The Latest Stories

Continuous improvement Driving Continuous Improvement to the Entire Organization

In traditional agile approaches, retrospectives are valuable to team improvement. However, when teams encounter organizational issues beyond their control, such as project structure, interorganizational communication, or resources, it's more difficult. Here's how to expand continuous improvement to the whole company.

Alan Crouch's picture
Alan Crouch
strumming a guitar Why Musicians Can Make for the Best Testers

Testers need to be both creative and analytical, and those are two features that are very common in musicians. Sure, it might not be writing code, but we’re learning more and more that the building blocks and innate qualities that make for good testers can be more important than the testing skills themselves.

Josiah Renaudin's picture
Josiah Renaudin
Agile development code Integrating Code in Agile Software Development: Start with the Goal in Mind

Agile software development works because of continuous feedback at various levels, and the most important form of feedback is working software. One way to achieve rapid feedback is to integrate and deploy code frequently. Rather than starting with the process, first decide what "frequently" should mean for your team.

Steve Berczuk's picture
Steve Berczuk
Person giving someone a flower Creating a Culture of Kindness

Employees tend to follow the model set from above, treating each other and their customers the way they’re treated by their superiors. Leaders set the tone for the entire organization, and that means that kindness starts at the top. But whatever level you're at, you can create a culture of kindness for everyone.

Naomi Karten's picture
Naomi Karten
On-off switch Using Feature Flags to Boost Testing and Deployment

A feature flag is a configuration setting that lets you turn a given feature on or off. There is no need for a feature to be complete before you can start testing—as soon as the first piece of code is merged, you can turn the flag on in your test environment and begin. This also reduces risk. Do you use feature flags?

James Espie's picture
James Espie
colorful right side of brain The Need for Well-Formed, Creative Minds in Software Testing

The need for creativity and innovation is felt in the world of software testing more than ever before given how dynamic and fast-paced it has become. With so many changing technologies and a multitude of people to interact with, a tester’s job calls for newer and better ways of accomplishing tasks.

Rajini  Padmanaban's picture
Rajini Padmanaban
people holding hands Testers, It’s Time to Become Best Friends with Your Developers

If you want to create software in the modern era and maximize the skills of your entire team, you can’t do things the way they’ve always been done. And going back to the late-stage testing example, you just can’t do things the traditional way anymore.

Josiah Renaudin's picture
Josiah Renaudin
magnifying glass looking at code Google: How Online Accounts Are Hijacked

Hijacking accounts is one of the top online security threats, with billions of usernames and passwords from different platforms available on black markets. To understand how hijackers steal passwords and other sensitive data, Google partnered with UC Berkeley in a study of Google accounts.

Pamela Rentz's picture
Pamela Rentz