Testing & Debugging Blog /blog/debugblog/ 2008-05-06T07:30:00-05:00 Five Questions With Elfriede Dustin /blog/debugblog/archives/2008/05/five_questions_55.html Elfriede Dustin has written numerous books and articles about testing and test automation. While I haven't read any of them myself, multiple someones evidently find her books useful as they have been translated into multiple languages and sell worldwide. She co-chairs the annual VERIFY conference, where one of the three presentation tracks focuses on (surprise!) test automation. She got her start in computers doing a different type of automation - using Wang computers to automate claims processing for the United States federal government. These days she is helping the US military automate their software testing, which seems a rather different challenge than the ones on which I work.


Here is what Elfriede has to say:

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Freelancer Blog mhunter 2008-05-06T07:30:00-05:00
Five Questions With Bob Dewing /blog/debugblog/archives/2008/04/five_questions_54.html Bob Dewing has been managing testers for as long as I have known him, which means for at least the past ten years. He has been so focused on doing that well that I don't have much else to say about his testing career. So I will have to resort to telling anecdotes from when I worked for him. Well, maybe I shouldn't, because then he will likely turn bright red with embarrassment, like the time he was presenting at an all-hands meeting and his laptop went to screensaver...which his wife had customized to say "I love you Bob!"

There I go, telling stories after I said I wouldn't. I'll stop now and turn you over to Bob.

Here is what Bob has to say:

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Freelancer Blog mhunter 2008-04-29T07:30:00-05:00
Five Questions With Paul Carvalho /blog/debugblog/archives/2008/04/five_questions_53.html Paul Carvalho is one of the many Canadians who are actively contributing to the Test community. You may have read his article on internationalization testing for Better Software, his article on hiring testers for Red Canary, or his blog wherein he divulges the secrets of his testing success.

After work Paul's children help him decompress by ensuring he has neither time nor need to focus on any task for more than a few minutes at a time. Once his kids go to bed Paul studies origami and volunteers at Ontario's Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics. And still he finds time to review books and university courses, and to contribute to the Software Engineering Body of Knowledge. (Send kudos or complaints, depending on your view of that corpus, to Paul's email above. <g/>)

Here is what Paul has to say:

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Freelancer Blog mhunter 2008-04-22T07:30:00-05:00
Five Questions With Johanna Rothman /blog/debugblog/archives/2008/04/five_questions_52.html How might you know Johanna Rothman? Let me count the ways. She is the author of Hiring the Best Knowledge Workers, Techies & Nerds, which teaches manager types how to find people like you and me and convince us to work for them. She teamed up with Esther Derby on Behind Closed Doors: Secrets of Great Management, which helps manager types manage people like you me - and helps us understand our managers. And most recently she published Manage It! Your Guide to Modern, Pragmatic Project Management, which helps manager types - and people like you and me - keep our projects out of the Business Blow-Ups section of our local newspapers. If blogs are more your style, you can get Hiring Technical People and Managing Product Development that way as well.

Can you tell Johanna runs a management consulting business? <g/> Also why she co-hosts AYE and helps Jerry Weinberg teach PSL?

Johanna follows the Helpful Rule in everything she does, and her books, workshops, and consulting practice all help you understand how to best do the Good Job you want to do. Here is what Johanna has to say:

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Freelancer Blog mhunter 2008-04-15T07:30:00-05:00
Five Questions With Adam White /blog/debugblog/archives/2008/04/five_questions_51.html Adam White manages Test Engineering and Escalations for PlateSpin. He makes the most of this dual role by using the customer problems he encounters to drive changes in his team's testing process and thus reduce the need for future escalations. As Test Manager part of Adam's job entails engaging his testers in philosophical discussions about testing and living his belief that teaching testing is more about helping people improve their ability to think about software than it is about instructing them in any particular technique or methodology. He also tinkers with neural networks and adaptive systems and such as he experiments with processes for analyzing financial markets and otherwise managing risks of various sorts.

Here is what Adam has to say:

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Freelancer Blog mhunter 2008-04-08T07:30:00-05:00
Five Questions With Joshua Williams /blog/debugblog/archives/2008/04/five_questions_50.html Joshua Williams  has been a tester throughout his twelve-plus years at Microsoft. That time has seen him working on globalization, testing drivers, and leading the USB support test process, on more architectures and versions of Windows than you probably care to hear about. He has worked with and on various automation frameworks and process improvement exercises as well, which experience is one reason he coauthored the recently published A Practical Guide to Defect Prevention. (See my review elsewhere on DDJ.) His primary focus nowadays is finding ways to help testers better enjoy their work, a mission I wholeheartedly support!

Here is what Joshua has to say:

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Freelancer Blog mhunter 2008-04-01T07:30:00-05:00
Five Questions With Selena Delesie /blog/debugblog/archives/2008/03/five_questions_49.html Selena Delesie is a photographer and ballroom dancer who enjoys camping around Canada. She's also the Software QA Manager for Intelligent Mechatronic Systems and President of the Kitchener Waterloo Software Quality Association. She accidentally discovered testing back in high school as she debugged her way through programming class. College brought her more testing experience in the form of helping her classmates determine why their programs weren't doing what they were supposed to. After college she continued both the testing and the mentoring for a variety of employers, including a stint at Research In Motion playing withtesting their wireless devices and services.

Here is what Selena has to say:

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Freelancer Blog mhunter 2008-03-11T07:30:00-05:00
Five Questions With Robert Musson /blog/debugblog/archives/2008/03/five_questions_48.html Robert Musson has been doing software for twenty-five years now. He spent fifteen of those years at Teradyne working on telecommunications products. He also helped deploy the Team Software Process (TSP) there, which experience he enjoyed so much he later joined the TSP Initiative at the Software Engineering Institute of Carnegie-Mellon University. These days Robert is a development lead on Microsoft's Windows Core Security Test Team, where he manages what he calls the "Department of Statistical Distortions". (Wonder what he means by that? See his chapters in The Practical Guide to Defect Prevention for further details. See my review of said chapters elsewhere on DDJ.)

Here is what Robert has to say:

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Freelancer Blog mhunter 2008-03-04T07:30:00-05:00
Five Questions With Wayne Miller /blog/debugblog/archives/2008/02/five_questions_47.html Wayne Miller is a Supporting Architect with the Enterprise Application Architecture Team at ExxonMobil. Which is to say that he spends his time helping people across his company find ways to solve their testing problems. One day he's advising senior architects on long term testing strategy, the next day he's helping frontline testers with their functional testing, and the day after that he's assisting usability and ergonomics groups innovate in their work. Sounds like fun to me!

Here is what Wayne has to say:

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Freelancer Blog mhunter 2008-02-19T07:30:00-05:00
Five Questions With Ross Smith /blog/debugblog/archives/2008/02/five_questions_46.html Ross Smith has held a variety of jobs in his life: cartooning, guarding jails, managing unions, and that voice on the other end of the line when you call Microsoft Product Support. Then he found testing and hasn't looked back since. As a Tester, Test Lead, Test Manager, Test Architect, and now Director of the Windows Core Security Test Team, he has been involved with Windows and Office for twelve years running. His recently published The Practical Guide to Defect Prevention is one way he aims to share all that experience with the rest of us. (See my review elsewhere on DDJ.)

Here is what Ross has to say:

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Freelancer Blog mhunter 2008-02-12T07:30:00-05:00
Five Questions With Matthew Heusser /blog/debugblog/archives/2008/02/five_questions_45.html Matthew Heusser develops software, such as a financial application that handles hundred of millions of dollars of fund transfers each year. Matt tests software too, where "testing" might mean writing unit tests, manually poking at an application, or driving the release process for a commercial application which brought in millions of dollars in revenue. And Matt also teaches other people how to develop and test software effectively. You may have read one of his articles here on DDJ Online, or heard him speak at any of a multitude of conferences, or seen him on the SW-IMPROVE discussion list he co-founded.

Matt understands that you may not agree with what he has to say, so he offers only two guarantees when you talk with him: that you'll leave the conversation thinking, and that you won't have been bored in the meantime.

Here is what Matt has to say:

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Freelancer Blog mhunter 2008-02-05T07:30:00-05:00
Five Questions With Mike Zintel /blog/debugblog/archives/2008/01/five_questions_44.html Mike Zintel's life goal is to be a train driving photographer. While he hasn't achieved that yet, he has achieved many other interesting things. Like being told he couldn't plug his fifth grade science project back in after it caught fire. Like writing a program to manage underground storage tank inventory. Like helping invent Universal Plug And Play.

These days Mike is Director of Development for a not-yet-unannounced product at Microsoft. Here is what Mike has to say:

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Freelancer Blog mhunter 2008-01-29T07:30:00-05:00
CASTing For Participants And Papers /blog/debugblog/archives/2008/01/casting_for_par.html If you are looking to attend a testing conference this year, consider CAST 2008. CAST is not your typical conference. While each session does start with you sitting in rows staring at PowerPoints, each session ends with you discussing anything and everything with the presenter and other attendees, all enabled by a trained facilitator. Sessions are separated by generous buffers of time, so energetic discussions can continue and continue and continue. Imagine a that - a conference where the point is to confer!

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Freelancer Blog mhunter 2008-01-25T13:00:00-05:00
Five Questions With Eric Jacobson /blog/debugblog/archives/2008/01/five_questions_43.html Eric Jacobson started Life After University as a Teacher Of How To Use Software. That gave him copious opportunities to notice the problems his students had using software and the defects in said software which his students stumbled upon. Eventually he started pointing these problems out to developers and it wasn't long after that until his first official testing gig.

These days Eric works for Turner Broadcasting, where he tests the software that manages which commercials and programming content air when. Hey Eric, schedule me a Star Trek marathon this weekend, will you? <g/>

Here is what Eric has to say:

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Freelancer Blog mhunter 2008-01-22T07:30:00-05:00
Five Questions With Evan Goldring /blog/debugblog/archives/2008/01/five_questions_42.html Evan Goldring is a test architect at Microsoft. Today, anyway; before that he was a Group Manager (i.e., he ran an entire product group and managed the people who managed the various disciplines). Before that he was a Dev Manager (which is to say he managed the people who managed the developers for a product group). Before that he was a tester. And before that he was a developer. And before that he was a tester. And before that...you get the picture, I imagine: Evan has switched between development and testing a lot! He says he keeps coming back to testing for the challenge and creativity. Which I guess means development is rote and boring. <g/>

Here is what Evan has to say:

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Freelancer Blog mhunter 2008-01-15T07:30:00-05:00