Dreaming in Code. This one is the story of three stonecutters. Each is asked what he is doing. The first answers that he is, "making a living wage." The second says, "I am doing the best job of cutting stones in the entire country." The third, "I am building a cathedral...

I used to play collectible card games. I attended Whitman College during Richard Garfield 's tenure there as a math professor so I got into Magic: The Gathering near its inception. For those of you who don't play these, the basic system goes something like this. You buy packs of cards--not unlike baseball...

I found myself giving this advice to two people today. It came in the context off preparing a presentation for upper management. The desire was to communicate an understanding of what (and why) we are creating a piece of technology. The difficulty was in trying to convey the information without overwhelming...

I was in a meeting the other day deciding what to do next in our testing efforts. Several times during the meeting someone made a suggestion which was countered by a statement something like this: "Shouldn't we let the centralized team handle this?" or "Could we write this in a more generic fashion so...

When you get toward the end of a product, you have to make the tough calls about what gets fixed and what doesn't. Most bugs fall into one of two obvious buckets: Must Fix - Something is really bad here. We cannot ship the product without fixing it. Won't Fix - The problem is minor, hard to get to, etc...

At the beginning of the Vista (then Longhorn) project our team decided that we would implement unit tests. This was the first attempt in our locale to try to use them. We had some successes and some failures. Out of that I have learned several things. This is an attempt to codify what I have learned...

I just finished talking to someone who lost 1 1/2 weeks of work due to an inadvertent key stroke. It's not only hard drive failure that may get you. With hardware stability quite high these days, we sometimes feel invincible. It is easy to get complacent and forget that we are fallible. All it takes...

This is the last post in my "experimenting with scrum" series. After our bug smash time, we went into a period of more serious product development. Recall that we were not implementing all of scrum but rather just the scrum meetings portion. This works acceptably in the development scenario, but not...

Our first attempt at using scrum came during what we call a bug smash. That is a time when we focus solely on fixing bugs. No work is being done on new features. This seemed like a logical time to implement scrum meetings. I chose to meet once a day for 15 minutes. We met at around 11:30 each morning...

It occurs to me that some of those reading this blog will not be familiar with Scrum. Before I go into any details about what did and didn't work about my experiments, I'll take some time to give a quick overview of the process. For more information, check out the book or Ken Schwaber's web page . ...