The Secret Ingredients of High Morale Jessica and Sean have just attended the company spirit meeting, and they're feeling a little dispirited. What does it really take to build morale? The answer is both simple and difficult. Learn the ingredients of morale as identified by a group of experts—a project team that may be a lot like yours. |
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Human Communication on Projects Tackling communication issues at the start can set a project up for success. Staying alert to communication issues during a project means keeping the lines open, clear, accurate, and helpful. Then when the deadline approaches, the schedule slips, or serious problems start cropping up, issues can be confronted much more smoothly and efficiently. In this column, Eileen discusses how human communication affects projects from start to finish. |
Eileen Strider
October 23, 2003 |
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Helpful Hints for Interviewing Experienced QA/Testing Candidates This article introduces suggested questions that can be presented to a candidate interviewing for a QA/Testing position. The suggested questions would help a test manager assess a candidate's knowledge of QA concepts and technical skills. The test manager can create a sample set of questions from this article and that will help them form a framework for efficiently interviewing future candidates. |
Jose Fajardo
October 16, 2003 |
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Soft Skills that Make a Tester If statistics are to be believed, software technology changes everyday for the better. There is always a quest to learn new technologies, languages, and methodologies among testers. In such a dynamic environment, often the importance of soft skills is overlooked. This article explores the impact and importance of soft skills in software testing. |
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Creating Team Norms In their eagerness to embark on a new project, project teams sometimes overlook an essential aspect of their effort—building a relationship among team members, which will foster not just a successful project outcome, but also a satisfying work experience. Investing in relationship building is invariably less costly and time-consuming than recovering from the divisiveness and conflict that may result from its absence. And that's where team norms come in. |
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A Detailed Look at the Idiosyncrasies of Test Tool Training In this article the author delineates some of the training issues confronting organizations that purchase automated test tools. The article delves into the copious decisions that a test manager has to make in order to get their testers properly trained on the use of the purchased automated test tools. Numerous insights are provided to help companies cope with the complexities associated with training testing resources. |
Jose Fajardo
September 15, 2003 |
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Model-Driven Architecture Powerful new development technologies such as model-based code generation will overwhelm test teams that continue to create tests by hand. It's time for testers to put their own productivity into a higher gear. Harry Robinson tells you all about it in this column. |
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Open the Doors of Business by Closing the Doors on Defects The highest risk that software development organizations face today is allowing defects to creep into the releases made for their high-paying customers. At times, either due to fear of losing the order, or due to overconfidence, organizations allow defects to ship. Time to market and (practically) defect-free products are the two pillars of any successful business. This article reiterates the important points in the defect-free part of that equation. How do you successfully implement system testing to ensure that the doors for future business remain open? |
Balan Swaminathan
September 8, 2003 |
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The Tyranny of the "To Do" List We create lists to help us prioritize tasks and stay on schedule. Sometimes those lists help us accomplish those tasks faster. Sometimes those lists simply chain us to an archaic way of doing things. Having a "To Do" list is a good thing if you don't let it prevent you from thinking outside the box. In this column, Elisabeth explains why the agenda items that don't make the list can often be some of the most important. |
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Stop the Bad MBOs Some managers use "management by objectives" effectively; however, too often they are used destructively and undermine the team. In this article Rex gives the clarion call to stop the bad MBOs and gives three case studies of what not to do. |
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