’nuff said

Posted on 2016-02-29 by Karo Stoltzenburg
Posted in I've liked a thing on twitter | Tagged , , | Leave a comment

Twitter Timeline Q4/15

Posted on 2016-01-31 by Karo Stoltzenburg

#December




Continue reading →

Posted in I've liked a thing on twitter | Tagged | Leave a comment

Boldly go (where no one has gone before)

Posted on 2016-01-27 by Karo Stoltzenburg

Last week we had Adam Knight present a talk on “Fractal Exploratory Testing” at the Software Testing Club Meetup here in Cambridge, hosted by the lovely folk at Linguamatics. FET is a concept Adam thought up in order to explain the benefits and workings of exploratory testing, drawing analogies to geographic expeditions and using fractals to visualise how your test focus might evolve on exploration. He has written about it in the past, from an initial draft to a revisited version, and there are also comprehensive write-ups from the evening:

Continue reading →

Posted in I've attended a thing | Tagged , , , | 1 Comment

Of forest and trees

Posted on 2016-01-18 by Karo Stoltzenburg

4662458235_3eb27b0a56_o

Software architecture overviews and me have a history. To start with, I’ve seen a few and most of them looked different to each other, by type. So I was often slightly confused about what all would fit that label and what would rather be a communication overview, a software design sketch, or just a happily colourful image of a few shapes, with some of them connected, somehow. And than there were the projects where I’ve not had an architecture overview available at all – even though annoyingly asking for it every other week.

Continue reading →

Posted in I've thought about a thing | Tagged , , | Leave a comment

So long, …

Posted on 2015-12-11 by Karo Stoltzenburg

IMG_20150807_184438

For this years last Cambridge Software Tester Meetup  (the evening one – there will be Lean Coffee next week!) we didn’t go for a topic, just drinks. Well, not just drinks, but some nice and relaxed conversations and a few laughs mixed in, too. I greatly enjoyed it, although others may have found it a somewhat reserved affair … !

Continue reading →

Posted in I've attended a thing | Tagged , | Leave a comment

Cambridge Lean Coffee 11/15

Posted on 2015-11-28 by Karo Stoltzenburg

This month Lean Coffee took place at Jagex. As we were about 20 people, we were splitting up in three groups. My group discussed four topics in the hour we got, but a backlog of good ones was left over. A lot of food for thought, good advise and engaging conversations to be had for me! And this time around even with an additional treat, as Michael Ambrose, Web QA Lead at Jagex, gave us a quick tour through the building.

Many thanks to Chris George for organising, Jagex and Michael for hosting and all attendees for letting me in on their thoughts on testing!
Continue reading →

Posted in I've attended a thing | Tagged , , , | Leave a comment

Lauren Ipsum

Posted on 2015-11-27 by Karo Stoltzenburg

The test manager dropped this on my desk, assuming I’d like it and right he was. The subtitle promises a story about computer science and other improbable things – without any actual computer making an appearance in the book! Instead, we follow Laurie’s adventures, who get’s lost in the woods and finds herself emerging into userland. In trying to find her way back home, she encounters a whole myriad of interesting characters along the way – the chameleon-lizard-dinosaur XOR who can change color all /but/ to blend in or the wandering salesman who’s always in a hurry visiting every town only once. Helping the pirate/mailwoman Winsome Losesome building up an alternative network of communication using telescopes, Laurie finds herself visiting all the lighthouses scattered throughout the sea and coastline, and if you thought lighthouses are all tall, white towers, well – think again.

Continue reading →

Posted in I've read a thing (or two) | Tagged , | Leave a comment

Twitter Timeline Q3/15

Posted on 2015-10-07 by Karo Stoltzenburg

#September




Continue reading →

Posted in I've liked a thing on twitter | Tagged , , | Leave a comment

CEWT #1: Testing ideas

Posted on 2015-09-10 by Karo Stoltzenburg

CEWT1_v2
The first Cambridge Exploratory Workshop on Testing – CEWT #1 – took place on Saturday, 4th July 2015 at Linguamatics.

CEWT (Cambridge Exploratory Workshop on Testing) is an exploratory peer workshop. We take the view that discussions are more interesting than lectures. We enjoy diverse ideas, and limit some activities in order to work with more ideas.

We were six attendees whom most I met at previous Software Tester Meetups in Cambridge. This includes the organiser, James Thomas, test manager at Linguamatics, who hosted the event. The topic was “Testing ideas”, purposefully ambiguous, and it turned out to be a real inspiring one. We all presented a quick talk around the topic for about 15 minutes, followed by another 15 minutes of discussion. I had been very much looking forward to this workshop, but was still surprised on just how nice a boost a Saturday afternoon, spent in great company, discussing testing, on a really inspirational level, can give – still feeling it, two month later. Many thank for this to all involved, and especially to James for making it happen.

Continue reading →

Posted in I've attended a thing | Tagged , , , | Leave a comment

Snippets: nomads, squads, chaos, quiet

Posted on 2015-08-21 by Karo Stoltzenburg

The_Holy_Monastery_of_ St._ Nicholas_Anapausas _ Flickr_Jaime_Perez

[1] https://labs.spotify.com/2014/03/27/spotify-engineering-culture-part-1/
[2] https://labs.spotify.com/2014/09/20/spotify-engineering-culture-part-2/

“Spotify engineering culture” sketched in two 10m+ videos. Pretty motivational. For me it emphasizes one of the main guidelines I’d want to work with – autonomy, to give the team, or in spotify terms the “squad”, the power, showing some faith and trust in the people you employ. Other ideas I hurrah and like:
Continue reading →

Posted in I've read a thing (or two) | Tagged , | Leave a comment