Christmas arithmetics

Ho-ho-ho!

Christmas is almost here and I'm feeling all Christmasy! People start to wind down, christmas lights spread calm ambience, the smell of hyacinths and swastika pastries fill the air... This is my 36th Christmas and I'm still getting my kicks out of it. I love joining with my friends and family, talking with them in peace, having nice meals with them, enjoying few cold ones in sauna with them, and ultimately just being with them longer than just the short weekend. It's safe to say I love Christmas.

One imporant part of this social event are the presents. I love giving them to those I care about, and of course I love receiving them at least as much. The anticipation before receiving them and the joy of opening them is something that brings me back into childhood. The theme of my presents may have changed (except for the Star Wars part), but the childish joy is still there. If you pay attention you might catch some real emotions, perhaps a tiny giggle too when I'm opening presents. That's rare in a Finn. Catch that s**t and put it in a bottle. ;)

Christmas presents lead us to our topic of the day: Christmas arithmetics.

FIT(Q)CODES

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I've been designing my new heuristic test strategy model. Mary Gorman's keynote in Agile Testing Days 2013 gave me some ideas on how to develop the viewpoint on product elements. For a long time I've been using James Bach's SFDIPOT and it has served me wonderfully, but I think I need to try something different. I need to evolve.

It's time for FIT(Q)CODES!!

Agile Testing Days 2013 highlights

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Agile Testing Days 2013 ended a week ago. I have some time between BBST Bug Advocacy assignments so let's get to recap before I forget what I experienced in this wonderful conference. So much awesomeness happened that I'll have to sample a bit.

Let's get to it then!

The Tao of Testing

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Yin and Yang, the symbol of Taoism

For some time now I have had a constantly growing interest in Taoism. Don't get me wrong; I'm not in it for religious reasons. It's not about higher powers or entities that should be followed or even worshipped. It's just something that resonates with the values that I have and the way I see the world. In work, freetime, jujutsu, etc. I constantly see connections and analogies to Taoism.

How Taoism turns into testing is a fascinating mind game. Let's play some of that, shall we... ;)

Can do!

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I watched Apollo 13 for the Nth time yesterday. There's a lot to like in that movie. Good script, great acting, memorable characters, etc. Also the original story is highly appealing. I think the movie manages to capture it quite nicely, but it's still quite impossible for us common people to really understand what happened during that mission. The amazing feats the astronauts and the mission control managed to conjure under the crisis go beyond imagination.

One of the most remarkable things was the spacecraft. The product that was designed to successfully transport three people to the moon and back, and that could do so much more. It inspired me to think, write this post and tweet too... :)

Harder or smarter?

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We Finns are a nation of hard workers. Since childhood we've been taught that it's the hard work that pays off. Our Lutheran heritage, wartime hardships and long periods of darkness are just a number of reasons why we think through is the only way "past the grey rock" (Finnish saying).

The problem is that we're no longer grinding ship axles, cutting wood or even building mobile phones. It's not about muscle and punch clocks anymore. It's about brain and around the clock now.

If we fail to understand this, we'll work ourselves to death.

Refining history

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I love Hannibal TV series. It's something you don't want to watch while in delicate mental state or eating, but other than that I think it's finally something that meets the level of quality that the legacy of Hannibal Lecter deserves and raises the bar (almost) to the height where it was after Silence of the Lambs.

Speaking of quality, in one the latest episodes of Hannibal Dr. Lecter stated: "It's the distinction that adds an expectation of quality." This is something that attracted my attention to the extent of writing this blog post.

Test management for Lean extremists

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I get grey hairs with Lean enthusiasts, or better yet extremists. I'm concerned about their obsession to see "waste" everywhere and remove it, "waste" being any goal other than the creation of value for the end customer. Quite often these people target testing activities too. By over-simplifying these activities Lean extremists justify the elimination of them.

Usually they do a half-ass job. So I, or actually Michael Bolton has created a test management process for these poor people.

BBST Foundations 2.0 recap

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So, I hopped to the BBST bandwagon and attended Foundations 2.0 certification program. The four week course was an eye-opening trip I will never forget. And now, few days after finalizing the course, I'd like to reflect on what happened. With the intent of not revealing too much to those who are about to take the course, of course. ;)

Breaking the boundaries of familiar

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It's about time I wrote a blog post. :) Once again there has been a turmoil of everything and this blog has gotten unfortunately low priority among this everything.

But enough about that. I'm boiling with ideas. One of them being the idea behind a tweet I wrote just a moment ago:

This pretty much culminates my values in testing at this moment. But I agree, it requires some explaining. So let's get to that explanation part then.