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aclairefication

~ using my evil powers for good

Category Archives: Agile2013

Sketching for fun and profit

17 Friday Jan 2014

Posted by claire in Agile2013, Approaches, Experiences, Experiments, Soft Skills, Speaking, Training, User Experience, Visualization

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Have at you

As I recently wrote in Better Software magazine, I tend toward visualizing information. While this does not mean I skimp on words – as anyone who has been near me for 15 minutes can attest – it does mean that I think more clearly when I have a whiteboard in front of me and a chisel tip marker in my hand.

Ode to whiteboards

“@aclairefication: No sticky notes. No whiteboards. #FiveWordTechHorrors” this happened to me last week.

— James Grenning (@jwgrenning) December 11, 2013

 

One Christmas gifts my husband installed a wall of whiteboards in our home for the children to draw and scribble. The children loved it and happily covered it with unintelligible childhood graffiti. As it turned out, this blank wall was a greater gift to me. When I was preparing to present at conferences in 2013, I was feeling quite blocked in writing proposals and producing presentation materials until I relaxed and just let myself have time with my home whiteboard.

I hadn’t realized how much I missed having a large expanse to fill with thoughts as they came spilling out. At my first testing job, my XP development team installed a wall of whiteboard for just this sort of thing, removing barriers to collaboration by having enough space for any conversation the team needed to have. Of course, some corners were dominated by persistent big visible charts but those lasted only as long as they were needed. Yes, I was spoiled.

I decided to keep my presentations simple and sketched the images I wanted to have in my slides on this wall. It turns out taking well lit pictures of whiteboards without glare is sufficiently difficult that there are apps for that. Go figure!

Takeaways

I also realized that I would be in a fix at the conference if I didn’t have a whiteboard handy, so I scoured the internet looking for portable options. It just so happened that one of my favorite nerdy websites was advertising a foldable pocket whiteboard. One look and I was in love. I was able to easily take notes in any way I saw fit and at a scale that pleased me, not being limited to eight and a half by eleven or whatever dimensions a digital application considered adequate.

In my day-long tutorial preceding CAST 2013, on a team with people I’d never met, I wasn’t sure how to begin solving the problem, but the casualness of a portable whiteboard that could be unfolded, scribbled on, wiped away, and stowed out of the way was definitely an asset to establishing good communication from the beginning.

It also came in handy when I was able to snag a table at one of the Agile2013 social events to catch up with a speaker whose talk I had missed. He liked it so much, he bought three. Subsequently, another friend from the conference asked whether that would be a good speaker gift and I heartily assented. Now I’m wondering whether this company pays for referrals. 🙂

Drawing pictures at work? Really!

At Agile2013, in his presentation Sketch you can!, Jeremy Kriegel explained using graphic facilitation to craft meetings that better involve attendees. People can focus on visuals easily and suggest improvements. This sketching is a combination of note taking and wire framing, which is something user experience (UX) folks do routinely as part of their work. He describes trading quality of the drawing for speed in order to keep the focus on communication, then enhancing the drawing later. The focus is on the need people are trying to satisfy and understanding the context of that need.

By sharing in a concrete way, you can validate precise language and discover where meeting participants are not agreeing. The result is a public record of the conversation that can be shared. (I’ve been known to take many many pictures of whiteboards in my day.) However, the communication is more important than the deliverable, which helped to free me of my concerns about how much artistic talent I have. I felt comfortable improvising and the sketching was a sort of performance, although in the class we were not standing up in front of a group.

Earlier today, I was having a conversation with a colleague at a whiteboard and sketching the interacting parts of the problem we are testing was very helpful for focusing the conversation and revealing areas that we needed to investigate. I’m definitely a fan of drawing pictures at work and I appreciate Jeremy’s encouragement.

Sketchy people

Periodically, I rediscover Gaping Void and wallow in the talent and inspiration of these images. My most recent visit followed a tweet to his blog on new year inspiration:

I guess my “mountain” was drawing cartoons (like the cartoon at the top rightfully indicates), although it took me DECADES to find that out. – Hugh MacLeod

However, I was so drawn to his live sketching videos that I decided to give it a whirl. Not sure where to begin, I snagged a photo of my 95-year-old grandmother off a family member’s Facebook and took a shot at digital sketching. I’m pretty pleased with the result. It’s not my best effort and I’m not worried about that because it was so much fun to try.

Gma

When I’m so busy that I don’t have time to blog or read a book or play a board game, I still have time to sketch something out, however crudely drawn the result might be. I know I won’t turn into an Andrea Zuill overnight, so I keep at it a little at a time.

I’m finding that sketching on digital photos or enhancing existing images (so far no original memes!) is much much easier than starting from nothing, so that’s kind of my thing at the moment, but I’m finding the courage to stretch a bit more into original composition. We’ll see if anything comes of it. For now, it gives me something creative to do that personalizes my slides a bit more.

How do you use sketching for fun or profit?

Est testing parfait?

19 Tuesday Nov 2013

Posted by claire in #testchat, Agile2013, AgileConnection, Experiments, Exploratory Testing, Hackathon, ISST, Lean Coffee, Podcast, Retrospective, Skype Test Chat, Social media, Software Testing Club Atlanta, Speaking, Tea-time With Testers, Techwell, Test Retreat, Testing Circus, TWiST, Volunteering, Weekend Testing

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I heard that Gerry Weinberg has an exercise called “Mary had a little lamb,” in which you analyze each word in the sentence to elicit implicit meaning that might be important. This sounded interesting enough to try, so when the opportunity came to propose a topic at Test Retreat 2013 I went for it. My topic “Is testing for me?” didn’t end up formally scheduled but made a nice interstitial topic to discuss with those milling about in the main room.

I chopped the sentence into separate words and wrote them top-to-bottom on a large sticky note. Then, instead of giving some sort of prepared remarks, I elicited brainstorming from the gathered participants. Having received interesting feedback on my professional and personal strengths at Agile2013 that had left me questioning how best to use my evil powers for good, I wanted to hear how others were thinking about the testing field and how it fit them.

The resulting scrawled notes ended up a mindmap, the path of least resistance for me. I won’t say the discussion solved all my problems, but it did give me some direction for future exploration – exploration that might also be helpful to a newbie wondering whether to pursue a career in testing.

Is testing for me?Which brings me to some interesting recent events:

  • the first ISST webinar by Ben Kelly
  • Our second meetup for Software Testing Club Atlanta
  • Randomly running across a new tester on Twitter
  • This testing blog post I read recently

I started composing a list of things I’d recommend to people just starting out as testers to help them to evaluate whether to continue. I wanted to encourage them to jump right in but also think big, not waiting them to wait 5 years to reach out to the wider world of testing (like I did).

Here’s my current list. I blogged about various experiments I tried, so you can read for yourself to see what it’s like to select what’s a good starting point for you.

  • First things first: Whatever you try, frequent retros
  • Social media, especially Twitter
  • Try exploratory testing
  • Weekend Testing
  • Chatting with other testers online
  • Books, Podcasts, Blogs, maybe even writing for some ezines or websites?
  • Meetups, local events, Lean Coffee, conferences – attend (in person or virtually), live-tweet a conference, volunteer, speak (lightning talk, whole session, workshop, tutorial)
  • Open Source, Hackathons, innovation days, etc
  • uTest/Applause? I’ve heard of this but not tried it. Seems like a lower barrier to entry/way to get started?
  • And, last but not least, who do you want to be?

No matter how many times I think I’ve found all the meaning in my testing career, suddenly I realize there are more layers… but like a parfait, not an onion.

Donkey: Oh, you both have LAYERS. Oh. You know, not everybody like onions. What about cake? Everybody loves cake!
Shrek: I don’t care what everyone else likes! Ogres are not like cakes.
Donkey: You know what ELSE everybody likes? Parfaits! Have you ever met a person, you say, “Let’s get some parfait,” they say, “Hell no, I don’t like no parfait”? Parfaits are delicious!
Shrek: NO! You dense, irritating, miniature beast of burden! Ogres are like onions! End of story! Bye-bye! See ya later.
Donkey: Parfait’s gotta be the most delicious thing on the whole damn planet! – Shrek

Thanks for the inspiration to write, EmJayKay80 and Niyi!

STC ATL Lean Coffee #1

11 Monday Nov 2013

Posted by claire in Agile2013, Approaches, Experiences, Experiments, Lean Coffee, Software Testing Club Atlanta, Speaking, Volunteering

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STCATLMeetup1-DotVotingOver the last few years, I have been getting to know other software testers here in Atlanta. Frequently, beginning this new acquaintance is such a positive experience that the other tester urges finding others similar to us to meet more regularly. This is such a common outcome that I am no longer surprised when first conversations end this way.

I don’t have much experience with the particulars of sifting through a large tech community for people interested in hanging out during their personal time to chat about testing software. However, when others insist on giving you a boost, it’s harder to say no.

I have demurred all these requests until now. Eventually it seemed silly to continue to turn down the genuine offers of resources, energy, and enthusiasm. I almost felt bad about denying people the community they so clearly craved. So here we are.

I love meeting new people and engaging them in conversations. However, I realize not everyone is comfortable doing that. I’ve noticed that having a structure to interactions can reduce the social barriers for those who might otherwise hang back.

At Agile2013, I noticed that Lean Coffee was an easy way to get to know a group of strangers, so I thought it would be a good place to start for the newly formed Software Test Club Atlanta.

I have participated in several Lean Coffee events run by different facilitators. I liked the simple style and frequent feedback so much that it was the first thing I brought back with me to work after Agile2013. The format proved fruitful for an internal meeting and so it seemed like a good idea for starting this local meetup.

Another good idea for starting something new is affiliating with established allies. Since one of my benefactors was part of the Software Testing Club community, I thought co-branding made a lot of sense. I led the idea of extending their brand to the United States since doing so would bring more people together worldwide than I could on my own. I wanted our nascent local group to be connected to the larger world of testing enthusiasts from the beginning. That would support the new members’ sense that each of them is not alone, the connection that drove creating this group in the first place. This is really a community building itself. I just happen to be in the center of it.

I love helping people to connect deeply with one another, so it seems only natural to put in the effort of providing the means for others to come together. Now that I work in social media, setting up channels for others to find us and join in the discussion was my first step. I want to be discoverable so that other local testers who feel the need for connection won’t have to wait so long for me to happen along.

I really appreciate that local businesses are supporting our efforts to make time to tackle difficult questions in testing and to share what we’ve learned through our professional and personal experiences. So you will definitely hear me being vocal about thanking them. I wouldn’t choose to do this alone and I’m encouraged that others think this is a cause worth the investment. I’m confident that we’re building a strong community of thoughtful and curious folks who give each other’s ideas a chance.

At our first meeting, I facilitated the Lean Coffee format since I didn’t want anyone to feel put on the spot to take over something they hadn’t experienced. Since we had 15 other in-person attendees and 3 online folks, this was a much larger group than normal. Although I recognized that groups of this size would normally split, I thought keeping everyone together would be better for cohesiveness.

We did use a simple personal kanban board. Each person had a chance to contribute topics. Due to the size of the group, each person had 3 dots to vote on which topics had priority. We established a 5 minute interval between votes to continue. Then, I added a “mercy kill” rule that after 10 minutes we had to move on to the next topic. I wanted everyone to experience the variety of Lean Coffee and knew that our topics were so complex that they could easily take over the entire time we had to meet. Those topics we still wanted to pursue went into our future meeting backlog.

As a result, we covered all of the topics that had received a vote. When items in the To Do column had an equal number of votes, I picked one to be the next to proceed to the In Progress column. Any topics we had covered sufficiently went into our Done column.

While this execution wasn’t a strict interpretation of Lean Coffee, it was a perfect adaptation to our purposes. The conversations continued after we had officially ended and people are looking forward to getting together again next month. We had lots of leftover pizza and beer, possibly because we were too engaged in the interaction to step away to enjoy the refreshments. All in all, it was a great investment of my time and I look forward to doing this again and again.

Please join us again this coming Thursday for another rousing Lean Coffee! We will have a WebEx available for virtual attendees, so tweet us to let us know you want to join in. See you then! Or on Twitter, Software Testing Club, Facebook, Google+, LinkedIn, etc

Software Testing Club Atlanta’s 1st Lean Coffee topics

  • 7 dots:
    • (1st) Who should “own” test automation? dev/test?
  • 5 dots:
    • (4th) Testing in SAFe
  • 3 dots:
    • (2nd) ATDD and/or BDD
    • (2nd) Specification by Example – getting started
    • (3rd) Exploratory testing
    • (5th) Testing in Kanban – its own column? encourages handoffs?
    • (6th) Test Manager Role on Agile Team
    • (7th) How to integrate off-shore testers w/agile teams
    • (8th) Hiring GREAT people – finding testers
    • Logic Flow Analysis and test coverage
  • 2 dots:
    • (3rd) What is breakdown of time/resources for: exploratory/scripted/automated testing (rough %)
    • (9th) Test/programmer pairing – success stories? Does it work?
    • (10th) Testing Meetups near us and around
    • Creating User Acceptance Testing
  • 1 dot:
    • Let’s get speakers! Topics?
    • What do you use to test multiple browsers?
  • No votes:
    • When to Automate?
    • What avenues do people use to find out about testing methods/tools?
    • LAWST Workshop in Atlanta?
    • Developers don’t test (?!!) (What?!!)
    • Test metrics
    • Whole team testing – good idea? How to get it working?
    • Gov’t shutdown & testing

Agile will FAIL

25 Friday Oct 2013

Posted by claire in Agile, Agile2013, CAST 2013, Experiences

≈ 1 Comment

The closing keynote at CAST 2013 was Scott Barber and Rob Sabourin describing takeaways from each of the talks of the conference, bringing together many different talks into themes or striking moments. As a speaker, I was on tenterhooks waiting to find out what Scott would say about my talk. It was not what I expected, a moment from before my talk that he described as a “kick to the head” (in a good way):
Scott's Takeaway from my Walking Skeletons talk
He pointed out that I was emphasizing empathizing with people with different experience and perspective, which was important enough to say explicitly before I began my talk. So with that in mind, I want to talk about a foreign perspective I encountered at my other software conference of the year.

At Agile2013, someone taped large sheets of sketch paper to the wall with a large writing prompt:

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA

to which many people replied in various ways during the week. Some of these responses were rebellious, resisting the seeming prophecy of failed agile. Others felt trapped by unresponsive or rigid organization behavior and hierarchy, industry regulation, or even customers. Contributors felt that companies with only a shallow understanding of agile or simply name-only “implementation” had no real difference in the way of working. Culture weighed heavily on the minds of attendees: belief, passion, desire, emotion, infighting, courage, trust, support, motivation, thinking. So people problems were at the heart of most expectations of failure.

To me, the most provocative perspectives I saw on that wall were not focusing on agile but on the demonstrated value delivered through whatever works, focusing on outcomes. Today, a friend pointed out a Mike Cottmeyer article from 2009 that discussed defining value in agile but at the enterprise level in terms of real business outcomes:

As an organization, we know that we need to deliver value as fast as possible… but we can’t figure out how to apply the small team concepts to our particular business problems. That’s why you get the classic “agile will never work here” comments. There is an inherent disconnect between the team level guidance agile methodologies talk about and the bigger concerns your senior executives are struggling with. There is a gap between value at the team level and value at the enterprise level.

Four years later, Agile2013 conference attendees are still wrestling articulating delivery of complex business objectives to business leaders. And while I also struggle with messaging how my work provides value to the enterprise, I’ve never experienced an agile transformation and so it hadn’t occurred to me to wonder whether agile could succeed. It’s always been business-as-usual, in my experience.

The full (transcribed) list from the Agile2013 wall:

  • We think we are “Agile”
  • The concept of “dedicated to one task at a time” is not supported!
  • They won’t change
    • Response: “They”? Maybe this is contributing to the problem
  • Because CEO manages with fear and intimidation
  • … Only focused on changes in development teams; not looking at whole value stream (product ideation & management)
  • No buy-in from the business
  • Duplicitous product owners (two masters)
  • because of our culture
    • Response: √
  • because my customer prefers waterfall…
  • Because the company wears “agile” as a label and yet does nothing to remove the bureaucracy and obstacles teams face daily while trying to implement agile.
    • Response: √
  • We lose trust in each other
  • … Adoption is done because of convenience not because of conviction.
  • We are different
    • Response: … Just like everyone else who has done it.
  • XP NOT DEAD!
  • Our egos are bigger & more important than the company goals
  • A re-org will set us back to the beginning, again and again. (weekly)
    • Response: √
  • Of me.
  • …Insufficient support from leadership
    • Response: Totally agree
  • Different part of the biz use different types of agile
  • Deeply hierarchy…. Project leader doesn’t want Agile.
  • my leadership team no longer believes in it 🙁
  • … it’s counterintuitive & hard to practice
  • Because agile is a state of being… NOT doing! Agile is grossly misunderstood… SADLY!
  • … because Agile is not the goal. Agile is simply a MEANS to and END
    • Response: Agree!
  • We only fund CAPITAL projects
  • Because I just think on the consequence not the cause. We should be able to teach the noble truth behind agile methods. Teach that discipline is not a fantasy. If we try hard as a team we can achieve anything. – She Liang
  • My manager has to assign work to the team
  • It does not support SECURE software (ISO27000 or code analyzers)
  • They don’t want to change. & no lean leadership.
  • Too much focus on the mechanics of the process. Not enough on the motivation/passion behind it.
    • Response: +1
  • We have not explained the ‘why’
  • Not everyone on our team understands it.
  • It won’t, because I work at Rackspace! 🙂
  • “Lack of Courage…”
  • We don’t want it badly enough
  • Because I’m writing on this wall & I think it will so it will
  • We can’t show the value
  • “What we do already works!?”
  • Crash at current (complex) business model
  • Jim
  • Strong and growing PMO traditional structure being instituted
  • We don’t think by ourselves. We need to think everyday, every time, everywhere!
    • Response: Agreed.
  • Our culture won’t *change*
    • Response: √

Q: Maybe someone can clarify that business model remark for me? I wasn’t quite sure what that said…

Story Time!

16 Monday Sep 2013

Posted by claire in Acceptance Criteria, Agile2013, Approaches, Context, Experiences, Experiments, Metrics, Personas, Publications, Retrospective, Speaking, Training

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Agile2013-ClaireMossAs Agile2013 considers itself a best in class kind of conference “designed to provide all Agile Team Members, Developers, Managers and Executives with proven, practical knowledge”, the track committees select from a large pool of applicants and prefer vetted content that has worked its way up from local meetings to conferences. I have only one talk that fits this criteria since I presented Big Visible Testing as an emerging topic at CAST 2012. I developed several versions of this talk subsequent to that event and doing so had given me confidence that I would be able to provide valuable information in the time allotted and still leave enough time for attendees to ask questions and to give feedback on what information resonated with them.

I worked to carefully craft this proposal for the experience reports track, knowing that if I were selected that I would have a formal IEEE-style paper to write. Fortunately, my talk made the cut and I began the writing process with my intrepid “shepherd” Nanette Brown. I wasn’t sure where to begin with writing a formal paper, but Nanette encouraged me to simply begin to tell the story and worry about the formatting later. This proved to be wise advice since telling a compelling story is the most important task. Harkening back to my high school and early college papers, I found myself wading through different but largely similar drafts of my story. I experimented with choosing a different starting point for the paper that I ultimately discarded, but it had served its purpose in breaking through my writer’s block. Focusing on how the story would be valuable to my readers helped to hone in on sequencing and language selection. Once I had the prose sorted out, I began to shape the layout according to the publication standards and decided to include photographs from my presentation – the story is about big visible charts after all!

Investing sufficient time in the formal paper made preparing the presentation more about strong simple visuals. I have discovered my own interest in information visualization so prototyping different slide possibilities and testing them out with colleagues was (mostly) fun. I’m still not quitting my day job to go into slide deck production. Sorry to disappoint!

Performance anxiety

Despite all of this preparation, I couldn’t sit still at dinner the night before my presentation and barely slept that night. I woke before the sunrise and tried to school my mind to be calm, cool, and collected while the butterflies in my stomach were trying to escape. This was definitely the most challenging work of presenting!

As a first time speaker, I didn’t know what to expect, so I set my talk’s acceptance criteria as a rather low bar:

    1. Someone shows up
    2. No one hates it enough to leave a red card as feedback

When I walked into my room in the conference center, a lone Agile2013 attendee was waiting for me. Having him ready to go encouraged me to say hello to each of the people who came to my presentation, which in turn changed the people in the room from a terrifying Audience into many friends, both new and old. I think I managed not to speed through my slides despite my tendency to chatter when I’m nervous. I couldn’t stay trapped behind my podium and walked around to interact with my slides and to involve my audience more in the conversation. Sadly, I can’t share my energy with you since I forgot to record it. Oh well. Next time!

The vanity metrics

  • At 10 minutes into the presentation, 50 people had come to hear me speak and at 60 minutes I had somehow gained another 7 to end at 57 people. Thanks so much for your kind attention! I hope I made it worth your while…
  • 43 people stopped to give me the simple good-indifferent-bad feedback of the color-coded cards (which I liked as a simple vote about a presentation) and I received 37 green cards and 6 yellow – with no red cards! Whoo hoo!

Words of Encouragement

Two people kindly wrote out specific feedback for me and I want to share that with you in detail, hoping to elicit some late feedback from attendees who might like to share at this point (Agree or disagree, I want to hear from you!)

Feedback Card #1:
– Best session so far!
– Great presenter – great information – great facilitator
– Would like to see future sessions by this speaker

Feedback Card #2:
Great Talk – speaker very endearing, Her passion for the subject matter is obvious.
A fresh perspective of how Developers and Testers should interact.
Should find ways to engage the audience

Someone else got a kick out of my saying, “I’m serious about my stickies.” and left their notes behind on the table after leaving. So thanks for sharing that. 🙂

One friend spoke to me afterward with some helpful feedback about word choice and non-native English speakers. When I was writing my talk, I was trying to focus on people who would be likely audience members, but I had not considered that aspect of the Agile2013 crowd. Since I was simply speaking off the cuff, I ended up using some words that would have fit in at our dinner table growing up but that would make for tougher translation. And yet, I got some wonderful feedback from Hiroyuki Ito about the “kaizen” he said I made. I can’t read it directly, but Google Translate assures me it’s good stuff. 🙂

uneasy truce

Finally, I discovered that my relationship with a linear slide deck is not a comfortable one. I wanted to be flexible in referencing each of the slides and having to sequence them hampered my ability to respond easily with visuals when discussing questions or improvising during my talk. I haven’t experimented with other presentation options, but I hope there’s an easy solution out there.

Image Credit

Big Visible Testing (Full Length) from Claire Moss

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

≈ 2 Comments

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

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
-1
minutes
-2
0
seconds
0
0
I’m on stage right now. Come join me![/tminus]

See you soon

30 Thursday May 2013

Posted by claire in Agile, Agile2013, CAST 2013, Experiences, Exploratory Testing, Scrum, Speaking, Training

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I’m excited to announce that I will be speaking at two conferences this year!

If you’re on your way to Agile2013 in Nashville in August, please stop by my full-length Big Visible Testing session in the experience report track. I simply didn’t have enough time to tell you all the cool stuff in my CAST 2012 emerging topic.
If you’re excited about trying exploratory testing with some in-person coaching, Matt Heusser and I will be there for you.
Or catch up with me some time that week to say hi.
Agile2013_Speaker_banner

 

 

 

 

If you’re on your way to CAST 2013 in Madison in August, start out your conference with my Walking Skeletons, Butterflies, & Islands: an agile journey experience report.
I look forward to fielding your questions about agile testing!
CAST2013_LessonsLearned

Sadly, my talks will not be streamed online this year, but you might enjoy the webCAST lineup!

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