From space to happiness

Dear simians,

Many have wondered what's going in my life. I haven't been blogging and even my Twitter and Facebook feeds have been quieter than usual. Well, I've been a bit busy. The best year of my life is closing to its end and I wanted to finally recap what really has happened. So fasten your seatbelts, people. It's going to be a wild ride. :)

It all started on January. Well, the year usually does. The momentum that separated me from Sogeti Finland. I have my personal and professional values, and while they have usually fitted wonderfully into surrounding environments, they never quite fitted into Sogeti. I tried. I really tried. At times I even questioned my integrity while trying to adapt to the world of Sogeti, but ultimately I started separating myself mentally from it. And finally, after four years of trying, also physically.

Some have said that I should've stayed, because Sogeti can be changed only from within. I agree, but I believe the majority: I've appeared much happier after leaving. And I actually AM much happier now. One of the reasons might however be that I'm a father now...

It's ok to be wrong

Heyhey!

I had an interesting chat with my wife just a moment ago about whether the school kills creativity or not. The discussion was a bit biased because a lot of her professional success is because of her education while I find only little or no connection between my professional success and my education. Ultimately the situation passed the threshold of me writing a blog post about it.

Cynefin

Heyhey!

Belgium Testing Days 2014 took place a couple of months ago. Again, it was a heart-warming experience filled with good times among the best in our industry. Lots of old friends, some new ones and loads of knowledge shared. I think it's safe to say that I loved every second of my stay in beautiful Brugge.

One of the absolute highlights was Lisa Crispin's workshop about changing testing mindset. There's too much to recap from that workshop so I'll just concentrate to one of the subjects that has become increasingly popular among my colleagues, especially in Agile and Lean circles: namely Cynefin.

RIMGEA

Heyhey!

Last November I took the BBST Bug Advocacy course and even though it was quite a lot more demanding than Foundations, somehow I managed to pull it off. Unfortunately I don't have the time to write full recap of it. Instead I'll concentrate to one of the best mnemonics since SFDIPOT, namely RIMGEA.

Bugs are an integral part of testers' work and the information we produce, and RIMGEA is a kick-ass heuristic of how to communicate bug related information to stakeholders. It's copyrighted by Cem Kaner and dissected as follows:

• Replicate it
• Isolate it
• Maximize it
• Generalize it
• Externalize it
• And say it cleary and dispassionately

There are some blog posts about this subject, but I wanted to present my take on it. So let's get to it then.