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Methods & Tools - May 2021
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

The Best Java Books for All Skill Levels Java is becoming increasingly popular in different parts of the world. If you decide to start learning Java or improve your current skills, you'll need good, clear, and concise literature to help. Among tons of resources, it is necessary to find the ones that will cope with the teaching mission the best. This article presents the best books to learn Java and other resources that will allow you to get started immediately. Read more...

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DBeaver - Open Source Database Management Tool DBeaver is a free open source database management tool. It provides features to manage the full data lifecycle on your desktop, from the creation a database to the update of a column value in a table. DBeaver supports all popular databases: MySQL, PostgreSQL, SQLite, Oracle, DB2, SQL Server, Sybase, MS Access, Teradata, Firebird, Apache Hive, Phoenix, Presto, etc. Read more...

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*** From The Archives ***

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Articles from Methods & Tools' Archives

Fingers in the Air: a Gentle Introduction to Software Estimation Estimation is a fundamental activity of every project. A project has always some goals, and the purpose of estimation is to give a reasonably accurate idea of what is necessary in terms of time, costs, technology, and other resources, to achieve them. Since resources are always limited, an accurate estimate is an invaluable tool for deciding if the goals are realistic, as well as for creating and updating the project plans. Read more...

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=== Sponsor ===

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Advertise with Methods & Tools

Reach an audience of more than 60'000 professional software developers, software testers and project managers publishing with Methods & Tools for as low a $60 / month. Do you want to promote a software development tool? Are you interested in buying a link to your website from a good reference?

Contact Methods & Tools today to advertise with us!

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*** Quote of the Month ***

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Today, companies create ridiculously complicated multi-step interview processes that filter out candidates that are "not good enough." We rarely give an opportunity to candidates spoiled by shitty companies and bad influence. We forget that some candidates weren't lucky enough to meet an inspiring mentor or work in a supportive team. Broken toys are not welcome.

We prefer hiring self-confident rockstars with a solid track record. The reason is simple - we fail to create environment and work conditions in which people can grow professionally, develop good habits and become rock-stars. Skilled developers do not have time for mentoring, because they are busy with coding and architecture. Mentoring is not part of our hiring and delivery processes. Mentoring is not a buzzword, you can't learn it on Coursera, and it's not visible on a tech radar.

Companies spend millions on TA departments, recruiters, promo websites and videos, struggling to find the best talent. We have this crazy talent search problem because companies are searching for the best engineers, instead of raising them. Everyone is fishing, but there is not much fish left. Recruiting more fishers and paying them high commission does not help. The pond is empty.

In the current market situation, every company needs to build a mentoring capacity. The most experienced developers should find time to grow less experienced colleagues through pair programming, continuous feedback, career advice. We must suggest books, blogs, videos, encourage colleagues to attend meetups, conferences, and workshops.

Source: "Great Developers Are Raised, Not Hired", Eduards Sizovs, https://sizovs.net/2019/04/10/the-best-developers-are-raised-not-hired/

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*** Books ***

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Succeeding with OKRs in Agile

"OKRs" is the acronym of "Objectives and Key Results." This is a collaborative goal-setting tool used by teams and individuals to set goals with measurable results. In his book "Succeeding with OKRs in Agile", Allan Kelly explains why he considers that "OKRs have the potential to reawaken the early ambition and drive inherent in agile. This time managers can join in too, not as obstacles to change, or change drivers, but as partners focused on the same outcomes for a greater purpose."

Read the full review and quotes from Succeeding with OKRs in Agile.

Reference: Succeeding with OKRs in Agile - How to Create and Deliver Objectives Key Results for Teams, Allan Kelly, https://leanpub.com/agileokrs

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*** Software Development Linkopedia ***

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Text: Heisenberg Developers – You cannot observe a developer without altering their behavior

Text: What Agility Really is About

Text: Pushing the limits of AndroidX Test

Text: Engineering Management & Leadership Reads

Text: Attention Is My Most Valuable Asset for Productivity as a Software Developer

Text: The challenge of testing Data Pipelines

Text: Delivering Agile Value

Text: State of Testing Report 2021

Video: Debugging Techniques for Uncertain Times When we learn to code, we focus on writing features while we understand what the code is doing. When we debug, we don't understand what our code is doing. The less we understand, the less likely it is that our usual programming mindset – the one we use for feature development – can solve the problem.

Video: Java Behavior-Driven Development with Cucumber This video demonstrates how to work with Java and Cucumber and how to add new features to a Java application following the BDD style that provides requirements documentation and Agile testing benefits.

Video: Engineering Data Quality Garbage in, garbage out - we have all heard about the importance of data quality. Having high quality data is essential for all types of use cases, whether it is reporting, anomaly detection, or for avoiding bias in machine learning applications. But where does high quality data come from? How can one assess data quality, improve quality if necessary, and prevent bad quality from slipping in?

Video: The Forensics of Software Testing This presentation puts the role of the software tester under the microscope and discusses how software testers can learn from the research and work that criminal investigators do today, how to use hard facts, as well as hidden facts, to determine a trustworthy conclusion.

Video: We Are SAFe, But Are We Agile? This presentation shares in details how Skandinaviska Enskilda Banken implemented the SAFe agile framework, creating tribes, agile teams, iterations, PI Planning, Review, Backlogs or Kanban portfolio. The presenter adds a "but" to this, as the organization still does not know the priorities, requirements and their roles

Tools: Drone is an open source Continuous Delivery system built on container technology. Drone uses a simple YAML configuration file, a superset of docker-compose, to define and execute Pipelines inside Docker containers.

Tools: Webtau (short for web test automation) is an open source testing API, command line tool and a framework to write unit, integration and end-to-end tests. Test across REST-API, Graph QL, Browser, Database, CLI and Business Logic with consistent set of matchers and concepts. REPL mode speeds-up tests development. Rich reporting cuts down investigation time.

Tools: Selenium Drag and Drop Bug Workaround Have you ever met a widely known Selenium issue that drag and drop gesture doesn't work for Selenium in some cases? This bug has been around for years and Dmitrii Bormotov will tell you how to resolve it, especially in just a few lines of code if you use Python.

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*** Promoted Software Development Conferences ***

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deliver:Agile Live! a series of online sessions by the Agile Alliance

Agile2021, July 19-22 2021 - Online

Pacific Northwest Software Quality Conference, Portland, USA, October 11-13 2021

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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

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*** Software Development Training ***

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BDD in C# - Using Specflow (Cucumber) to Develop a REST API and Automate Software Testing: Learn how to develop software in Behaviour Driven Development (BDD) using Specflow - part of the Cucumber software family of tools for software testing automation. In this course, you will learn about Behavior-Driven Development in C# and how this can be done using Specflow, which is the .Net implementation of Cucumber. We will be going Specflow's core features in detail including Installation, scenarios, features, tags, hooks, scenario outlines, scoped bindings, step definitions, running tests, and many more

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Software Development Lifecycle Specialization: This course is designed for people who are new to software engineering. It is also for those who have already developed software, but wish to gain a deeper understanding of the underlying context and theory of software development practices.

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Contact us if you want to your training courses listed in this newsletter and reach 35'000 software development profesionnals worldwide.