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Methods & Tools - August 2019
Sharing global software development expertise since 1993

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=== Sponsor ===

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TimeShiftX - Travel in Time, Test with Ease

TimeShiftX lets you time travel your software into the future or past to temporal test date and time sensitive functionality and code such as year-end, daylight savings, billing, and policies. Employ instant time travel inside Active Directory & Kerberos without changing system clocks, editing code, or isolating servers. TimeShiftX is multi-platform, cloud & container compatible, and supports all applications and databases.

Start your free trial today!

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*** Updates ***

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Last Articles Published on Methods & Tools Website

Selenified - Open Source Selenium Extension for DevOps Selenified is an open source test framework that provides mechanisms for simply testing applications at multiple tiers while easily integrating into DevOps build environments. Selenified offers traceable reporting for both web and API testing, wraps and extends Selenium calls to more appropriately handle testing errors, and supports testing over multiple browsers in parallel, either locally or in the cloud. It can be a great starting point for building or improving test automation in your organization. Read more...

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*** From The Archives ***

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Articles from Methods & Tools' Archives

Breaking Bad - The Cult of not Giving Bad News Why is it so hard to break bad news? Why is there a cult of people who do not want to give bad news about their projects to stakeholders? Why do we let our fears cloud our judgement? Things can seem bad when they don't go as we planned and hoped, but in reality things 'just are'. As Esther Derby notes "The ability to 'face the truth' and take effective action rests on the ability to be in a mental state where our emotions and fears aren't running us". How do we remove that fear and emotion, create an environment in which we are not afraid to break 'bad news', into 'news' that allows us to make informed decisions. Read more...

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=== Sponsor ===

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Methods & Tools

Reach a monthly audience of more than 40'000 professional software developers, testers and project managers advertising with Methods & Tools. This sponsor spot will cost you only $195. A top banner visible on all website pages will cost $395 and the side banner $295. Furthermore, we offer a 10% discount to the first order from new advertisers.

Contact Methods & Tools today to advertise with us!

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*** Quote of the Month ***

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The most successful transformations I have experienced - the ones where you walk into the office and there is a tangible difference in the energy and interactions between people, where the commercial and management stakeholders are as excited and invested as the technology stakeholders, where everyone agrees on the metrics that matter and those metrics are trending in the right direction, where the people involved are proud to be part of the change, and where those outside are eager to get involved - those transformations succeed because a small cabal of dedicated individuals take the time and effort bringing people on the journey with them; they create and nurture a groundswell of enthusiasm; they engage, challenge, educate and support the middle and senior managers whose world is being turned on its head; they gain the executive sponsorship and investment to carry the whole thing forwards; they use external help because they know they can't do it all themselves. And they do all this without recourse to canned methods or certification Ponzi schemes.

Source: In praise of SWARMing, Dan North, https://dannorth.net/2018/01/26/in-praise-of-swarming/

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*** Books ***

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Escape Velocity

Following the famous mantra of "you can't manage what you can't measure", Scrum teams have often a set of metrics to monitor their activity. Velocity, the amount of work performed by a team during a single sprint, might be one of the most famous Agile metric. Doc Norton has written an interesting book about the negative sides of velocity and what might be a good metric for an Agile team.

Read the review and quotes from Escape Velocity.

Reference: Escape Velocity - Better Metrics for Agile Teams, Doc Norton, https://leanpub.com/escapevelocity

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=== Web Sponsors ===

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

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*** Software Development Linkopedia ***

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Text: Why software projects take longer than you think - a statistical model

Text: Why our team cancelled our move to microservices

Text: JavaScript & Node.js testing best practices

Text: Shape Up - Stop Running in Circles and Ship Work that Matters

Text: "How to Specify it" in Java and jqwik

Text: Master the Art of Influence - Persuasion as a Skill and Habit

Text: Run less software

Text: Test Cases Are Not Testing

Video: Staying Sane in a Code Maze

Video: Exploring Java Hidden Costs

Video: Soft Skills for IT Teams

Video: Lessons Learned on Testing API

Video: Changing Focus: From Speed - Efficiency to High Customer Value

Book Review: Escape Velocity - Better Metrics for Agile Teams

Tools: Puppetry is an open-source cross-platform desktop application that gives non-developers the ability to create, manage, and integrate automated tests for Web

Tools: Free Web Load Testing Tools & Services

Tools: Agile and Scrum Trello Extensions

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*** Promoted Software Development Conferences ***

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Agile Crete & SoCraTes, September 5-7 2019, Kolymbari, Greece

Agile Prague, September 16-17 2019, Prague, Czech Republic

Pacific Northwest Software Quality Conference, October 14-16 2019, Portland, USA

Agile Tour London, October 18 2019, London, UK

STARCANADA Testing Conference, October 20-25 2019, Toronto, ON, Canada

Agile + DevOps East, November 3-8 2019, Orlando, FL, USA

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Contact us if you want your software development conference promoted here.
Find more upcoming conferences on SoftDevConferences.com, ScrumExpert.com, SoftwareTestingMagazine.com