Yesterday’s Cambridge Lean Coffee was hosted by Chris George at Cambridge Consultants. Here’s a brief note on the topics that made it to discussion in the group I was in.

Can you quantify usability? Do you try?

How to manage bug backlogs alongside sprints?

  • very dependent on the context you’re working in
  • don’t separate the bugs and other stories
  • the tester should be trying to illuminate knowledge of the product
  • … including project risks (like two managers with different goals) to the product

What makes you laugh when you’re testing?

  • the discovery of the unexpected thing that exposes assumptions were made
  • … examples included a configuration option which was only used in reporting the setting of the option itself; a performance metric reported in mega rather than milli units (against industry standard) which had been that way for years and not been noticed.
  • … but not usually the discovery that some spec item under test isn’t implemented right
  • aha! vs haha!
  • the start of the planning process (but that’s an evil laugh to worry developers)

Should developers be testers?

  • experiments at Atlassian: Quality at speedQuality assistance.
  • what it takes to make someone have pride in their work
  • what does it mean to be a tester anyway?
  • comparison with other professions – important work is tested (or checked?) generally. Isn’t it?