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Methods & Tools - August 2018
Sharing global software development expertise since 1993

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*** Updates ***

Last Articles Published on Methods & Tools Website

What We Learned From Our First Blockchain Software Project Working as an outsourced partner for an app using blockchain, we have learned how to overcome several challenges associated with this new technology. At first, we had misguided ideas about blockchain. Once we started working with it we realized things were not exactly as we thought they would be. So we have decided to share our learning process, detailing some of the unexpected challenges we faced and how we solved them along the way. Read more...

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*** Quote of the Month ***

Traditional testers often don't like agile because without detailed specification documents they are suddenly unable to do their jobs. This is because they consider their job being to compare the working system to the specification, and report where there are discrepancies. If you think about this for a second, the only thing they are checking is how closely the developers followed the specification. This actually says nothing about the quality of a product, or more importantly if it is fit for purpose.

We call this work "checking". You know what's really good at checking? Computers! Checking that 1 + 1 = 2 is easy work for computers to do, and they will get it right every single time. They don't get bored or tired or distracted. With agile testing simple checking should be automated so that testers can be freed up to do the kind of work computers can't do. Things like exploratory testing or usability testing.

In agile, testers need to become customer advocates. They need to deeply understand who their users are and what they are trying to achieve with the product. They should be the representative of that customer in every design decision, ensuring that the feature meets the customers actual needs, not just the specification, or even what they asked for.

When a user asks for a feature, ask them: "How would you test that?" or "How will you know if that works?". This can help understand the real result the customer is looking for. Translating that into acceptance criteria for the team can ensure the product does the right thing.

Source: Growing Agile: A Coach's Guide to Agile Testing, Samantha Laing and Karen Greaves, , http://leanpub.com/AgileTesting

*** Books ***

Environment for Agile Teams

As Agile has become a mainstream approach in software development, there are many books and discussions about its concepts and how to implement them. The book “Environment for Agile Teams” by Andy Brandt provides a different, and very interesting, perspective as it discusses the practical details of the everyday life of a Scrum team.

Read the review and quotes from Environment for Agile Teams.

Reference: Environment for Agile Teams – How to create an environment that supports agility, Andy Brandt, http://leanpub.com/environment_for_agile_teams

=== Web Sponsors ===

This month, the Methods & Tools website is supported by Software Testing Magazine and Scrum Expert. We thank them for their support.

*** Software Development Linkopedia ***

Text: A Programmer Burnout Story; How to Recognize it And Avoid it

Text: Ten sentences with all the Scrum Master advice you’ll ever need

Text: The Dark Side of Test Automation

Text: Negotiation Cheat Sheet

Text: DoD (definition of done) defines agility

Text: Storyboards Help Visualize UX Ideas

Text: That’s not our code

Text: The testing renaissance

Video: The Natural Course of Refactoring

Video: No Spaghetti with Software Architecture Foundations

Video: Managing a Technical Debt Portfolio

Video: Agile Testing: BDD for Everyone

Video: Building a Customer Quality Dashboard

Video: Servant Leadership

Book Review: Environment for Agile Teams

Book Review: A Coach Guide to Agile Testing

Tools: Neodymium is an open source software testing library tries to solve your typical and most pressing UI test automation problems by combining JUnit, WebDriver, BDD/Cucumber, and proper reporting. It gives you ready to use templates, assembles well-known open source projects, and enhances this all with additional functionality that is often missing.

Tools: Papyrus is an Eclipse-based industrial-grade open source Model-Based Engineering tool. Papyrus enables model-based techniques: model-based simulation, model-based formal testing, safety analysis, performance/trade-offs analysis, architecture exploration. To address any specific domain, every part of Papyrus may be customized: UML profile, model explorer, diagram notation and style, properties views, palette and creation menus, and much more.

Tools: Open Source Test Management Tools

Tools: Commercial Scrum Retrospectives Tools

Find more interesting links on the software development tools, the software development articles or the software development videos websites.

*** Promoted Software Development Conferences ***

BlockChainConf.Tech, September 6-7 2018, Atlanta, USA

Scala Wave, September 6-8 2018, Gdansk, Poland

Agile Prague, September 10-11 2018, Prague, Czech Republic

Software Testing Training Week, September 24-28, 2018, Washington, DC, USA

DevChain Conference, September 27-28 2018, London, UK

STARWEST Testing Conference, September 30-October 5 2018, Anaheim, CA, USA

Pacific NW Software Quality Conference, October 8-10 2018, Portland, USA

STARCANADA, October 14–19 2018, Toronto, Canada