Visit the new book-review site

Visit the new book-review site

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The Doublecheckers

Exhausted after fifteen hours of preparing a CD product that had to ship that day, one last little error was found, and fixed. “It’s good to go!” said the person who fixed it. It was 11 p.m. on a Friday night, we had been working on this since 8 a.m., pushing to meet the deadline. There was a sigh of relief by everyone, except for me and my lead Quality Assurance Analyst. We looked at each other and nodded in agreement—“No, not good to go.” Continue reading

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Archaeology of SDLC

There are some great names among the founders of the still-nascent field, industry, and profession of Software Testing & Quality Assurance: Dave Gelperin, Boris Beizer, Glenford Myers, Rick Craig, and Lee Copeland, to name a few. A name not often included in that list is Michel Foucault. That may be because Foucault was a social theorist and philosopher rather than a software quality practitioner. But I was listening to a Foucault interview on knowledge and culture from 1971, and as with all things interesting, I started thinking how it might relate to QA. Continue reading

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Big Data and the New CMO

Marketers and especially CMOs transition into increasingly technical roles as marketing becomes an increasingly metrics-driven activity. Big data is largely to blame. Metrics deliver actionable information on human community, phone apps behavior, ecommerce behavior, social networking, browsing patterns, as well as metrics on real-world trends and transactions Continue reading

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Thanksgiving, Football, and Web Development

Thanksgiving reminds me of many things for which I am grateful. Thanksgiving is a time to count blessings, and a time to use football analogies for software projects. As the stuffing settles, and the games are on, my thoughts naturally turn towards the leadership, the coaching, the training, the practice, the teamwork, and the execution that all contribute to the successful launch of a website. Continue reading

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QA vs. QC

Quality Assurance (QA) and Quality Control (QC) have some overlap but for the most part they are very different. Here are some differences between QA and QC I can think of off the top of my head. Continue reading

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Road Rallies & Software Testing

In the current phase of projects at work, a lot of people around me have been traveling, either from elsewhere to here, or from here to other places around the globe. Also a lot of others are taking summer vacation trips. With all this travel going on, one thing comes to mind: road rallies. Continue reading

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Binary Is Always and Never

“Binary Is Always and Never” — A better binaryesque statement would be “Binary is Always OR Never” but it would be less accurate. Many functions, thoughts, events, behaviors, appear stream-like, flowing, complicated, with millions of molecular, intellectual and motivational subtleties. Continue reading

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Dreamweaver vs WordPress

I read web-tool-related forums and lately I’ve seen several “WordPress-or-Dreamweaver?” types of questions. WordPress is a GUI-like template-driven CMS. Dreamweaver is a hand-code-intensive Web Building tool. I wouldn’t compare them in the sense of “which is better.” I would contrast them because Continue reading

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CSS Weblife

Remember when CSS was new and we all wanted to create lighter-than-air pure CSS websites? It seems like only yesterday. Browser quirks and complex flashy interfaces put an end to those dreams, at least in the realm of corporate and most business sites. CSS is far from finished, though. Here’s a link to a list of CSS Design award winners, Continue reading

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Adobe CQ5 (AEM)

Adobe’s CMS “CQ5” is growing in popularity among larger corporations because of Adobe’s extremely effective acquisition, bundling, and marketing strategy around the product. The definition of CMS has grown more complex and comprehensive because of CQ5. Continue reading

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Word for the Occasion

Most everyone knows a malapropism when they see it, even if they don’t know it’s called a malapropism. Here are some malapropisms (followed by the correct form): Continue reading

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Frankenstein and the Agile Casserole

What’s Agile? The word itself sounds upbeat, fast, and flexible. In fact, it sounds agile. No wonder almost every company and person in the known world today declares that it “Does Agile.” The concept has been accepted and embraced almost universally. Continue reading

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Cicero and Lorem Ipsum

Once upon a time in 45 BC, Cicero wrote “de Finibus Bonorum et Malorum” (The Extremes of Good and Evil), an essay on ethics. Among other topics, he talks about the virtues of seeking pleasure in the sense of long-term benefits that are good for you. One example he gives is Continue reading

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Wabi-Sabi

Wabi-sabi is a Japanese word that evokes a minimalist beauty that is imperfect, unique, understated, authentic, and deeply felt. Hyphenating wabi and sabi merges two slightly different ideas of beauty. Continue reading

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Semantic Web

Semantic Web means XML-tagging content by type, uniformly, using the terms that people actually use to search for that content. One industry well suited to Semantic Web is pharmaceuticals. Continue reading

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Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

Here are some Search Engine Optimization (SEO) tips that anyone can use to get started on improving your ranking in the search results of the major search engines. Continue reading

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User Stories

Everyone likes a user story. People nowadays equate user stories with Agile or AMDD. But of course the same thing must be done in every software development project, whether waterfall, agile, or something else. Continue reading

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Kanban

Kanban is a method in industry and software that uses cards or other signals to show when something is needed and what is needed. In industry, it refers to inventory and stock flow. So when you’re low on an item on the shelf, you check the warehouse, when you’re low in the warehouse, you post or send a kanban card ordering more production of the low-inventory item. Continue reading

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Use Case vs. Test Case (with a sidenote on Requirements Traceability)

A Use Case is not a substitute for a Test Case. I start with this point because there is a growing trend of organizations using Use Cases as Test Cases. Writing Use Cases takes a lot less time, requires fewer resources and less expertise. Continue reading

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In-house Styleguides

The purpose of an in-house styleguide is to guide writers and editors in a particular company or office with its own style peculiarities. In-house styleguides might include industry usage that conflicts with standard publishing manuals. Continue reading

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Pipelines and Smoketests

Where there’s smoke, there’s fire. We smoketest a new build for a quickie reassurance that new fixes basically worked, and did not introduce new side-effect errors. Failing a smoketest tells us the code still has a fire to put out. Continue reading

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Workmanship

When something works out well, as planned, no glitches, it’s nice to point it out because it seems to happen less and less often. Continue reading

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Perils of a Living Language

Mankind is notorious for abusing other living things, for example, bird eggs with DDT, deforestation, gorillas in zoo cages, toxic waste, paving paradise, radiation, endangering the Quietschbükers, etc. But what about language? Language is a living thing. Continue reading

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Type “P” Personality

Planning fills the air with joy and clarity. I’ve planned everything from building a bookshelf, to going to college, to setting up my curriculum, to researching a thesis, to having children, to buying a house, to re-roofing a house, to camping trips, to exercise regimens, to buying a car, to writing a book, to relocating my family to another state, to  Continue reading

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Shoulds and Shouldn’ts

Don’t you hate it when people say that you “should do this” and “shouldn’t do that”? I do, especially when they are saying it in a Requirements Document. “Should” can mean a lot of things, but it doesn’t mean “require.” Continue reading

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Measuring the Window

I was having a window replaced at my house. But it wasn’t a normal window, it was a triple-layer fog-proof 20 ft. x 4 ft. window. Of course, my window space isn’t exactly 20 ft., it’s 19 ft., 53/64 inches. It’s good to have these exact measurements, it’s even better to have them *before* you cut and transport the replacement. Continue reading

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A Question of Context

There are several “schools of thought” in software testing. People who rigidly adhere to one school are very idealistic about a theory of software testing. Older and wiser testers mix and match schools, styles, systems, theories, practices, to fit each new given situation. Continue reading

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