Agile and numbers

In his recent post, Seth Godin writes:

When you measure the wrong thing, you get the wrong thing. Perhaps you can be precise in your measurement, but precision is not significance.

On the other hand, when you are able to expose your work and your process to the right thing, to the metric that actually matters, good things happen.

We need to spend more time figuring out what to keep track of, and less time actually obsessing over the numbers that we are already measuring.

This is the essential part of the "agile development".
In my current team we spend lots of time on "Backlog grooming sessions" arguing on numbers, getting asked "why is it 5 not 8?"
On the same time, nobody cares on getting the Burndown Chart to look like burn down. The reason is "We have many important and urgent tasks with vague deadlines emerging meanwhile in the sprint."
So on our "Sprint planning" meeting we are basically putting the "precisely measured" tickets to a heap of immeasurable ones. What we get is precisely immeasurable. Like dropping 10 carat diamonds to a bucket of soil and trying to estimate the bucket weight.
What precision we might get?

Moreover, the measurement does not influence our actions in any way.

Our the most precise scale of estimations probably should have 3 values:
- "It's OK to try to do this now"
- "Better not to try now"
- "We don't know"

Having the priorities in place, this simple scale will give us enough information to plan sprints, and dramatically reduce time spent on estimation and planning.

Test Design Strategy

Updated my Test Strategy Template with a new section.

Enjoy :-) Comments are welcome!

Test Design Strategy

Test Design activity is a process of identifying and formalizing Test Cases and Test Suites (in forms of Check Lists, mind maps, etc.) in regards to risk weights, i.e. the value customers might loose if the test is not conducted; or in other words, the risk of unawareness of the unwanted behavior of the system.

Each Test Case is explicitly related to a piece of Requirements, as well as to Test Suites it is run under.

Сем проти Джеймса (скандали-інтриги-розслідування у віршах)

Якщо ви достатньо давно в тестуванні, то маєте знати Джеймса Баха (James Bach). Не менш відомою постаттю у галузі  методологій розробки є Сем Канер (Cem Kaner), автор багатьох книжок і публікацій. Колись давно вони разом були співзасновниками Школи Контексто-керованого Тестування (Context Driven Testing School), що заклала засади сучасного розуміння дослідницького підходу (exploratory testing). Після того вони чогось посварилися, побили горщики, та перестали спілкуватися. І щось мені підказує, що розбіжності в них були зовсім не у способах тестування, а у чомусь іншому. Але що було, те загуло.