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~ using my evil powers for good

Monthly Archives: August 2013

Live testing – End-to-End Agile Tutorial – CAST 2013

26 Monday Aug 2013

Posted by claire in CAST 2013, Context, Experiments, Exploratory Testing

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Shelfari: Book reviews on your book blog

Big Visible Testing Full Length

19 Monday Aug 2013

Posted by claire in Agile, Agile2013, Approaches, Context, Experiences, Experiments, Personas, Publications, Speaking, Training, User Experience

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Here are the slides from my full length Big Visible Testing talk, presented at Agile2013 in Nashville, TN on August 6, 2013.

Big Visible Testing (Full Length) from Claire Moss

My experience report paper will be published by the Agile Alliance under the conferences archive as part of the proceedings of the Agile2013 conference. You can also download the PDF here: ClaireMoss-BigVisibleTesting-Agile2013

During the year and a half of experimentation that included the big visible charts that are included in this slide deck, I read over the following resources, only some of which would easily fit into the IEEE format. This is the full bibliography of my research, as far as I have been able to track down my sources. (At the time, I wasn’t expecting to cite them for anyone else, so I probably didn’t bookmark everything I read.) I hope the following links will prove helpful to you in developing your own big visible charts. Let me know how it goes! And please share any sources that you find helpful. I’m always looking for new inspiration.

REFERENCES

My first dev team was an XP dev team that dogfooded our own digital signage product to display success/failure for the thousands of unit tests in the suite (i.e. single flag for whole suite red/green).
Other eXtreme Programming big visible charts

Extreme Feedback Devices summary – I loved this team’s “feel-around” approach to feedback!

  • code smell
  • auditory
  • scrolling marquee
  • code flow
  • lights

Alistair Cockburn coined information radiator
Alistair Cockburn’s burn charts (burn up vs burn down)
Information radiator flash card
More information radiator stuff

Lisa Crispin’s whole team approach includes Big Visible Charts
Energized Work site map backlog
More from Lisa Crispin’s tour of Energized Work

Heatmaps (from code analysis)

Paul Holland’s Exploratory Testing charter Kanban board
Lanette Creamer and Matt Barcomb gave a presentation that included ET charter management in big visible charts; podcast preview of their session

Visualizing above the product team
Including faces of people/profiles in the big visible charts
I can’t remember whether I’d see this one at the time or not… it might have been something I discovered after my time on the team mentioned in my presentation: Visual management for agile teams

New inspiration

Although the above resources were all I knew at the time I began my experiments, as I prepared my IEEE paper for the Agile2013 conference proceedings, I was tracking down my sources and came across these other relevant pages & posts that have given me some great ideas of things to try next!

Gojko Adzic’s visualizing quality

Michael Bolton’s mind-maps

I like this greyhound chasing the rabbit decoy visualization Alistair made
Alistair’s projects (radiating)
Alistair’s collaboration cards

Lego representation of bugs

Other cool extreme feedback devices:

  • bat signal (as a Batman nerd, I heartily approve!)
  • bear lamp
  • traffic light

Clothesline wallboard contest entry – as an avid crafter, I adore this one!
Wallboard contest results

After some discussion in my session about suggesting solutions for distributed teams, I was looking for some digital implementations of big visible charts, but I don’t know how these would work out for you.

Atlassian on information radiators for extreme feedback (with broken image links – sad!)
Atlassian on information radiators
Greenhopper (Jira plugin) wallboard
More on Jira Wallboard

What I Did For My Summer Vacation – Part 2

14 Wednesday Aug 2013

Posted by claire in Agile, Experiences, Experiments, Retrospective, Soft Skills, Testing Humor, Weekend Testing

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For Science!

For Science!

Our geek gals weekend was quite a memorable one! We had an email thread going around discussing all of our excitement that culminated in:

Road Trip Retrospective

Liked

  • Beginning new friendships and rekindling old ones
  • WaHo, or Waffle House for you non-Southerners, is a road trip staple
  • Seeing the sights: art gallery, street musician, architecture walk, shopping
  • Active pursuits: plantation tour, petting zoo, bodysurfing
  • Keeping it mellow: drip castles, collecting shells, yoga, sunbathing
  • Team-building through cooking indoors & grilling out
  • Kitsch juxtaposed with refinement: deep fried peanuts and formal high tea
  • Bizarre medical poster discovery
  • Conversation: discussions of literature, science, and life
  • Creative outlets: lanyards, scrapbooking, board games, magnetic nail polish

Learned

  • Having pricing/rental agreements in writing is essential – but at least one of us was overcharged and our deposit wasn’t fully refunded
  • Foodie friends should always pick the restaurant
  • Crafting doesn’t come as naturally to everyone – but collaborative art is more fun!
  • Twilight is hilarious when read aloud with expression and voice acting
  • About 1 in 10 photographs come out the way I’d expect
  • Vintage gold lamé will cover you in glitter
  • I can disassemble a grill to light it when the starter is broken – but I didn’t expect a fireball when I opened the lid!

Lacked

  • Roadside attractions
  • Strange food venues
  • Pest control (huge roaches landing in my hair? unacceptable!)
  • Respect from the rental agent who told me I was a b*tch on the phone (keepin’ it classy!)
  • Support from the rental agent to operate the hot tub that we were forbidden to adjust when it was tepid

Longed For

  • Working internet connection (seriously, who cuts a bunch of geek girls off?)
  • Privacy: long term renter walked his dog through our space each day
  • Functional bathrooms: inconsistent water pressure, toilets constantly running or clogged and leaking, shower door jammed, scalding hot water hurt a couple of us, and what’s with the toilet installed in the linen closet?!?
  • Stable floors: I fell through the deck once and nearly fell through another part of the deck a second time, squishy kitchen floor
  • Sturdy roofs: bedroom ceiling collapsed
  • Nighttime lighting out on the uneven decks
  • Ovens/grills that heated evenly and to the designated temperature
  • Cleaning crew: moldy air conditioning unit, dust, dirt, bug parts, expired cleaning supplies
  • Maintenance crew to shore up the framing and carpentry

So how did our product turn out? Our execution wasn’t flawless, but we have very fond memories of creativity, conversation, and survival. Nothing like a few disasters to remind us how fortunate we are.

Countdown to Agile2013!

02 Friday Aug 2013

Posted by claire in Agile2013, Experiences, Speaking, Training

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I’m so excited about next week that I’m re-reading the schedule for next week with great anticipation (on a Friday evening. Yeah, I’m a big nerd. It’s cool.)

So in celebration, I’m counting down to my first full-length talk at the conference! See you there!

weeks
-51
-2
days
0
-3
hours
-1
0
minutes
-2
-5
seconds
0
-2
I’m on stage right now. Come join me![/tminus]

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