Better Software Magazine Archive: Sep/Oct 2011

IN THIS ISSUE

Learning For Agile Testers, Part 2
By Lisa Crispin
Janet Gregory

In part one of our Learning for Agile Testers series, we addressed general "thinking" skills that go beyond technical competence and how learning these enhances the value you contribute. In part two, we discuss some specific technical skills that benefit testers and how to acquire them.

Goodhart’s Law
By Lee Copeland

Charles Goodhart stated: "Any observed statistical regularity will tend to collapse once pressure is placed upon it for control purposes." In other words, "When a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure."

Software Project Managers: Know Your Business Case
By Payson Hall

Many professionals in the software industry chose to pursue software to avoid business schools and MBAs. In this article, Payson explains that some of that "Business BS" can be useful both tactically and strategically to software project managers.

Alternative JVM Languages For Java Projects
By Daniel Wellman

Java Virtual Machine has become a successful platform for applications written in many languages, not just Java. Alternatives like JRuby, Scala, Clojure, and Groovy can be more concise and offer new ways to approach problems.

Testing Under Pressure
By Robert Sabourin

A cast-in-concrete delivery date looms on your project’s horizon. You have precious little time remaining, and the development team keeps delivering incomplete builds of unstable code. Is this a "death march" project, or can the testing team actually do something useful, or perhaps even save the day?

Managing in Fluid Environments
By Rick Brenner

Most management and change management methodologies assume a traditional environment—one in which the time between changes is much greater than the time required to adapt to each change. In fluid environments, the next change event happens before we can finish adapting to the last one, and sometimes even the one before that.

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