I stumbled upon (via Agile Testing) a presentation by Gerson Almeida yesterday. Some things caught my eyes, so up they go.

Oh ya, here is the link: Test Management – The Basic Blocks

  • People and Projects have many different needs and conditions. Train people to understand first, and then, use the Process. — One of the things I look for when hiring is the presence of the nebulous ‘clue’. It is one of the more significant barriers in convincing me to hire you. If you have it, then I can show you the application and you will be able to be a productive tester. After that, its just a matter of showing you the metrics to watch, or the format of the artifacts.
  • …not an automatic process and need[s] constant intervention, but it is also functional, low-cost and ‘reliable’. — I think the key word there is reliable. A process that constantly breaks down is one that needs to be revisited.
  • The W Model — Looks like another hole in my ‘testing theory’ has been identified.
  • There is no point testing if we cannot prove (show) what was tested and covered, thus Metrics are a very important part. — This sentence is what made me read the whole presentation instead of just skim it. Too bad there isn’t a more thorough discussion of Metrics though. There are a couple slides showing a rainbow of colours in Excel under the guise of Metrics, but no discussion over which Metrics they are tracking and why.
  • Encrypt your Subversion dir. — Good point, especially as more companies realize that giving development/test groups laptops is a good thing.
  • A[n Excel] Macro was created to automatically create the link to Bugzilla — That is pretty cool. I’ll have to remember that trick. I would imagine you could integrate Excel with a lot of things that way.