Planning Online Meetings
Posted on March 27th, 2020
We all know that to be productive, meetings should be planned. The ease of organising and launching an online meeting can make a little planning even more important.
I have been using and teaching a planning model based on The Layered Systems Model for many years now.
The model has six plannin...
Change Driven Training
Posted on March 6th, 2020
When staff need to improve their skills, organisations usually think in terms of training. Often, the new skills they need are described as training needs which are then used to identify suitable training courses.
Once the 'right' course has been found, students are 'processed' through the cours...
More About Describing Software Features
Posted on January 29th, 2020
When a mechanical engineer specifies a length of 12 centimetres, it is perfectly clear what is required. When an electrical engineer specifies a current of 2 amps, once again is perfectly clear what is needed. But when a software engineer or business analyst specifies a feature, the underlying ne...
The 6+1 Essential Questions that define a Requirements Approach
Posted on October 28th, 2018
Also published in a revised form on LinkedIn October 24th, 2018
These days much our thinking seems to have been reduced to simple binary choices. In reality, most problems worth our attention are multi-dimensional by nature.
The agile vs. traditional requirements debate is no exception.
For me, ...
The Software Testing Canvas
Posted on October 13th, 2018
The Software Testing Canvas is a tool for closing the gap between software testing theory and practice. In this presentation we take a guided tour of the Software Testing Canvas and explain how teams can use it as a collaborative tool for understanding, exploring and describing software testing s...
Will Anyone Read an Article About Documentation?
Posted on October 6th, 2018
I am pleased with the response to the articles I have published on LinkedIn, but a total lack of interest in one article surprised me. The rhetorical question How can agile teams produce comprehensive documentation? seemed like a great title to me because it was echoing one of the values in the ...
Rebooting the Use Case Diagram
Posted on September 28th, 2018
Use cases have fallen out of favour in recent times with user stories becoming the preferred way for teams to manage requirements. For a good discussion of the differences, see Gustav Bergman's older (but still relevant post) A Use Case is to a User Story as a Gazelle is to a Gazebo.
In the rush ...
The Software Testing Canvas
Posted on September 27th, 2018
I have to confess that I have become a bit of a canvas "junkie" ever since I discovered the Business Model canvas a few years back. Canvases summarise the wisdom of experts on a single page in a way that is easy for non-experts to understand. In fact the original Business Model Canvas summarise...
Agile Non-Functional Requirements
Posted on September 12th, 2018
I've just updated my post How Can Agile Teams Capture Non-Functional Requirements? to add a few clarifying diagrams from one of my courses. The post is now better aligned with the new post How Can Agile Teams Deliver Comprehensive Documentation?
Read together, the two posts present a workable...
The Test Automation Reference Model
Posted on September 11th, 2018
There is no shortage of test automation tools. The independent software testing company Cigniti maintains a list of 100 commercial and open source tools [1]. The web site Opensourcetesting.org features over 360 open source tools in 20 categories [2]. Add to this the vast array of tools that ar...
