In response to my previous post, John Stevenson kindly pointed me toward an article by Brittany Hunter, who claims to be a poly-skilled software designer. Does she adopt the T-shape? In her article on the broken comb she explains why this model is most effective to her. I think it is a nice addition to my previous post, what do you think?
Rob Lambert, Lisa Crispin and Janet Gregory worked on a great model called the T-shaped tester. Where the horizontal stands for our generic skills and competences. The vertical in the T describes our specialism. In my previous column – G(r)ood testing 16 – I discussed the competences that are associated with good testing. I stated that testing is a versatile profession and to be a good tester, we need to master many skills and competences. Should adopt more than one specialism? Yes, I think we should. Ross Dawson states in the article he wrote on this topic:
“It can be dangerous to have just one area of deep expertise, as the value of any single domain of expertise can erode rapidly with new developments. Complementary sets of deep expertise can make people extraordinary valuable, if combined with a breadth of perspective.”
In my new column G(r)ood testing 17 I state that it is time to move beyond the T-shape. Lets us introduce the π-shaped tester and an extended model like the comb-shaped one.
Like Iris Classon states: “Comb-skills I believe are hard to maintain, and some can pull it of- but definitive not everybody and you can become ‘Jack of all trades, master of none’ instead of ‘Jack of all trades, master of many’”. So it might a wise thing to adopt the π-shape and develop a (read: only one) extra specialism to secure your future as a tester.
Read “G(r)ood testing 17: Beyond the T-shape, what specialisms do you develop” on the EuroSTAR community pages, learn about the π-shaped tester and how you can become one yourself.
This October I’ll be flying towards Seoul for the Seoul Software Testing Conference. I found the online billboard with the speaker line-up.
Mette Bruhn-Pedersen, Kelvin Ross, Debra Friedenberg, Wonil Kwon are with me on the program. I’ll take on the challenge to give the audience an impression on how we do our agile development and testing in Europe. Using the pretentious title “Agile in Europe, this is how we do it” I’ll be combining benchmark research with my own experience. Share some pitfalls and things I feel we are struggling with; Scaling and test strategies in larger Agile projects. Looking forward to sharing my thoughts and getting to know the city.
While preparing a presentation for a customer I stumbled upon a nice blogpost the Agile Admin. The agile admin is written by Ernest Mueller, James Wickett, Karthik Gaekwad, and Peco Karayanev. The post presents a definition of DevOps, and I think I had the same in mind.
DevOps is the practice of operations and development engineers participating together in the entire service lifecycle, from design through the development process to production support.
Read the post and the comments for more background information
On 1 september the AgileHubNoord organised a session on Scaling Agile. During the meeting Anko Tijman gave the presentation that we (Anko, Cesario Ramos and I) did during the testnet event last spring.
Reading the comments on the event page the event was a succes. I saw some good tweets on the subwaymapping technique that was presented. And was positively surprised by the visio drawing that was put online by Steven Nienhuis.
So in addition to the powerpoint template in my original post, there is now a visio option as well. Succes with applying.
Derk-Jan de Grood 