We live in interesting times. Knowledge is available at our fingertips, no matter where we are. Social networks enable communication around the world. However, along with these marvels of the information age come weapons of mass distraction. With so many things competing for our attention—and so little time to focus on real work—it’s a wonder we get anything done at all. What does this mean for testers? A common belief is that only focused concentration leads to productive work—and conversely, that distraction causes procrastination and stifles creativity. While it is important that testers find flow and maintain focus, Zeger Van Hese believes that a state of defocus—guilt-free play—can also be helpful in testing. Zeger shares tips, tricks, and tools that have helped him focus and defocus while testing. He explains not only how to benefit from distraction but also how to return to flow and focus when needed. Learn to make the most of these techniques in your testing.
3D Printing & Retail
The document discusses the emerging trend of 3D printing and its implications for retail. It notes that 3D printing is moving beyond science fiction into applications like customized phone cases, medical devices, and even food. Retailers may see consumers designing their own products instead of buying pre-packaged items off the shelf. The document suggests retailers will need to explore new business models involving both mass production and on-site 3D printing to meet consumer demand for personalized products. It recommends companies update their knowledge of 3D printing, start discussions about long-term strategy, and conduct experiments to learn how this trend might impact their business.
This is a presentation I gave at the Fred Reichheld NPS Masterclass which took place on May 10, 2012 in Breda.
The presentation is part of a series on customer-centricity, which is linked to my recent book "So You Want To Be Customer-Centric?"
I've included these because in essence these notes are taken from the people behind some of the products and help to (I hope) expose them and their products for the nonsense they really are.
Make things people want verses make people want things. Technology and the minutia of bullshit that proclaims to promote it get's uncovered and tortured by Steve Price, along with some examples of great things.
The document provides a review and recap of the Bett 2016 education technology conference. Some key details:
- The conference included 144 exhibitors, 700 visitors, 321 speakers, and took place over 4 days.
- The Bett Arena featured presentations from experts on using technology to take learning anywhere in the world (both virtually and potentially in the future physically) and inspire students through fun and interactive lessons.
- Other conference highlights included the Summit, Learn Live, Bett Futures, STEAM Village, and The Education Show exhibition areas, as well as awards ceremonies and profiles of exhibitors.
On 28/2 our managing partner, Alain Thys was the closing speaker of the FutuRetail event which took place at Google's offices in London. Pushed to come with "something innovative and different", he tried to bring a level-headed view on the ways he believes 3D Printing will affect retail in the coming 5+ years.
Many in the audience tended to agree, and if you do to (or not) feel free to leave your comments. Also, should you wish to look at the opportunities for 3D printing in your business (retail or B2B) do not hesitate to get in touch :-)
This document provides tips for coming up with business ideas. It discusses identifying problems to solve, problems that may arise in the future, adapting to evolving needs, saving people money, making people's lives easier, gamifying tasks, turning hobbies into businesses, fulfilling needs, and appealing to base emotions. The key ideas are to look for problems, frustrations, and inefficiencies that can be addressed through new products or services. Identifying needs and finding ways to meet them in novel ways are also discussed as strategies for generating business ideas.
A Journey into Online Qualitative Research - Abbott ResearchMerlien Institute
at Qualitative360 North America 2014
1-3 April 2014, Toronto, Canada
This event is proudly organised by Merlien Live
Check out our upcoming events by visiting http://qual360.com/
3D Printing & Retail
The document discusses the emerging trend of 3D printing and its implications for retail. It notes that 3D printing is moving beyond science fiction into applications like customized phone cases, medical devices, and even food. Retailers may see consumers designing their own products instead of buying pre-packaged items off the shelf. The document suggests retailers will need to explore new business models involving both mass production and on-site 3D printing to meet consumer demand for personalized products. It recommends companies update their knowledge of 3D printing, start discussions about long-term strategy, and conduct experiments to learn how this trend might impact their business.
This is a presentation I gave at the Fred Reichheld NPS Masterclass which took place on May 10, 2012 in Breda.
The presentation is part of a series on customer-centricity, which is linked to my recent book "So You Want To Be Customer-Centric?"
I've included these because in essence these notes are taken from the people behind some of the products and help to (I hope) expose them and their products for the nonsense they really are.
Make things people want verses make people want things. Technology and the minutia of bullshit that proclaims to promote it get's uncovered and tortured by Steve Price, along with some examples of great things.
The document provides a review and recap of the Bett 2016 education technology conference. Some key details:
- The conference included 144 exhibitors, 700 visitors, 321 speakers, and took place over 4 days.
- The Bett Arena featured presentations from experts on using technology to take learning anywhere in the world (both virtually and potentially in the future physically) and inspire students through fun and interactive lessons.
- Other conference highlights included the Summit, Learn Live, Bett Futures, STEAM Village, and The Education Show exhibition areas, as well as awards ceremonies and profiles of exhibitors.
On 28/2 our managing partner, Alain Thys was the closing speaker of the FutuRetail event which took place at Google's offices in London. Pushed to come with "something innovative and different", he tried to bring a level-headed view on the ways he believes 3D Printing will affect retail in the coming 5+ years.
Many in the audience tended to agree, and if you do to (or not) feel free to leave your comments. Also, should you wish to look at the opportunities for 3D printing in your business (retail or B2B) do not hesitate to get in touch :-)
This document provides tips for coming up with business ideas. It discusses identifying problems to solve, problems that may arise in the future, adapting to evolving needs, saving people money, making people's lives easier, gamifying tasks, turning hobbies into businesses, fulfilling needs, and appealing to base emotions. The key ideas are to look for problems, frustrations, and inefficiencies that can be addressed through new products or services. Identifying needs and finding ways to meet them in novel ways are also discussed as strategies for generating business ideas.
A Journey into Online Qualitative Research - Abbott ResearchMerlien Institute
at Qualitative360 North America 2014
1-3 April 2014, Toronto, Canada
This event is proudly organised by Merlien Live
Check out our upcoming events by visiting http://qual360.com/
The Four Dimensions of Performance ImprovementTechWell
Once upon a time, in a land far, far away, a team dealt with unrealistic deadlines, impossible stakeholders, and demotivated testers, who had no time to do things smarter and faster, just hammering away on the project “hamster wheel.” Then one day, as if heaven sent, a magical, but systematic approach to performance improvement, solving performance problems, and enhancing testing service delivery arrived in the form of the Four Dimensional Performance Improvement model. Marisa Müller describes this model that recognizes that performance relies on more than just people. Four dimensions of performance improvement—worker, workplace, work, and world—make up the total system. Marisa shares how her organization went about identifying and closing gaps, and provided empirical evidence that raised the understanding of the important value added by software testing. Join Marisa in exploring practical ways to apply to your own team what they did and empower you to transform testing’s value add and service delivery.
The Leadership Tutorial: Improving Your Ability to Stand and DeliverTechWell
In this highly interactive tutorial, Andy Kaufman helps you wrestle with real-world leadership issues we all face—influencing without authority, motivating your team, and dealing with conflict. Explore the difference between leadership and management—and why it matters—and get a clear picture of a leader’s responsibilities, including the balance between short- and long-term focus and the need to deliver results while developing organizational capability. Discuss the importance of developing your team members’ leadership skills, including practical ways to do so even with a limited training budget. Andy delves into the importance of one-on-one relationships and delivers proven insights on managing upward, dealing with peers, and developing stronger bonds both inside and outside your organization. Accelerate your ability to influence your organization, your projects, and your career to become the leader your team needs and demands. Take away practical tools to help you lead your team, including a template for formalizing a team charter and a reproducible survey to solicit leadership feedback from bosses, peers, stakeholders, and team members.
Scaling Agile at Dell: Real-life Problems - and SolutionsTechWell
The transition from waterfall-based software development to an agile, iterative model carries with it well-known challenges and problems-entrenched cultures, skill gaps, and organizational change management. For a large, globally distributed software development organization, an entirely different set of practical challenges comes with scaling agile practices. Last year the Dell Enterprise Solutions Group applied agile practices to more than forty projects ranging from a collocated single team project to projects that consisted of fifteen Scrum teams located across the US and India. Geoff Meyer and Brian Plunkett explain how Dell mined these real-life projects for their empirical value and adapted their agile practices into a flexible planning model that addresses the project complexities of staffing, scale, interdependency, and waterfall intersection. Join Geoff and Brian to see how they tackled the tough, real-life problems scaling agile at Dell: functional-based organizational boundaries, globally distributed teams, contractor challenges, multi-team projects, and dependencies on teams that continued to develop using waterfall methods.
Test Status Reporting: Focus Your Message for ExecutivesTechWell
Test status reporting is a key factor in the success of test projects. Stephan Obbeck shares some ideas on how to communicate more than just a red-yellow-green status report to executive management and discusses how the right information can influence their decisions. Testers often create reports that are too technical, losing crucial information in a mountain of detailed data. Management needs to make decisions—based on data they do understand—that support the test project. Stephan explains how stakeholder and risk analysis helps you identify recipients of a report and what information is of interest to them. Learn different ways of presenting data to support your message and to get the most possible attention from the executive level. Discover how to avoid pitfalls when generating reports from test automation. Produce a summary of statistics that provides insight into a test project.
Beyond Processes and Tools: What about Ethics?TechWell
Jackie Pulley presented on the topic of ethics in project management. She began by defining ethics as a set of moral principles or standards of behavior, and discussed the importance of having a code of ethics that establishes appropriate standards. Pulley then covered the four key values in PMI's Code of Ethics - responsibility, respect, fairness, and honesty. She provided examples for each value and questions individuals can ask themselves to reflect on practicing ethics. Pulley concluded by discussing the importance of considering ethical situations and developing a personal standard of ethical conduct.
Your test strategy is the design behind your plan—the set of big-picture ideas that embodies the overarching direction of your test effort. It captures the stakeholders’ values that will inspire, influence, and ultimately drive your testing. It guides your overall decisions about the ways and means of delivering on those values. The weighty test strategy template mandated in many organizations is not conducive to thinking through the important elements of a test strategy and then communicating its essentials to your stakeholders. A lightweight medium like a mindmap is far more flexible and direct. In this interactive session Fiona Charles works with you to develop your own strategic ideas in a mindmap, exploring along the way what really matters in a test strategy and how best to capture it using a mindmap. Fiona shares tips on how to use your mindmap to engage your stakeholders’ interest, understanding, and buy-in to your strategy.
Test Automation Patterns: Issues and SolutionsTechWell
Automating system level test execution can result in many problems. It is surprising to find that many people encounter the same problems, yet they are not aware of common solutions that have worked well for others. These problem/solution pairs are called “patterns.” Seretta Gamba recognized the commonality of these test automation issues and their solutions and, together with Dorothy Graham, has organized them into Test Automation Patterns. Although unit test patterns are well known, Seretta and Dorothy’s patterns address more general issues. They cover management, process, design, and execution patterns to help you recognize common test automation issues and show you how to identify appropriate patterns to solve the problems. Issues such as No Previous Automation, High ROI Expectations, and High Test Maintenance Cost are addressed by patterns such as Maintainable Testware, Tool Independence, and Management Support. Laptop required (with USB access). An offline version of the wiki will be available to copy to your laptop from a USB stick to use during the session.
A Rapid Introduction to Rapid Software TestingTechWell
This document provides a summary of a presentation on Rapid Software Testing. The presentation was given by Michael Bolton of DevelopSense and covered the methodology and mindset of rapid software testing. It emphasizes testing software expertly under uncertainty and time pressure. The presentation defines rapid testing as testing more quickly and less expensively while still achieving excellent results. It compares rapid testing to other approaches like exhaustive, ponderous, and slapdash testing. The presentation also discusses principles of rapid testing, how to recognize problems quickly using heuristics, and testing rapidly to fulfill the mission of testing.
Exploratory Testing on Agile Projects: Combining SBTM and TBTMTechWell
Exploratory testing provides both flexibility and speed—characteristics that are vitally important with the quick pace of short agile iterations. With session-based test management (SBTM), exploratory testing is structured and documented in pre-defined sessions. A newer approach, thread-based test management (TBTM), organizes test efforts by threads of activities rather than sessions. So, how do you retain the traceability of SBTM without losing the creativity offered by TBTM? The answer is xBTM—a combination of SBTM and TBTM. After introducing SBTM and TBTM, Christin shows how she uses xBTM on projects to obtain maximum efficiency—only creating test documentation that actually adds value. Using a mock example, Christin describes the xBTM workflow on an agile project, covering all the steps from test planning and performing the tests through reporting. Her focus is on sharing practical examples and providing a range of flexible tools that you can immediately apply on almost any project.
Reduce Release Cycle Time: Nine Months to a Week - Nice!TechWell
Picture this scene from three years ago: Employing the corporately mandated processes, a software engineering team is delivering system updates about once every nine months. When their senior user suddenly demands the next delivery in twenty-two weeks-half the current cycle duration-the team realize that they must quickly change development practices. Mathew Bissett describes how Her Majesty's Government did precisely that-and much, much more. First, they reduced delivery cycles from unpredictable dates every nine months to predictable releases every six weeks. Then, they cut releases cycle time to once every week. By identifying and mitigating risks early in the work intake process, enforcing quality gates, executing multiple test levels concurrently-and more-they dramatically increased throughput with the same or better quality. Today, these new processes provide their teams the best balance of structure versus agility. Join Mathew to see if what works for Her Majesty's Government might just work for you and your company.
Agile Code Reviews for Better Software—SoonerTechWell
The document summarizes a presentation by Mark Hammer of SmartBear Software on using agile code reviews to build higher quality software more quickly. It discusses how code reviews are underutilized on many agile teams and presents best practices and metrics showing reviews find many defects early, saving significant costs compared to later fixes. The presentation recommends integrating code reviews into development workflows using review tools and highlights benefits seen in a large Cisco case study, such as faster problem finding, more readable code, and improved collaboration across functions.
The question of how much design to do up-front on a project is an engaging one. Too much design often results in overkill, complexity, and wasted effort. Too little design results in insufficient system structures that require later rework, additional complexity, and wasted effort. How can we know what the right balance is? Ken Pugh shows how to use advice taken from Design Patterns, coupled with the attitude of not building what you don’t need from agile. The trick is in observing potential variation, how it may affect you in the future, and then how to isolate these risks in a simple manner. Ken describes the essence of emergent design – that is, start with a simple design and let it evolve as the requirements evolve. He also demonstrates how to refactor to achieve better designs and how this is different from refactoring bad code.
It's a Phone First! How to Test Your Five-star Mobile AppsTechWell
Mobile application development shares many similarities-and some stark differences-with traditional web-based development. To build, test, and deploy five-star mobile applications, your organization needs-from inception-a focused test strategy to drive quality. Employing the wrong approaches and tools can leave your business sponsors and clients wondering what went wrong. Will Hurley outlines the current mobile landscape and explains what can and cannot be controlled in the mobile lifecycle. He explores the current landscape and limitations on tools for testing mobile apps, and offers guidance on what-and what not to-automate. With Will's guidance, you’ll learn how to establish a mobile lifecycle test strategy that is both leading edge and practical. From high-level feature classifications that are meaningful to your business to low-level test types and approaches that practitioners need to know, Will shares the knowledge you need to release a five-star app.
A Rapid Introduction to Rapid Software TestingTechWell
You're under tight time pressure and have barely enough information to proceed with testing. How do you test quickly and inexpensively, yet still produce informative, credible, and accountable results? Rapid Software Testing, adopted by context-driven testers worldwide, offers a field-proven answer to this all-too-common dilemma. In this one-day sampler of the approach, Michael Bolton introduces you to the skills and practice of Rapid Software Testing through stories, discussions, and "minds-on" exercises that simulate important aspects of real testing problems. The rapid approach isn't just testing with speed or a sense of urgency; it's mission-focused testing that eliminates unnecessary work, assures that the most important things get done, and constantly asks how testers can help speed up the successful completion of the project. Join Michael to see how rapid testing focuses on both the mind set and skill set of the individual tester who uses tight loops of exploration and critical thinking skills to help continuously re-optimize testing to match clients' needs and expectations.
Twelve Heuristics for Solving Tough Problems—Faster and BetterTechWell
The workshop objectives are to practice problem definition, explore improved problem solving methods, examine and apply heuristics to enhance problem solving, and have fun while accomplishing other objectives. Attendees will learn to better define problems, generate a variety of solutions, and improve problem solving through increased awareness, tactics and tools. The document provides an overview of heuristics, or problem solving tactics, and explores factors that influence problem solving like self-awareness. It also covers steps in the problem solving process like defining the problem, identifying possible solutions, and selecting the best solution.
The document discusses how web conferencing solutions like Zoom saw explosive growth with the rise of remote work and learning during the COVID-19 pandemic. It notes that while these tools allow communication without physical presence, online meetings and classes can lack interactivity and body language. To keep audiences engaged, the document recommends using a visualizer device to display materials spontaneously and reset attention spans, as visual content is better retained than text-heavy slides. Integrating the visualizer's live camera feed into conferencing platforms like Zoom allows for flexibility and interaction lacking in static presentations.
In the last two decades, screens have made our world hyper-connected. But do these virtual connections replace "authentic" physical interactions? Have our neighborhood communities become silent places that merely house people on screens? Explore the next wave in maker culture hacking our sense of community with emerging experiments that challenge our notion of "place". Find inspiration from interaction examples that can help prioritize fundamental human needs in your work.
The interfaces we're building need to work in distracting environments. And we need to figure out how to cope with users' tendency to get distracted. This presentation looks at how we might achieve that. And why, I think, it's the most serious problem facing interaction designers today.
This presentation has been designed as part of the www.screenlessweek.co.uk resource and gives teachers a set of slides to use with pupils (aged 12 years +) to look at the issues of excessive screeen use.
- Open accessibility data can be used to make the lives of people with mental/cognitive disabilities better by making information more accessible through features like text-to-speech, pictures/pictograms, and simplified layouts.
- Only a small percentage of technology organizations focus on helping people with mental/cognitive disabilities, compared to those helping people with physical disabilities. The presenter's goal is to inspire more organizations to serve this community.
- Open data can be paired with accessibility features and released through apps to provide important information to people with disabilities in accessible formats they can understand.
The Four Dimensions of Performance ImprovementTechWell
Once upon a time, in a land far, far away, a team dealt with unrealistic deadlines, impossible stakeholders, and demotivated testers, who had no time to do things smarter and faster, just hammering away on the project “hamster wheel.” Then one day, as if heaven sent, a magical, but systematic approach to performance improvement, solving performance problems, and enhancing testing service delivery arrived in the form of the Four Dimensional Performance Improvement model. Marisa Müller describes this model that recognizes that performance relies on more than just people. Four dimensions of performance improvement—worker, workplace, work, and world—make up the total system. Marisa shares how her organization went about identifying and closing gaps, and provided empirical evidence that raised the understanding of the important value added by software testing. Join Marisa in exploring practical ways to apply to your own team what they did and empower you to transform testing’s value add and service delivery.
The Leadership Tutorial: Improving Your Ability to Stand and DeliverTechWell
In this highly interactive tutorial, Andy Kaufman helps you wrestle with real-world leadership issues we all face—influencing without authority, motivating your team, and dealing with conflict. Explore the difference between leadership and management—and why it matters—and get a clear picture of a leader’s responsibilities, including the balance between short- and long-term focus and the need to deliver results while developing organizational capability. Discuss the importance of developing your team members’ leadership skills, including practical ways to do so even with a limited training budget. Andy delves into the importance of one-on-one relationships and delivers proven insights on managing upward, dealing with peers, and developing stronger bonds both inside and outside your organization. Accelerate your ability to influence your organization, your projects, and your career to become the leader your team needs and demands. Take away practical tools to help you lead your team, including a template for formalizing a team charter and a reproducible survey to solicit leadership feedback from bosses, peers, stakeholders, and team members.
Scaling Agile at Dell: Real-life Problems - and SolutionsTechWell
The transition from waterfall-based software development to an agile, iterative model carries with it well-known challenges and problems-entrenched cultures, skill gaps, and organizational change management. For a large, globally distributed software development organization, an entirely different set of practical challenges comes with scaling agile practices. Last year the Dell Enterprise Solutions Group applied agile practices to more than forty projects ranging from a collocated single team project to projects that consisted of fifteen Scrum teams located across the US and India. Geoff Meyer and Brian Plunkett explain how Dell mined these real-life projects for their empirical value and adapted their agile practices into a flexible planning model that addresses the project complexities of staffing, scale, interdependency, and waterfall intersection. Join Geoff and Brian to see how they tackled the tough, real-life problems scaling agile at Dell: functional-based organizational boundaries, globally distributed teams, contractor challenges, multi-team projects, and dependencies on teams that continued to develop using waterfall methods.
Test Status Reporting: Focus Your Message for ExecutivesTechWell
Test status reporting is a key factor in the success of test projects. Stephan Obbeck shares some ideas on how to communicate more than just a red-yellow-green status report to executive management and discusses how the right information can influence their decisions. Testers often create reports that are too technical, losing crucial information in a mountain of detailed data. Management needs to make decisions—based on data they do understand—that support the test project. Stephan explains how stakeholder and risk analysis helps you identify recipients of a report and what information is of interest to them. Learn different ways of presenting data to support your message and to get the most possible attention from the executive level. Discover how to avoid pitfalls when generating reports from test automation. Produce a summary of statistics that provides insight into a test project.
Beyond Processes and Tools: What about Ethics?TechWell
Jackie Pulley presented on the topic of ethics in project management. She began by defining ethics as a set of moral principles or standards of behavior, and discussed the importance of having a code of ethics that establishes appropriate standards. Pulley then covered the four key values in PMI's Code of Ethics - responsibility, respect, fairness, and honesty. She provided examples for each value and questions individuals can ask themselves to reflect on practicing ethics. Pulley concluded by discussing the importance of considering ethical situations and developing a personal standard of ethical conduct.
Your test strategy is the design behind your plan—the set of big-picture ideas that embodies the overarching direction of your test effort. It captures the stakeholders’ values that will inspire, influence, and ultimately drive your testing. It guides your overall decisions about the ways and means of delivering on those values. The weighty test strategy template mandated in many organizations is not conducive to thinking through the important elements of a test strategy and then communicating its essentials to your stakeholders. A lightweight medium like a mindmap is far more flexible and direct. In this interactive session Fiona Charles works with you to develop your own strategic ideas in a mindmap, exploring along the way what really matters in a test strategy and how best to capture it using a mindmap. Fiona shares tips on how to use your mindmap to engage your stakeholders’ interest, understanding, and buy-in to your strategy.
Test Automation Patterns: Issues and SolutionsTechWell
Automating system level test execution can result in many problems. It is surprising to find that many people encounter the same problems, yet they are not aware of common solutions that have worked well for others. These problem/solution pairs are called “patterns.” Seretta Gamba recognized the commonality of these test automation issues and their solutions and, together with Dorothy Graham, has organized them into Test Automation Patterns. Although unit test patterns are well known, Seretta and Dorothy’s patterns address more general issues. They cover management, process, design, and execution patterns to help you recognize common test automation issues and show you how to identify appropriate patterns to solve the problems. Issues such as No Previous Automation, High ROI Expectations, and High Test Maintenance Cost are addressed by patterns such as Maintainable Testware, Tool Independence, and Management Support. Laptop required (with USB access). An offline version of the wiki will be available to copy to your laptop from a USB stick to use during the session.
A Rapid Introduction to Rapid Software TestingTechWell
This document provides a summary of a presentation on Rapid Software Testing. The presentation was given by Michael Bolton of DevelopSense and covered the methodology and mindset of rapid software testing. It emphasizes testing software expertly under uncertainty and time pressure. The presentation defines rapid testing as testing more quickly and less expensively while still achieving excellent results. It compares rapid testing to other approaches like exhaustive, ponderous, and slapdash testing. The presentation also discusses principles of rapid testing, how to recognize problems quickly using heuristics, and testing rapidly to fulfill the mission of testing.
Exploratory Testing on Agile Projects: Combining SBTM and TBTMTechWell
Exploratory testing provides both flexibility and speed—characteristics that are vitally important with the quick pace of short agile iterations. With session-based test management (SBTM), exploratory testing is structured and documented in pre-defined sessions. A newer approach, thread-based test management (TBTM), organizes test efforts by threads of activities rather than sessions. So, how do you retain the traceability of SBTM without losing the creativity offered by TBTM? The answer is xBTM—a combination of SBTM and TBTM. After introducing SBTM and TBTM, Christin shows how she uses xBTM on projects to obtain maximum efficiency—only creating test documentation that actually adds value. Using a mock example, Christin describes the xBTM workflow on an agile project, covering all the steps from test planning and performing the tests through reporting. Her focus is on sharing practical examples and providing a range of flexible tools that you can immediately apply on almost any project.
Reduce Release Cycle Time: Nine Months to a Week - Nice!TechWell
Picture this scene from three years ago: Employing the corporately mandated processes, a software engineering team is delivering system updates about once every nine months. When their senior user suddenly demands the next delivery in twenty-two weeks-half the current cycle duration-the team realize that they must quickly change development practices. Mathew Bissett describes how Her Majesty's Government did precisely that-and much, much more. First, they reduced delivery cycles from unpredictable dates every nine months to predictable releases every six weeks. Then, they cut releases cycle time to once every week. By identifying and mitigating risks early in the work intake process, enforcing quality gates, executing multiple test levels concurrently-and more-they dramatically increased throughput with the same or better quality. Today, these new processes provide their teams the best balance of structure versus agility. Join Mathew to see if what works for Her Majesty's Government might just work for you and your company.
Agile Code Reviews for Better Software—SoonerTechWell
The document summarizes a presentation by Mark Hammer of SmartBear Software on using agile code reviews to build higher quality software more quickly. It discusses how code reviews are underutilized on many agile teams and presents best practices and metrics showing reviews find many defects early, saving significant costs compared to later fixes. The presentation recommends integrating code reviews into development workflows using review tools and highlights benefits seen in a large Cisco case study, such as faster problem finding, more readable code, and improved collaboration across functions.
The question of how much design to do up-front on a project is an engaging one. Too much design often results in overkill, complexity, and wasted effort. Too little design results in insufficient system structures that require later rework, additional complexity, and wasted effort. How can we know what the right balance is? Ken Pugh shows how to use advice taken from Design Patterns, coupled with the attitude of not building what you don’t need from agile. The trick is in observing potential variation, how it may affect you in the future, and then how to isolate these risks in a simple manner. Ken describes the essence of emergent design – that is, start with a simple design and let it evolve as the requirements evolve. He also demonstrates how to refactor to achieve better designs and how this is different from refactoring bad code.
It's a Phone First! How to Test Your Five-star Mobile AppsTechWell
Mobile application development shares many similarities-and some stark differences-with traditional web-based development. To build, test, and deploy five-star mobile applications, your organization needs-from inception-a focused test strategy to drive quality. Employing the wrong approaches and tools can leave your business sponsors and clients wondering what went wrong. Will Hurley outlines the current mobile landscape and explains what can and cannot be controlled in the mobile lifecycle. He explores the current landscape and limitations on tools for testing mobile apps, and offers guidance on what-and what not to-automate. With Will's guidance, you’ll learn how to establish a mobile lifecycle test strategy that is both leading edge and practical. From high-level feature classifications that are meaningful to your business to low-level test types and approaches that practitioners need to know, Will shares the knowledge you need to release a five-star app.
A Rapid Introduction to Rapid Software TestingTechWell
You're under tight time pressure and have barely enough information to proceed with testing. How do you test quickly and inexpensively, yet still produce informative, credible, and accountable results? Rapid Software Testing, adopted by context-driven testers worldwide, offers a field-proven answer to this all-too-common dilemma. In this one-day sampler of the approach, Michael Bolton introduces you to the skills and practice of Rapid Software Testing through stories, discussions, and "minds-on" exercises that simulate important aspects of real testing problems. The rapid approach isn't just testing with speed or a sense of urgency; it's mission-focused testing that eliminates unnecessary work, assures that the most important things get done, and constantly asks how testers can help speed up the successful completion of the project. Join Michael to see how rapid testing focuses on both the mind set and skill set of the individual tester who uses tight loops of exploration and critical thinking skills to help continuously re-optimize testing to match clients' needs and expectations.
Twelve Heuristics for Solving Tough Problems—Faster and BetterTechWell
The workshop objectives are to practice problem definition, explore improved problem solving methods, examine and apply heuristics to enhance problem solving, and have fun while accomplishing other objectives. Attendees will learn to better define problems, generate a variety of solutions, and improve problem solving through increased awareness, tactics and tools. The document provides an overview of heuristics, or problem solving tactics, and explores factors that influence problem solving like self-awareness. It also covers steps in the problem solving process like defining the problem, identifying possible solutions, and selecting the best solution.
The document discusses how web conferencing solutions like Zoom saw explosive growth with the rise of remote work and learning during the COVID-19 pandemic. It notes that while these tools allow communication without physical presence, online meetings and classes can lack interactivity and body language. To keep audiences engaged, the document recommends using a visualizer device to display materials spontaneously and reset attention spans, as visual content is better retained than text-heavy slides. Integrating the visualizer's live camera feed into conferencing platforms like Zoom allows for flexibility and interaction lacking in static presentations.
In the last two decades, screens have made our world hyper-connected. But do these virtual connections replace "authentic" physical interactions? Have our neighborhood communities become silent places that merely house people on screens? Explore the next wave in maker culture hacking our sense of community with emerging experiments that challenge our notion of "place". Find inspiration from interaction examples that can help prioritize fundamental human needs in your work.
The interfaces we're building need to work in distracting environments. And we need to figure out how to cope with users' tendency to get distracted. This presentation looks at how we might achieve that. And why, I think, it's the most serious problem facing interaction designers today.
This presentation has been designed as part of the www.screenlessweek.co.uk resource and gives teachers a set of slides to use with pupils (aged 12 years +) to look at the issues of excessive screeen use.
- Open accessibility data can be used to make the lives of people with mental/cognitive disabilities better by making information more accessible through features like text-to-speech, pictures/pictograms, and simplified layouts.
- Only a small percentage of technology organizations focus on helping people with mental/cognitive disabilities, compared to those helping people with physical disabilities. The presenter's goal is to inspire more organizations to serve this community.
- Open data can be paired with accessibility features and released through apps to provide important information to people with disabilities in accessible formats they can understand.
Open data and apps for people with a handicap
How to make your new kind of open data? How can you translate data to people with a mental disability? In this talk I talk about the opportunity to work with data from other organizations that work in the sector for people with a disability, rather than the Government. And most of all how you can make them accessible with apps specific made for people who haven't the mental capacity to read / write!
Innovative technology for universal communication designed to involve the (he...PaloSanto Solutions
This document appears to be a presentation on accessibility and communication challenges for those who are deaf or hard of hearing. It discusses the closed cultural society of the deaf community and how communication works differently for those without hearing. Misunderstandings can occur for both hearing and deaf individuals without visual cues like facial expressions and gestures. True understanding only happens when all parties are emotionally involved. Different situations require different approaches depending on the type and degree of hearing loss for an individual. Hearing loss impacts many areas of life.
Digital Wellbeing: Meaningful Daily Actions for Parents - COVIDMax Stossel
A list of practices parents I've spoken with have found helpful for managing their mental health and general wellbeing in the world of smartphones & social media.
Beyond your studies ~ You studied X at Y. now what?
HackPra, July 2018
A student's life ago, the author somehow managed to graduate.
On the way, he made a lot of mistakes -- and he still does.
A few people since called him 'successful', but LOL, if only they knew....
And now, the author will do another (big!) mistake:
instead of hiding in shame as he probably should,
he'll share his mistakes with anyone bored enough to attend,
in the hope that he's the last person to ever look that dumb to commit such mistakes.
If you're a genius and you know what to do in life, please skip this. Seriously.
If, like the author at the time, you wonder WTF is going on with graduation, professional work and life, then hopefully you learn a few things. Maybe.
Btw the author is 42 (WTF - old!).
Maybe that will help to provide a few answers.
Reaching net-generation learners with social technologiesguestba21f9
1. The document discusses reaching "net-generation" learners and students using social technologies.
2. It notes that today's students are different than what the current education system was designed for, and that adapting to these students means adapting to a changing world.
3. The document suggests using multimedia, stories, videos, audio and triggering multiple senses to engage students, as well as making learners more autonomous and using tools like blogs and Skype.
Reaching Net Generation Learners with social technologies - CDIO 2008Maarten Cannaerts
1. The document discusses reaching "net-generation" learners through the use of social technologies.
2. It notes that today's students are different than those the education system was designed for, and argues we must adapt to a changing world by making learning more autonomous, interactive, and skills-focused.
3. The document suggests using tools like social networking, multimedia, and open learning approaches to better engage students and show the relevance of their education.
This document discusses how to determine the value of a customer. It notes that with the rise of the internet, companies need to focus on where their customers are and engage with them through conversations. However, some companies still struggle with focusing on the customer experience and engaging in conversations. The key is for companies to listen to customers, understand their needs and stories, and have conversations in a human voice.
The document discusses using digital tools in the classroom. It provides examples of several digital tools that could be used for various purposes like calendars, video recording, reading tools, QR codes, writing tools, numeracy tools, and communication tools. It also discusses setting up student contracts and policies around device use, cybersafety, creative commons, and ways to continue developing digital practices in the classroom.
Fabian Delahaut - Réussir son pitch - Workshop 1Start Academy
The document discusses the 10/20/30 Rule of PowerPoint presentations proposed by a venture capitalist. The rule states that presentations should have:
10 slides or less to focus on the most important concepts;
Last no more than 20 minutes to respect people's time;
Use a font size of 30 points or larger so the presenter does not have to read slides and can engage the audience.
Following this simple rule aims to make presentations more concise and engaging for audiences, especially when seeking funding. It encourages presenters to know their material well and focus on the most salient points to explain their business.
Technology So Easy Your Lawyer Could Do It (OSCON 5/18)Zoe Landon
Technology is a language all its own, and open source is no exception. But as more people jump into the world of programming, they can be quickly overwhelmed by the volume of jargon. How, then, do we explain powerful technologies without misleading people? It takes empathy, clever language, and a bit of Shakespeare.
Similar to Testing in the Age of Distraction: Flow, Focus, and Defocus in Testing (20)
Isabel Evans stopped drawing and painting after being told she was not very good at it, which led to a loss of confidence in her creative and professional abilities. However, she realized that attempting creative activities is important for cognitive and emotional development, and that making mistakes and learning from failures allows for growth. By reengaging with failure through art and with support from others, Isabel was able to regain confidence in her abilities and reboot her career. The document discusses different perspectives on failure and the importance of learning from mistakes.
Instill a DevOps Testing Culture in Your Team and Organization TechWell
The DevOps movement is here. Companies across many industries are breaking down siloed IT departments and federating them into product development teams. Testing and its practices are at the heart of these changes. Traditionally, IT organizations have been staffed with mostly manual testers and a limited number of automation and performance engineers. To keep pace with development in the new “you build it, you own it” environment, testing teams and individuals must develop new technical skills and even embrace coding to stay relevant and add greater value to the business. DevOps really starts with testing. Join Adam Auerbach as he explains what DevOps is and how it relates to testing. He describes how testing must change from top to bottom and how to access your own environment to identify improvement opportunities. Adam dives into practices like service virtualization, test data management, and continuous testing so you can understand where you are now and identify steps needed to instill a DevOps testing culture in your team and organization.
Test Design for Fully Automated Build ArchitectureTechWell
This document summarizes a half-day tutorial on test design for fully automated build architectures presented by Melissa Benua of mParticle at STAREAST 2018. The tutorial covered guiding principles for test design including prioritizing important and reliable tests, structuring automated pipelines around components, packages, and releases, and monitoring test results through code coverage, flaky test handling, and logging versus counters. It also included exercises mapping test cases to functional boundaries and categories of tests to pipeline stages.
System-Level Test Automation: Ensuring a Good StartTechWell
Many organizations invest a lot of effort in test automation at the system level but then have serious problems later on. As a leader, how can you ensure that your new automation efforts will get off to a good start? What can you do to ensure that your automation work provides continuing value? This tutorial covers both “theory” and “practice”. Dot Graham explains the critical issues for getting a good start, and Chris Loder describes his experiences in getting good automation started at a number of companies. The tutorial covers the most important management issues you must address for test automation success, particularly when you are new to automation, and how to choose the best approaches for your organization—no matter which automation tools you use. Focusing on system level testing, Dot and Chris explain how automation affects staffing, who should be responsible for which automation tasks, how managers can best support automation efforts to promote success, what you can realistically expect in benefits and how to report them. They explain—for non-techies—the key technical issues that can make or break your automation effort. Come away with your own clarified automation objectives, and a draft test automation strategy to use to plan your own system-level test automation.
Build Your Mobile App Quality and Test StrategyTechWell
Let’s build a mobile app quality and testing strategy together. Whether you have a web, hybrid, or native app, building a quality and testing strategy means (1) knowing what data and tools you have available to make agile decisions, (2) understanding your customers and your competitors, and (3) testing your app under real-world conditions. Jason Arbon guides you through the latest techniques, data, and tools to ensure the awesomeness of your mobile app quality and testing strategy. Leave this interactive session with a strategy for your very own app—or one you pretend to own. The information Jason shares is based on data from Appdiff’s next-gen mobile app testing platform, lessons from Applause/uTest’s crowd, text mining hundreds of millions of app store reviews, and in-depth discussions with top mobile app development teams.
Testing Transformation: The Art and Science for SuccessTechWell
Technologies, testing processes, and the role of the tester have evolved significantly in the past few years with the advent of agile, DevOps, and other new technologies. It is critical that we testing professionals evaluate ourselves and continue to add tangible value to our organizations. In your work, are you focused on the trivial or on real game changers? Jennifer Bonine describes critical elements that help you artfully blend people, process, and technology to create a synergistic relationship that adds value. Jennifer shares ideas on mastering politics, maneuvering core vs. context, and innovating your technology strategies and processes. She explores how new processes can be introduced in an organization, what the role of organizational culture is in determining the success of a project, and how you can know what tools will add value vs. simply adding overhead and complexity. Jennifer reviews critically needed tester skills and discusses a continual learning model to evolve your skills and stay relevant. This discussion can lead you to technologies, processes, and skills you can stake your career on.
We’ve all been there. We work incredibly hard to develop a feature and design tests based on written requirements. We build a detailed test plan that aligns the tests with the software and the documented business needs. And when we put the tests to the software, it all falls apart because the requirements were changed without informing everyone. Mary Thorn says help is at hand. Enter behavior-driven development (BDD), and Cucumber and SpecFlow, tools for running automated acceptance tests and facilitating BDD. Mary explores the nuances of Cucumber and SpecFlow, and shows you how to implement BDD and agile acceptance testing. By fostering collaboration for implementing active requirements via a common language and format, Cucumber and SpecFlow bridge the communication gap between business stakeholders and implementation teams. In this workshop, practice writing feature files with the best practices Mary has discovered over numerous implementations. If you experience developers not coding to requirements, testers not getting requirements updates, or customers who feel out of the loop and don’t get what they ask for, Mary has answers for you.
Develop WebDriver Automated Tests—and Keep Your SanityTechWell
Many teams go crazy because of brittle, high-maintenance automated test suites. Jim Holmes helps you understand how to create a flexible, maintainable, high-value suite of functional tests using Selenium WebDriver. Learn the basics of what to test, what not to test, and how to avoid overlapping with other types of testing. Jim includes both philosophical concepts and hands-on coding. Testers who haven't written code should not be intimidated! We'll pair you up to make sure you're successful. Learn to create practical tests dealing with advanced situations such as input validation, AJAX delays, and working with file downloads. Additionally, discover when you need to work together with developers to create a system that's more easily testable. This tutorial focuses primarily on automating web tests, but many of the same concepts can be applied to other UI environments. Demos and labs will be in C# and Java using WebDriver. Leave this tutorial having learned how to write high-value WebDriver tests—and stay sane while doing so.
DevOps is a cultural shift aimed at streamlining intergroup communication and improving operational efficiency for development and operations groups. Over time, inclusion of other IT groups under the DevOps umbrella has become the norm for many organizations. But even broadening the boundaries of DevOps, the conversation has been largely devoid of the business units’ place at the table. A common mistake organizations make while going through the DevOps transformation is drawing a line at the IT boundary. If that occurs, a larger, more inclusive silo within the organization is created, operating in an informational vacuum and causing operational inefficiency and goal misalignment. Sharing his experiences working on both sides of the fence, Leon Fayer describes the importance of including business units in order to align technology decisions with business goals. Leon discusses inclusion of business units in existing agile processes, benefits of cross-departmental monitoring, and a business-first approach to technology decisions.
Eliminate Cloud Waste with a Holistic DevOps StrategyTechWell
Chris Parlette maintains that renting infrastructure on demand is the most disruptive trend in IT in decades. In 2016, enterprises spent $23B on public cloud IaaS services. By 2020, that figure is expected to reach $65B. The public cloud is now used like a utility, and like any utility, there is waste. Who's responsible for optimizing the infrastructure and reducing wasted expenses? It’s DevOps. The excess expense, known as cloud waste, comprises several interrelated problems: services running when they don't need to be, improperly sized infrastructure, orphaned resources, and shadow IT. There are a few core tenets of DevOps—holistic thinking, no silos, rapid useful feedback, and automation—that can be applied to reducing your cloud waste. Join Chris to learn why you should include continuous cost optimization in your DevOps processes. Automate cost control, reduce your cloud expenses, and make your life easier.
Transform Test Organizations for the New World of DevOpsTechWell
With the recent emergence of DevOps across the industry, testing organizations are being challenged to transform themselves significantly within a short period of time to stay meaningful within their organizations. It’s not easy to plan and approach these changes considering the way testing organizations have remained structured for ages. These challenges start from foundational organizational structures and can cut across leadership influence, competencies, tools strategy, infrastructure, and other dimensions. Sumit Kumar shares his experience assisting various organizations to overcome these challenges using an organized DevOps enablement framework. The framework includes radical restructuring, turning the tools strategy upside down, a multidimensional workforce enablement supported by infrastructure changes, redeveloped collaborations models, and more. From his real world experiences Sumit shares tips for approaching this journey and explains the roadmap for testing organizations to transform themselves to lead the quality in DevOps.
The Fourth Constraint in Project Delivery—LeadershipTechWell
All too often, the triple constraints—time, cost, and quality—are bandied about as if they are the be-all, end-all. While they are important, leadership—the fourth and larger underpinning constraint—influences the first three. Statistics on project success and failure abound, and these measurements are usually taken against the triple constraints. According to the Project Management Institute, only 53 percent of projects are completed within budget, and only 49 percent are completed on time. If so many projects overrun budget and are late, we can’t really say, “Good, fast, or cheap—pick two.” Rob Burkett talks about leadership at every level of a team. He shares his insights and stories gleaned from his years of IT and project management experience. Rob speaks to some of the glaring difficulties in the workplace in general and some specifically related to IT delivery and project management. Leave with a clearer understanding of how to communicate with teams and team members, and gain a better understanding of how you can be a leader—up and down your organization.
Resolve the Contradiction of Specialists within Agile TeamsTechWell
As teams grow, organizations often draw a distinction between feature teams, which deliver the visible business value to the user, and component teams, which manage shared work. Steve Berczuk says that this distinction can help organizations be more productive and scale effectively, but he recognizes that not all shared work fits into this model. Some work is best handled by “specialists,” that is people with unique skills. Although teams composed entirely of T-shaped people is ideal, certain skills are hard to come by and are used irregularly across an organization. Since these specialists often need to work closely with teams, rather than working from their own backlog, they don’t fit into the component team model. The use of shared resources presents challenges to the agile planning model. Steve Berczuk shares how teams such as those providing infrastructure services and specialists can fit into a feature+component team model, and how variations such as embedding specialists in a scrum team can both present process challenges and add significant value to both the team and the larger organization.
Pin the Tail on the Metric: A Field-Tested Agile GameTechWell
Metrics don’t have to be a necessary evil. If done right, metrics can help guide us to make better forward-looking decisions, rather than being used for simply managing or monitoring. They can help us identify trade-offs between options for what to do next versus punitive or worse, purely managerial measures. Steve Martin won’t be giving the Top Ten List of field-tested metrics you should use. Instead, in this interactive mini-workshop, he leads you through the critical thinking necessary for you to determine what is right for you to measure. First, Steve explores why you want to measure something—whether it’s for a team, a portfolio, or even an agile transformation. Next, he provides multiple real-life metrics examples to help drive home concepts behind characteristics of good and bad metrics. Finally, Steve shows how to run his field-tested agile game—Pin the Tail on the Metric. Take back this activity to help you guide metrics conversations at your organization.
Agile Performance Holarchy (APH)—A Model for Scaling Agile TeamsTechWell
A hierarchy is an organizational network that has a top and a bottom, and where position is determined by rank, importance, and value. A holarchy is a network that has no top or bottom and where each person’s value derives from his ability, rather than position. As more companies seek the benefits of agile, leaders need to build and sustain delivery capability while scaling agile without introducing unnecessary process and overhead. The Agile Performance Holarchy (APH) is an empirical model for scaling and sustaining agility while continuing to deliver great products. Jeff Dalton designed the APH by drawing from lessons learned observing and assessing hundreds of agile companies and teams. The APH helps implement a holarchy—a system composed of interacting organizational units called holons—centered on a series of performance circles that embody the behaviors of high performing agile organizations. Jeff describes how APH provides guidelines in the areas of leadership, values, teaming, visioning, governing, building, supporting, and engaging within an all-agile organization. Join Jeff to see what the APH is all about and how you can use it in your team and organization.
A Business-First Approach to DevOps ImplementationTechWell
DevOps is a cultural shift aimed at streamlining intergroup communication and improving operational efficiency for development and operations groups. Over time, inclusion of other IT groups under the DevOps umbrella has become the norm for many organizations. But even broadening the boundaries of DevOps, the conversation has been largely devoid of the business units’ place at the table. A common mistake organizations make while going through the DevOps transformation is drawing a line at the IT boundary. If that occurs, a larger, more inclusive silo within the organization is created, operating in an informational vacuum and causing operational inefficiency and goal misalignment. Sharing his experiences working on both sides of the fence, Leon Fayer describes the importance of including business units in order to align technology decisions with business goals. Leon discusses inclusion of business units in existing agile processes, benefits of cross-departmental monitoring, and a business-first approach to technology decisions.
Databases in a Continuous Integration/Delivery ProcessTechWell
The document summarizes a presentation about including databases in a continuous integration/delivery process. It discusses treating database code like application code by placing it under version control and integrating databases into the DevOps software development pipeline. This allows databases to be built, tested, and released like other software through continuous integration, delivery, and deployment.
Mobile Testing: What—and What Not—to AutomateTechWell
Organizations are moving rapidly into mobile technology, which has significantly increased the demand for testing of mobile applications. David Dangs says testers naturally are turning to automation to help ease the workload, increase potential test coverage, and improve testing efficiency. But should you try to automate all things mobile? Unfortunately, the answer is not always clear. Mobile has its own set of complications, compounded by a wide variety of devices and OS platforms. Join David to learn what mobile testing activities are ripe for automation—and those items best left to manual efforts. He describes the various considerations for automating each type of mobile application: mobile web, native app, and hybrid applications. David also covers device-level testing, types of testing, available automation tools, and recommendations for automation effectiveness. Finally, based on his years of mobile testing experience, David provides some tips and tricks to approach mobile automation. Leave with a clear plan for automating your mobile applications.
Cultural Intelligence: A Key Skill for SuccessTechWell
Diversity is becoming the norm in everyday life. However, introducing global delivery models without a proper understanding of intercultural differences can lead to difficulty, frustration, and reduced productivity. Priyanka Sharma and Thena Barry say that in our diverse world, we need teams with people who can cross these boundaries, communicate effectively, and build the diverse networks necessary to avoid problems. We need to learn about cultural intelligence (CI) and cultural quotient (CQ). CI is the ability to relate and work effectively across cultures. CQ is the cognitive, motivational, and behavioral capacity to understand and respond to beliefs, values, attitudes, and behaviors of individuals and groups. Together, CI and CQ can help us build behavioral capacities that aid motivation, behavior, and productivity in teams as well as individuals. Priyanka and Thena show how to build a more culturally intelligent place with tools and techniques from Leading with Cultural Intelligence, as well as content from the Hofstede cultural model. In addition, they illustrate the model with real-life experiences and demonstrate how they adapted in similar circumstances.
Turn the Lights On: A Power Utility Company's Agile TransformationTechWell
Why would a century-old utility with no direct competitors take on the challenge of transforming its entire IT application organization to an agile methodology? In an increasingly interconnected world, the expectations of customers continue to evolve. From smart meters to smart phones, IoT is creating a crisis point for industries not accustomed to rapid change. Glen Morris explains that pizzas can be tracked by the minute and packages at every stop, and customers now expect this same customer service model should exist for all industries—including power. Glen examines how to create momentum and transform non-IT-focused industries to an agile model. If you are struggling with gaining traction in your pursuit of agile within your business, Glen gives you concrete, practical experiences to leverage in your pursuit. Finally, he communicates how to gain buy-in from business partners who have no idea or concern about agile or its methodologies. If your business partners look at you with amusement when you mention the need for a dedicated Product Owner, join Glen as he walks you through the approaches to overcoming agile skepticism.
A Comprehensive Guide to DeFi Development Services in 2024Intelisync
DeFi represents a paradigm shift in the financial industry. Instead of relying on traditional, centralized institutions like banks, DeFi leverages blockchain technology to create a decentralized network of financial services. This means that financial transactions can occur directly between parties, without intermediaries, using smart contracts on platforms like Ethereum.
In 2024, we are witnessing an explosion of new DeFi projects and protocols, each pushing the boundaries of what’s possible in finance.
In summary, DeFi in 2024 is not just a trend; it’s a revolution that democratizes finance, enhances security and transparency, and fosters continuous innovation. As we proceed through this presentation, we'll explore the various components and services of DeFi in detail, shedding light on how they are transforming the financial landscape.
At Intelisync, we specialize in providing comprehensive DeFi development services tailored to meet the unique needs of our clients. From smart contract development to dApp creation and security audits, we ensure that your DeFi project is built with innovation, security, and scalability in mind. Trust Intelisync to guide you through the intricate landscape of decentralized finance and unlock the full potential of blockchain technology.
Ready to take your DeFi project to the next level? Partner with Intelisync for expert DeFi development services today!
Ivanti’s Patch Tuesday breakdown goes beyond patching your applications and brings you the intelligence and guidance needed to prioritize where to focus your attention first. Catch early analysis on our Ivanti blog, then join industry expert Chris Goettl for the Patch Tuesday Webinar Event. There we’ll do a deep dive into each of the bulletins and give guidance on the risks associated with the newly-identified vulnerabilities.
GraphRAG for Life Science to increase LLM accuracyTomaz Bratanic
GraphRAG for life science domain, where you retriever information from biomedical knowledge graphs using LLMs to increase the accuracy and performance of generated answers
Skybuffer AI: Advanced Conversational and Generative AI Solution on SAP Busin...Tatiana Kojar
Skybuffer AI, built on the robust SAP Business Technology Platform (SAP BTP), is the latest and most advanced version of our AI development, reaffirming our commitment to delivering top-tier AI solutions. Skybuffer AI harnesses all the innovative capabilities of the SAP BTP in the AI domain, from Conversational AI to cutting-edge Generative AI and Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG). It also helps SAP customers safeguard their investments into SAP Conversational AI and ensure a seamless, one-click transition to SAP Business AI.
With Skybuffer AI, various AI models can be integrated into a single communication channel such as Microsoft Teams. This integration empowers business users with insights drawn from SAP backend systems, enterprise documents, and the expansive knowledge of Generative AI. And the best part of it is that it is all managed through our intuitive no-code Action Server interface, requiring no extensive coding knowledge and making the advanced AI accessible to more users.
Digital Marketing Trends in 2024 | Guide for Staying AheadWask
https://www.wask.co/ebooks/digital-marketing-trends-in-2024
Feeling lost in the digital marketing whirlwind of 2024? Technology is changing, consumer habits are evolving, and staying ahead of the curve feels like a never-ending pursuit. This e-book is your compass. Dive into actionable insights to handle the complexities of modern marketing. From hyper-personalization to the power of user-generated content, learn how to build long-term relationships with your audience and unlock the secrets to success in the ever-shifting digital landscape.
Salesforce Integration for Bonterra Impact Management (fka Social Solutions A...Jeffrey Haguewood
Sidekick Solutions uses Bonterra Impact Management (fka Social Solutions Apricot) and automation solutions to integrate data for business workflows.
We believe integration and automation are essential to user experience and the promise of efficient work through technology. Automation is the critical ingredient to realizing that full vision. We develop integration products and services for Bonterra Case Management software to support the deployment of automations for a variety of use cases.
This video focuses on integration of Salesforce with Bonterra Impact Management.
Interested in deploying an integration with Salesforce for Bonterra Impact Management? Contact us at sales@sidekicksolutionsllc.com to discuss next steps.
In the rapidly evolving landscape of technologies, XML continues to play a vital role in structuring, storing, and transporting data across diverse systems. The recent advancements in artificial intelligence (AI) present new methodologies for enhancing XML development workflows, introducing efficiency, automation, and intelligent capabilities. This presentation will outline the scope and perspective of utilizing AI in XML development. The potential benefits and the possible pitfalls will be highlighted, providing a balanced view of the subject.
We will explore the capabilities of AI in understanding XML markup languages and autonomously creating structured XML content. Additionally, we will examine the capacity of AI to enrich plain text with appropriate XML markup. Practical examples and methodological guidelines will be provided to elucidate how AI can be effectively prompted to interpret and generate accurate XML markup.
Further emphasis will be placed on the role of AI in developing XSLT, or schemas such as XSD and Schematron. We will address the techniques and strategies adopted to create prompts for generating code, explaining code, or refactoring the code, and the results achieved.
The discussion will extend to how AI can be used to transform XML content. In particular, the focus will be on the use of AI XPath extension functions in XSLT, Schematron, Schematron Quick Fixes, or for XML content refactoring.
The presentation aims to deliver a comprehensive overview of AI usage in XML development, providing attendees with the necessary knowledge to make informed decisions. Whether you’re at the early stages of adopting AI or considering integrating it in advanced XML development, this presentation will cover all levels of expertise.
By highlighting the potential advantages and challenges of integrating AI with XML development tools and languages, the presentation seeks to inspire thoughtful conversation around the future of XML development. We’ll not only delve into the technical aspects of AI-powered XML development but also discuss practical implications and possible future directions.
Best 20 SEO Techniques To Improve Website Visibility In SERPPixlogix Infotech
Boost your website's visibility with proven SEO techniques! Our latest blog dives into essential strategies to enhance your online presence, increase traffic, and rank higher on search engines. From keyword optimization to quality content creation, learn how to make your site stand out in the crowded digital landscape. Discover actionable tips and expert insights to elevate your SEO game.
Monitoring and Managing Anomaly Detection on OpenShift.pdfTosin Akinosho
Monitoring and Managing Anomaly Detection on OpenShift
Overview
Dive into the world of anomaly detection on edge devices with our comprehensive hands-on tutorial. This SlideShare presentation will guide you through the entire process, from data collection and model training to edge deployment and real-time monitoring. Perfect for those looking to implement robust anomaly detection systems on resource-constrained IoT/edge devices.
Key Topics Covered
1. Introduction to Anomaly Detection
- Understand the fundamentals of anomaly detection and its importance in identifying unusual behavior or failures in systems.
2. Understanding Edge (IoT)
- Learn about edge computing and IoT, and how they enable real-time data processing and decision-making at the source.
3. What is ArgoCD?
- Discover ArgoCD, a declarative, GitOps continuous delivery tool for Kubernetes, and its role in deploying applications on edge devices.
4. Deployment Using ArgoCD for Edge Devices
- Step-by-step guide on deploying anomaly detection models on edge devices using ArgoCD.
5. Introduction to Apache Kafka and S3
- Explore Apache Kafka for real-time data streaming and Amazon S3 for scalable storage solutions.
6. Viewing Kafka Messages in the Data Lake
- Learn how to view and analyze Kafka messages stored in a data lake for better insights.
7. What is Prometheus?
- Get to know Prometheus, an open-source monitoring and alerting toolkit, and its application in monitoring edge devices.
8. Monitoring Application Metrics with Prometheus
- Detailed instructions on setting up Prometheus to monitor the performance and health of your anomaly detection system.
9. What is Camel K?
- Introduction to Camel K, a lightweight integration framework built on Apache Camel, designed for Kubernetes.
10. Configuring Camel K Integrations for Data Pipelines
- Learn how to configure Camel K for seamless data pipeline integrations in your anomaly detection workflow.
11. What is a Jupyter Notebook?
- Overview of Jupyter Notebooks, an open-source web application for creating and sharing documents with live code, equations, visualizations, and narrative text.
12. Jupyter Notebooks with Code Examples
- Hands-on examples and code snippets in Jupyter Notebooks to help you implement and test anomaly detection models.
Letter and Document Automation for Bonterra Impact Management (fka Social Sol...Jeffrey Haguewood
Sidekick Solutions uses Bonterra Impact Management (fka Social Solutions Apricot) and automation solutions to integrate data for business workflows.
We believe integration and automation are essential to user experience and the promise of efficient work through technology. Automation is the critical ingredient to realizing that full vision. We develop integration products and services for Bonterra Case Management software to support the deployment of automations for a variety of use cases.
This video focuses on automated letter generation for Bonterra Impact Management using Google Workspace or Microsoft 365.
Interested in deploying letter generation automations for Bonterra Impact Management? Contact us at sales@sidekicksolutionsllc.com to discuss next steps.
Let's Integrate MuleSoft RPA, COMPOSER, APM with AWS IDP along with Slackshyamraj55
Discover the seamless integration of RPA (Robotic Process Automation), COMPOSER, and APM with AWS IDP enhanced with Slack notifications. Explore how these technologies converge to streamline workflows, optimize performance, and ensure secure access, all while leveraging the power of AWS IDP and real-time communication via Slack notifications.
Ocean lotus Threat actors project by John Sitima 2024 (1).pptxSitimaJohn
Ocean Lotus cyber threat actors represent a sophisticated, persistent, and politically motivated group that poses a significant risk to organizations and individuals in the Southeast Asian region. Their continuous evolution and adaptability underscore the need for robust cybersecurity measures and international cooperation to identify and mitigate the threats posed by such advanced persistent threat groups.
Main news related to the CCS TSI 2023 (2023/1695)Jakub Marek
An English 🇬🇧 translation of a presentation to the speech I gave about the main changes brought by CCS TSI 2023 at the biggest Czech conference on Communications and signalling systems on Railways, which was held in Clarion Hotel Olomouc from 7th to 9th November 2023 (konferenceszt.cz). Attended by around 500 participants and 200 on-line followers.
The original Czech 🇨🇿 version of the presentation can be found here: https://www.slideshare.net/slideshow/hlavni-novinky-souvisejici-s-ccs-tsi-2023-2023-1695/269688092 .
The videorecording (in Czech) from the presentation is available here: https://youtu.be/WzjJWm4IyPk?si=SImb06tuXGb30BEH .
Fueling AI with Great Data with Airbyte WebinarZilliz
This talk will focus on how to collect data from a variety of sources, leveraging this data for RAG and other GenAI use cases, and finally charting your course to productionalization.
Driving Business Innovation: Latest Generative AI Advancements & Success StorySafe Software
Are you ready to revolutionize how you handle data? Join us for a webinar where we’ll bring you up to speed with the latest advancements in Generative AI technology and discover how leveraging FME with tools from giants like Google Gemini, Amazon, and Microsoft OpenAI can supercharge your workflow efficiency.
During the hour, we’ll take you through:
Guest Speaker Segment with Hannah Barrington: Dive into the world of dynamic real estate marketing with Hannah, the Marketing Manager at Workspace Group. Hear firsthand how their team generates engaging descriptions for thousands of office units by integrating diverse data sources—from PDF floorplans to web pages—using FME transformers, like OpenAIVisionConnector and AnthropicVisionConnector. This use case will show you how GenAI can streamline content creation for marketing across the board.
Ollama Use Case: Learn how Scenario Specialist Dmitri Bagh has utilized Ollama within FME to input data, create custom models, and enhance security protocols. This segment will include demos to illustrate the full capabilities of FME in AI-driven processes.
Custom AI Models: Discover how to leverage FME to build personalized AI models using your data. Whether it’s populating a model with local data for added security or integrating public AI tools, find out how FME facilitates a versatile and secure approach to AI.
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Testing in the Age of Distraction: Flow, Focus, and Defocus in Testing
1. K2
Keynote
5/7/2014 10:00:00 AM
Testing in the Age of
Distraction: Flow, Focus, and
Defocus in Testing
Presented by:
Zeger Van Hese
Z-sharp
Brought to you by:
340 Corporate Way, Suite 300, Orange Park, FL 32073
888-268-8770 ∙ 904-278-0524 ∙ sqeinfo@sqe.com ∙ www.sqe.com
2. ZegerVan Hese
Z-sharp
Belgium-based Zeger Van Hese has a background in commercial engineering and cultural
science. Zeger started his career in the movie distribution industry, switched to IT, was bitten by
the software testing bug (pun intended), and has never been cured. He is passionate about
exploratory testing, testing in agile projects, and, above all, continuous learning from different
perspectives. The 2012 EuroStar program chair, Zeger recently founded his own company, Z-
sharp. He cofounded the Dutch Exploratory Workshop on Testing, is a founding member of the
ISST, muses about testing on his TestSideStory blog, and is a regular speaker at conferences
worldwide. Contact Zeger at zeger@z-sharp.be.
3. Please click for Prezi Presentation:
http://prezi.com/jpqhbabuheqc/
4. Testing In The Age
Of Distraction
The Importance Of
(De)Focus In Testing
Zeger Van Hese
Z-sharp bvba
February 2014
5. IsThisBookRightForMe?
INTRODUCTORY
Introductory content is for software testing professionals who are
relatively new to the subject matter of the ebook. Introductory
ebooks typically feature an overview of an aspect of testing or
guidance on understanding the fundamentals of the subject at hand.
INTERMEDIATE
Intermediate ebooks are for software testers who are already
familiar with the subject matter of the eBook but have limited hands-
on experience in this area. Intermediate level usually focuses on
working examples of a concept or relaying experiences of applying
the approach in a particular context.
ADVANCED
Advanced ebook content is for software testers who are, or intend
to become, experts on the subject matter. These ebooks look at
more advanced features of an aspect of software testing and help
the reader to develop a more complete understanding of the subject.
This eBook is
intended for an
INTERMEDIATE
audience level(s)
6. “All ignorance toboggans into know
and trudges up to ignorance again:
but winter’s not forever,
even snow melts;
and if spring should spoil the game,
what then?”
- E.E. Cummings -
OpeningQuote
7. Zeger Van Hese has a background in
Commercial Engineering and Cultural Science. He
started his professional career in the motion picture
industry but switched to IT in 1999. A year later he got
bitten by the software testing bug (pun intended) and
has never been cured since.
He has a passion for exploratory testing, testing in
agile projects and, above all, continuous learning from
different perspectives. Zeger considers himself a lifelong
student of the software testing craft. He was program
chair of Eurostar 2012 and co-founder of the Dutch
Exploratory Workshop on Testing (DEWT). He muses
about testing on his TestSideStory blog and is a regular
speaker at national and international conferences. In
2013, Zeger founded his own company, Z-sharp.
Biography
8. TableofContents
Prologue 6
86400 6
The Age of Distraction 7
Multitasking 7
Distraction - A Model 8
Two Types of Distractions 11
Procrastination 11
My Journey Into Focus 12
Distractions As A Way To Focus 14
Focus 15
Focusing Tips & Tricks 15
Flow 17
Distraction In Support Of Creativity 18
Defocus In Testing 20
Defocusing Tips & Tricks 20
Testing & Styles Of Thinking 22
Epilogue 24
References 25
Additional Reading 27
9. The subject of distraction has kept me busy for quite some time now. To be honest, it
kept me busy way longer than I anticipated, since I’m easily distracted and quite a big
procrastinator. There is a lovely bit of irony in this all: in preparing and researching
this paper and presentation about distraction, I was permanently distracted and
ended up procrastinating like there’s no tomorrow. In a way I became the very
subject of what I was investigating. Come to think of it, being distracted while
working on a piece about distraction does have a nice “meta” ring to it.
In one of the more useful corners of the internet I found out that “distracted” was
once a synonym for “insane”1,2
. In Shakespeare’s Henry IV, a character named
Falstaff utters the phrase “Poverty hath distracted her.”3
Falstaff didn’t mean that
the lack of funds made the woman in question absent-minded; he believed that it
made her insane.
Distraction still has a bad name today. Many people see it as the ultimate enemy of
getting things done, but I think that in reality distraction is often misunderstood.
Over the years I developed strange relationship with it. Sure, it has worked against
me, but it has worked wonders for me as well. In college, I noticed that unlike many of
my friends I didn’t need total isolation and silence. I was surprised to find I was able
to study better with a radio on, or with a flickering TV in my line of sight. Without
these permanent distractions, I just wasn’t able to keep focus.
If you think that’s awkward, you would get along fine with my parents.
This triggered me to further investigate the phenomenon. Gradually, this became a
personal journey - I set out to learn about distraction, but I ended up learned a lot
about myself.
Imagine there is a bank that every morning deposits 86400 euros into your account.
Every day this happens, over and over again. The only catch is that you cannot save
that particular deposit until the next day. The 86400 euros you get in the morning
are gone in the evening. What would you do? Would you think carefully about how
you would use it each day?
The thing is, we all have this account available to us - except it’s time we get to use.
We all have 86400 seconds to spend every day. We cannot save them up. At the end
of the day, they’re gone.
Does that stress you out? Does this make you think of living differently?
We cannot hold on to these seconds, but we /can/ use them wisely. And by “wisely”,
I don’t mean “being productive”, at least not all the time. The real challenge is to
manage our time so we can get the things done that really matter to us: we want to
be happy, and at the same time be good partners, parents and friends. On top of that,
we also want to excel professionally - we want to become better testers, coaches
or managers
Prologue86400
10. “Our life is frittered away by detail... simplify, simplify.”
- Henry David Thoreau -
We live in curious times. This is the Age of Information, but we might as well call it
the Age of Distraction. Granted, humanity has never been free of distraction, but
never have distractions been so overwhelming, so persistent as they are now.
At work, we have distractions coming from every direction: In front of us is the
computer, with email and other notifications. In there, there is the addicting lure of
the browser, which is nothing less than a black hole from which we can never escape
- but it does offer unlimited opportunities for shopping, chatting and lolcat pictures.
All the while, several new emails come in, waiting for a quick response. Several
programs are open at once, the software under test one of them. And that is just in
front of us. From the sides come a ringing desk phone, a ringing mobile, questionable
music from coworkers, a colleague dropping by to ask a question, someone calling a
meeting (and if we are lucky, someone offering a freshly baked cake).
On the way home, we are bombarded with advertisements, asking not only for our
attention but also our money and desires. And all this continues well after we are
parked on our driveways: television, home computer, iPad, kids and spouses
- life in general.
With so many things competing for our attention, and so little time to focus on real
work, it’s a wonder we get any work done at all. So how exactly do we deal with this?
Some people claim to have found the solution: multitasking!
There is a slight problem with that, however: over the last twenty years, research
has shown again and again that multitasking is a myth. When we think we are doing
two things at once, we are almost always serial tasking - switching rapidly between
tasks. We are not cruising along the information highway; we are stepping on the
gas and then hitting the brakes, over and over. We are living in a state of continuous
partial attention.
Our brain processes different kinds of information on separate channels - a language
channel, a visual channel, an auditory channel, and so on - each of which can process
only one stream of information at a time. If you overburden a channel, the brain
becomes inefficient and prone to mistakes. If you have ever muted your car radio
when being lost – I know I have - you will have experienced that the amount of
attention we have is strictly limited, a zero-sum game. When all our attention is
deployed to one modality – listening to the car radio - another modality suffers - in
this case, the visual task of driving.
TheAgeofDistractionMultitasking
11. There are times when multitasking /does/ work, but only when following two
conditions are met:
>> At least one of the tasks is so well learned that it is almost automatic, like walking
or eating.
>> The tasks operate on entirely separate channels. For example, folding laundry (a
visual-manual task) while listening to a test report (a verbal task). Which - I must
admit - doesn’t happen to me too often.
The figure below shows a model I created to help me to gain understanding of the
forces at work in the system. It is by no means a scientific model - you will find that
it is full of contradictions and paradoxes - but it does provide a good overview of the
topics covered in this paper and the relation between them. I will cover the causes
and different kinds of distraction, and highlight how distractions can be used to
enhance focus and creativity. I will explain that phenomenon called procrastination
and demonstrate that even that can be used in our favor. A good portion is reserved
for focus and defocus, and tips and tricks to handle each one of them. I will conclude
by explaining what all this means for testing.
Distractions are all around us. But why exactly is that a problem? Why are we so
easily distracted? Can’t we just ignore all things fighting for our attention? A it turns
out, it is a little bit more complex than that. There are several factors - some human,
some environmental - that cause us to be terminally distracted.
Fig. 1 - A Distraction Model
testing
critical
thinking
creative
thinking
creativity
defocus procrastination
focus
flow
ways to
regain focus
human factors
context factors
in support
of focus
in support
of creativity
deceptive
distractions
receptive
Distraction-AModel
12. 1. Human Factors
We are biologically wired for distraction.
We are biologically wired to be distracted4
. When our ancestors were out hunting,
and the bush next to them rustled, the ones who did not look up and see the lion
coming at them – they are probably not our ancestors.
We are a daydreaming species.
According to a recent study by Harvard psychologists Matthew Killingsworth and
Daniel Gilbert, people let their minds wander forty-seven percent of the time they
are awake. In fact, the only activity during which we report that our minds are not
constantly wandering is lovemaking – we are able to focus on that5
.
We make a lot of decisions in the course of a day. However, as the graph bottom
left shows, making decision after decision comes with a biological price6
. Decision
fatigue is different from ordinary physical fatigue. You are not consciously aware of
being tired; rather you become low on mental energy. The more choices you make
throughout the day, the harder each one becomes for your brain, which eventually
starts looking for shortcuts: you start acting impulsively and it becomes harder to
resist urges (e.g. the urge to check your mail, twitter or the urge to eat the contents
of your fridge).7
Fig. 2 - Decision Fatigue
This is also the reason why supermarkets place candy at their counters. By the time
innocent shoppers get to the exit, they lose all resistance after the multitude of
decisions they had to take in the aisles. Bereft of their willpower, they are an easy
prey, especially vulnerable to candy and anything else offering a quick hit of sugar.
With decision fatigue in mind, there are some valuable lessons to be learned: if you
want to stay in control, avoid scheduling meetings back to back, and taking important
decisions at the end of the day.
Distraction-AModel
Number of Decisions in a Day
QualityofDecisionsinaDay
13. It’s an addiction.
I recently learned that the most profitable parts of a casino are the slot machines,
because use a principle called “Variable-Ratio Schedule”, also known as random
payout. If you pull the handle on a slot machine and it pays you the same amount
every hundredth time, you would quickly stop playing. But if it pays you a little bit
some times, other times nothing and occasionally a lot, you are going to pull that
handle a long time. Now think about text, email, twitter and Facebook messages in
that setting: some are important, some are really trivial, and sometimes it’s going to
be something really urgent – they are random payout in your pocket.
2. Context Factors
Apart from these internal factors, there is also one big external factor that does that
as well:
Jessica Hagy’s graph on the bottom right8
hits the proverbial nail on the head.
There is nothing wrong with acquiring more information, which is all good and
clarifying. When the amount of information coming at us rises however, we get more
confused instead. This is a phenomenon also known as information overload, a term
popularized by Alvin Toffler in his 1970 book Future Shock9
. Information overload
refers to the difficulty a person can have understanding an issue and making
decisions that can be caused by the presence of too much information.
Fig. 3 - Information Overload
“It’s not information overload. It’s filter failure.”
- Clay Shirky -
Actually this external factor could be considered a hidden internal factor. Maybe
we shouldn’t be blaming the information that is out there. It’s us who are not able to
filter the chaff from the wheat.10
Distractions come in all shapes and sizes - and in roughly two categories: receptive
and deceptive ones. A receptive distraction is any sort of distraction that creates
Confusion
Information
Distraction-AModel
14. mental space, one that relaxes you and helps you regain your focus in the longer
term. This can be as simple as getting a glass of iced-tea, or a walk outside for a
few minutes.
Deceptive distractions are all things that make you lose track of what you were
working on and cause you to get immersed in all sorts of other issues. Examples:
M&M’s (managers and meetings), emails, phone calls, the internet in general. Of
course, this is highly person-dependent: some people do get energized by watching
forty variations of the Harlem Shake.
The likelihood of a distraction being receptive is tied to whether it engages a
different set of skills than the task being distracted from. For example, reading/
writing code and reading/writing emails or blogs are activities so similar that they
are almost always deceptive. In general, deceptive distractions are the kind of
distractions that facilitate procrastination.
The figure below may be painfully recognizable for many - it certainly is for me. We
keep putting off stuff that needs to be done, and decide to get busy only when a
deadline is breathing down our necks. Afterwards we proudly say “I did it again”, but
in reality these situations are draining our energy.
Fig. 4 - Procrastination in a nutshell
“Anyone can do any amount of work, provided it isn’t the work
he is supposed to be doing at that moment.”
- Robert Benchley, 1949 -
This quote from Robert Benchley11
summarizes procrastination well: in the face of a
daunting task, all of a sudden everything else seems super appealing. Cleaning that
desk? Oh, I need to do that to be able to work. And no way I can write without all my
pencils sharpened. Yes, I know the work is urgent, but the lawn needs mowing.
TwoTypesofDistractionsProcrastination
Productivity
Time Until Deadline
0%
25%
100%
75%
25%
1 Month 1 Week 1 Day 1 Hour
15. There are a lot of misconceptions about procrastination. Some say it is plain laziness,
others see it as attention deficit, but it is not. Procrastination does not mean doing
absolutely nothing. When procrastinating you are actually doings all sorts of things,
just not what you are supposed to be doing at that moment.
Procrastination is not a character defect, the main cause are underlying
psychological problems that need to be addressed. We procrastinate to temporarily
relieve deep inner fears:
>> Perfectionism that paralyses you and keeps you from finishing stuff (“I need more
time to finish that”, “no way, this is not ready yet”)
>> Fear of failure, of not being good enough (“I am not an expert in this stuff, I’ll make
a fool of myself”)
>> Anxiety of starting and finishing (“If I manage to finish this, I’ll even get more of
this stuff to do and more responsibilities”)
This causes a vicious circle of despair: we feel guilty because we haven’t done
something, which makes us feel more stressed. If we feel more stressed we
procrastinate even more.
I should note that there is a thin line between procrastination and defocus - that’s
why it shows just that in the model. As James Bach mentioned in his 2009 book
Secrets of a Buccaneer-Scolar, a lot of our procrastination leads to learning. Not
always relevant for the task at hand, but possibly later on. Lots of our learning is a
side effect.12
There I was, struggling in preparing this paper and the presentation to go with it,
which was supposed to premiere at the Let’s Test conference in May. At some point I
was desperate enough to join a Facebook group about creative productivity, which - I
must admit - sounds like buying a chair about jogging. But to be honest, some good
tips came to surface there. One of them was to observe your procrastination habits.
Take note of your procrastination habits and note down when and why it happens. If
you do this for a couple of days, patterns will start to emerge.
Mid February - in full procrastination frenzy - I stumbled upon the book “The
Now Habit” by Neil Fiore.13
The book takes a look at the psychology behind
procrastination and explains why and how we procrastinate. A couple of tools
concepts in the book have stuck with me since:
Reverse Calender
The reverse calendar is a backwards schedule of the task ahead: you start from the
end goal or deadline and list all the smaller activities that need to be done in order to
reach that goal. This simple technique forces you to split a big, daunting task into
ProcrastinationMyJourneyIntoFocus
16. smaller, more achievable chunks of work. Mapping it in reverse helps you to keep the
end goal in mind.
The figure right gives you an idea what my reversed calendar looked like in February,
three months before my not very negotiable deadline. Much to my surprise it worked
for me: the exercise eased my mind a great deal, and all of a sudden three months
looked like the sea of time it actually is.
May 22, 2013 Presentation at Let’s Test
May 17, 2013 First dry run
May 12, 2013 Presentation (Prezi) ready
May 04, 2013 First draft of paper finished
April 01, 2013 Rough outline finished
March 17, 2013 Research - Backlog of articles
March 15, 2013 Research - Checklist manifesto
March 08, 2013 Research - Focus manifesto
March 01, 2013 Start tool experiments
February 28, 2013 Research - Now Habit
February 19, 2013 Current day
February 11, 2013 Submitted for EuroSTAR
September 23, 2012 Submitted for Let’s Test
January 2010 Initial idea ‘Testing In The Age Of Distraction’
Table 1 - Reverse Calendar
Unschedule
Neil Fiore defines an unschedule as a week schedule, but with a twist. Instead of
scheduling the work you have to do, you first fill in everything you want to do: first
plan in time for social activities, play and hobbies and only then fill out the remaining
gaps. This sounded relatively simple to do, so I decided to take a shot at it. I enrolled
for a jazz initiation course, scheduled long overdue dinners with friends, even
allocated some time for reading and watching television. I even put in some running
during lunchtime breaks at a client site. When the fun slots were filled, I added the
mandatory stuff (work times, meetings, other appointments, household matters).
Only then I allocated time for the things I needed to work on.
The result of this change in perspective is that I felt refreshed and not guilty at
all when not being productive, because it was all planned activity: guilt-free play.
Furthermore, this changed my mindset from: “This week I have to work on my
presentation for a minimum of 4 hours” to “I have a maximum of 4 hours to spend on
my presentation”. Subtle changes like this made me more eager to start the work.
MyJourneyIntoFocus
17. Structured Procrastination
If you like science, but also like the sometimes delightfully absurd side of scientific
research, The Ig Nobel Prizes are something worth looking into. They are handed
out each year for unusual achievements in scientific research, and their stated aim is
to “honor achievements that first make people laugh, and then make them think.” In
2011, the Ig Nobel literature prize went to John Perry of Stanford University, for his
Theory of Structured Procrastination.
Perry’s Theory of Structured Procrastination14
states:
“To be a high achiever, always work on something important,
using it as a way to avoid doing something that’s even more important.”
Perry is convinced that you /can/ use procrastination to get loads of important stuff
done, if you just make sure to have that one thing that seems even more urgent and
important. The trick is of course to pick the right sorts of projects for the top of the
list. These ideal projects have two characteristics: first - they seem to have clear
deadlines (but really don’t), and second - they seem awfully important (but
really aren’t).
After the initial obligatory laugh, I found out that I was doing just that in my personal
life. I recently became independent and I absolutely need to work on my website,
since there only is a temporary one-pager up there now. The website is always the
top item on my list, and I definitely need to start working on that, but I tend to avoid
it by doing other useful work instead. That company website seems awfully urgent
and important to me (but it really isn’t). And that deadline that I keep giving myself is
rather imaginary. Self-deception for the win!
Using distractions as a way to focus sounds like a paradox if ever there was
one. Aren’t distractions supposed to be the enemy of focus? That used to be
my conviction as well, but vividly colored flash-backs to the time when I was
able to focus and memorize better with TV and radio on made me look into the
phenomenon. I stumbled upon a couple of scientific studies that might explain what
was going on there.
High Brain Load
We testers are very familiar with the phenomenon of inattentional blindness: when
we focus intently on one task, we often fail to see other things in plain sight. A
study by the Journal of Cognitive neuroscience15
shed a different light on this. If we
bring our brain under high information load, our processing becomes selective, and
apparently we can ignore irrelevant distractions more effectively. Basically this is a
way to use inattentional blindness to our advantage, when we are able to be blind for
irrelevant details.
MyJourneyIntoFocusDistractionsAsAWayToFocus
18. Unconscious Processing
When faced with a difficult decision, it is often suggested to “sleep on it”. New brain
imaging research from Carnegie Mellon University finds that the brain regions
responsible for making decisions continue to be active even when the conscious
brain is distracted with a different task16
. The most intriguing part about this is that
participants in the study did not have any awareness that their brains were still
working on the decision problem while they were engaged in an unrelated task. With
complex decisions, a brief period of distraction - while your brain can unconsciously
process information - can be advantageous for your decision-making and your
learning. This means that distraction can not only help us process information better,
but also enables us to learn.
I mentioned before that distraction is often seen as the enemy of focus, and it
certainly is if you’re working on something that requires mostly logical thought. The
problem here is that our brain has a “working memory” where the logical reasoning
takes place. When our attention wanders, that working stack is dumped and it can
take up to half an hour to get it back up to speed. Needless to say that the ability
to focus is an important asset for a tester - here is a small selection of things that
improved my ability to focus over the years.
The Beauty Of Disconnection
If you feel that social media are the source of your interruptions, your best bet may
be to disconnect from the internet. Keep in mind though that timing is essential. If
you plan a focused test session and plan to disconnect before you start, do not post
a tweet or Facebook message right before disconnecting. Don’t tweet and quit. You
will want to keep checking for reactions - that kind of random payout is
highly addictive.
If your work requires access to the Internet, only turn off the things that risk
distracting you. If you don’t trust yourself to do that, there are plenty of blocking
tools or apps available to do that for you. Here are two that worked wonders for me:
>> SelfControl: blocks access to mail servers and websites for a predetermined
period of time
>> StayFocusd: a Google Chrome extension that helps you stay focused on work by
restricting the amount of time you can spend on time-wasting websites
You might also want to look into using multiple desktops on your computer. The idea
is to put the software under test on one desktop, and have possible distractions like
twitter or Facebook quarantined on the other.
>> For Windows, VirtuaWin is one such program
>> Mac OS has a multiple desktop functionality built in in the form of “Spaces”
FocusFocusingTips&Tricks
19. You Don’t Need To Respond
This also means cutting down on all sorts of notifications. I made my personal
mantra “You don’t need to respond”. We have developed a need to respond to so
many things, and before we know our day becomes responsive rather than driven by
conscious choices. Here is a convenient truth: you don’t need to respond - you can
get in control and decide when you respond.
The (10+2)*5 Procrastination Hack
Merlin Mann’s (10+2)*5 procrastination hack has three simple principles:17
>> 10 - Work for ten minutes with single-minded focus
>> 2 - After ten minutes of dedicated work, take a 2-minute break to do whatever
you want
>> *5 - Iterate this four more times for a total of one hour
I first started using this nifty little technique intensively in the spring of 2012 when
I was programme chair for EuroSTAR. I had to work my way through more than
420 submissions, and I soon learned that consuming large amounts of awkwardly
formatted text brimming with buzzwords really threatens your sanity. My first
attempts at making progress were not very successful, but from the moment I forced
myself in the rigid structure of the procrastination hack, my productivity tripled.
Many variations on this hack exist (the Pomodoro technique,18
among others),but
they all have the same core elements in common: strict time-boxing and
short breaks.
In my experience, these short time-boxing techniques work really well with easily
divisible logical/analytical tasks, like going through defect lists or reviews of any
kind - but they don’t match well with more creative, test design work. Creative
people - designers, programmers, writers, engineers, thinkers and sometimes
testers – typically need longer stretches of uninterrupted time to get their creative
juices flowing. You cannot ask somebody to be creative in 15 minutes and really
think about a problem. You might have a quick idea, but to be in deep thought
about a problem and really consider a problem carefully, you need long stretches of
uninterrupted time. Creativity needs time in order to unfold in unpredictable ways.
Test Approach: Time-Boxed Focused Test Sessions (SBTM)
This is also the reason why in exploratory testing sessions longer time boxes are
usually a good idea. A typical format when doing exploratory testing is Session Based
Test Management (SBTM),19
with a time box (the session) and a defined scope - the
charter. Here’s how I usually manage my focus in such a session:
>> I block off time for the session (1 to 2 hours), close email and Instant Messaging
systems, let people know that I’m in a session (or arrange a meeting room
if necessary)
20. >> Before I start, I already open up everything I think I’ll need to do my testing
effectively: applications, databases, spreadsheets, tools, etc. This prevents me
from getting distracted or slowed down mid testing
>> Once the session started, I don’t stop my testing to write up defects or to ask
questions – I note them while I test, and I come back to the issues and questions
later when the session is completed
>> I plan faster tests and higher risks tests (or tests more important to the
business) first
>> I group features together to reduce context switching while testing
The To-Not-Do List
Another tool I started using is the to-not-do list. The concept is brilliant in its
simplicity: at the start of every month, sit down and list all the things on your mind
that you’re not going to worry about doing that month. What could be more time-
saving than that? As Jerry Weinberg stated in More Secrets of Consulting: “Anything
not worth doing is not worth doing right.”20
Have you ever found yourself in a state of totally being in the zone, so involved in
an activity that nothing else seemed to matter anymore? That is flow, the ultimate
state of being focused, the Walhalla of focus if you like. The term flow was coined
by Mihály Csíkszentmihályi in his 1990 book “Flow: The Psychology of Optimal
Experience.”21
His flow theory states that three conditions need to be fulfilled to
achieve a flow state:
1. One must be involved in an activity with a clear set of goals and progress
2. The task at hand must have clear and immediate feedback
3. There is a good balance between the perceived challenges of the task at hand
and our own perceived skills. It all boils down to having confidence that we are
capable to do the task at hand
With this in mind, how could we as testers increase the chance of achieving a flow
state in our work?
1. Clear set of goals and progress. This can be accomplished when we add direction
to our testing: have a clear mission, and guide that mission with charters while
testing
2. Clear & immediate feedback. There are ways to enable quick feedback during.
Working in an exploratory fashion is a good way to make the feedback immediate:
you design a theory, test for that theory and immediately see the result of that
3. The higher the skill level, the greater the confidence in our capability, and the
higher the chance of getting in a flow state
Flow
21. But in all this looms a paradox for testers:
In order to achieve flow, Csíkszentmihályi says, people should be able to suspend
their critical abilities for a while. But what happens when testers suspend their
critical abilities? They probably will start missing important stuff. The feeling of flow
can also work like an opiate, as it feels good to do things we are good at. Beware of
the opiate of expertise: to improve, we sometimes have to seek discomfort and step
out of our comfort zone.
If you ask people when or where they get their best ideas, the same similar answers
come up. Most people will tell me “in the shower”, “in the car”, “while running”, “while
walking in nature”, “when thinking about other stuff”. Personally, I have gotten my
best ideas either when running or during long commutes in the car.
Mind-Wandering Promotes Creativity
Ideas typically don’t occur when we are focused on tasks. They happen when the
mind starts wandering. You could say that mind-wandering promotes creativity: it
is unconstrained and can go anywhere, which is the perfect condition for creative
thought. In recent years, psychologists found that mind-wandering is an essential
cognitive tool: daydreams seem to have a similar function as night dreams, facilitating
bursts of creative insight.22, 23
Chance Favors The Connected Mind
In his 2010 book and TED talk on where good ideas come from, Steven Johnson
explains that great ideas generally occur thanks to the combination of your hunch
with someone else’s hunch. To get to that point, you need to place yourself in
environments that foster good collaboration. Historically, he saw that happen in
coffee shops, where scientists could meet face to face to exchange ideas. Nowadays,
while the internet can often be a distraction, it can also be a fantastic collaborative
environment.24
Social media are a double-edged sword. While they often are the portal to
procrastination and oblivion, they can do wonders for testers as well. So far, twitter
has proven to be the most valuable of them all. It has helped me to:
>> Virtually attend testing conferences, even mingle in the discussions - all it takes is
the right hashtag (e.g. try #esconfs, #LetsTest, #CAST201x or #AgileTD
for starters)
>> Bounce off new ideas on my followers. It is an instant-feedback sounding board.
I often give other people feedback on their ideas too, which in turn inspires new
ideas. Twitter’s function as an idea fertilizer / incubator cannot
be underestimated
DistractionInSupportOfCreativity
22. >> Facilitate connection in real life. The Dutch Exploratory Workshop on Testing
(DEWT) was formed by a couple of guys discussing on twitter and suggesting to
meet up some time
During testing you can use Twitter to get in touch (and familiarize yourself) with the
users of a product, and see how they perceive the service being delivered. Pradeep
Soundararajan showed an eye-opening and at times hilarious example of something
he called Twitter-driven exploratory testing25
at the Øredev conference in 2011.
Pradeep used twitter as a source of test ideas by entering the company name as a
search term and looking for emotions associated with those tweets (ranging from
sad smileys over #fail to a plain old #f**k). Being aware of your (and other people’s)
emotions is one of the most important oracles for a tester in order to find bugs.
Ambient Noise (Also Known As “The Coffee House Effect”)
A paper in the Journal of Consumer research found that ambient noise can affect
creativity. Results from experiments demonstrate that low (50 dB) to moderate (70
dB) levels of ambient noise enhance performance on creative tasks, while high levels
of noise (> 85 dB) hurt creativity.26
Behold, the secret behind that productivity boost in coffee bars.
For the unfortunate few that don’t have the luxury to go working in coffee bars,
there is a website that will bring you in the right creative mood using ambient noise
from coffee houses - minus the coffee: coffitivity dot com. This is great news for the
agoraphobics among us: you can now get all cozy and creative without even having
to leave the house.
Defocus
Dictionary.com defines the verb “defocus” as follows: “to lose concentration or
awareness; become distracted”. Since people cannot stay concentrated indefinitely,
defocusing is a natural reflex for us. This is often fed by distractions. When receptive,
they help us defocus from the tasks at hand and refresh our minds, which in the end -
paradoxically - will help us to focus better.
A lot of people look down upon defocusing, thinking that staying focused is the only
way to get things done. But if study professional athletes, you will notice that rest
days are an explicit part of their training programs. Their coaches plan for them
because an athlete’s body absolutely needs to recuperate and recover in order to
come out stronger.
Everyone accepts that athletes rest their bodies, since they are in such a physical line
of work. Is it such a crazy idea that we, as knowledge workers, plan for rest as well to
let our brains recuperate and to rejuvenate our thinking?
23. I think this addresses an important issue affecting testing. When solving testing
problems, people always assume that you get more done when you are consciously
paying attention to a problem. After all, that’s what it means to be “working on
something”. But if you are trying to solve a complex problem, you need to give
yourself a real break. Whenever creative thinking is needed, our mind performs the
best when we’re defocused.
There also is a lesson here: beware of going off on an appearance of work.
Knowledge work doesn’t always look like work. I made this mistake once: at a
customer site there was this one person I didn’t know too well who was constantly
going outside for coffee and cigarettes. When I mentioned to someone that that
person was probably not their most productive or motivated employee, they were
surprised: “No, no, he is the mastermind behind our whole new program - he has to
go outside - that’s where he does all his thinking!” They knew, I didn’t - I will never
make that mistake again.
The “Follow Your Energy” Heuristic
While testing, sometimes you just got to follow your energy. It is okay and natural
to let your mind wander. When you allow yourself to be distracted, your mind will
start making connections. This is what James Bach calls the “Follow your Energy”-
heuristic. If you want to be more in control of your learning, it is advised to combine
the “Follow your Energy”-heuristic with the “Long Leash”-heuristic. Let your mind
drift off, but in a controlled manner - keep it on a long leash. Every now and then,
remind yourself that you are on a mission and gently pull on the leash to regain
focus again.27
The “Get A Coffee” Heuristic
In the product I’m testing now, I came across some crashes that seemed random and
were really hard to reproduce. After a while I noticed that the frequency of those
bugs was higher right after lunch or after coffee breaks, when the application stayed
open for a longer time. As it turned out, quite a lot of them were time-related, and
not related to the actions done in the user interface.
From that moment on, I’ve been using the “Get-a-coffee” heuristic: take a break, go
do something else for a while - works wonders for bugs that are impacted by time,
but it is also great for bug finding in general: you tend to see things in a new light
when defocused: fresh eyes find failure.
Last year I tested apps on digital TV. It were educational apps consisting of well-
known children’s stories with a karaoke-style text you could follow along - great for
kids who are just learning how to read. One afternoon, I did a focused test session
of the help pages that were there in four different languages. I found a major bug
concerning the fact that some text was in the wrong language. After some intensive
further investigation, I was convinced that had I found the most important bugs and
DefocusInTestingDefocusingTips&Tricks
24. decided to stop testing. Until I took a coffee break, returned and noticed that the
wrong screenshots were shown, something I failed to see for three hours in a row.
Notetaking
Work on your note taking skills. Always be ready to capture, everywhere. Inspiration
strikes at strange times: right before you fall asleep, right after you wake up, in
the shower, while running, in the car. You will forget most insights if you don’t
immediately write them down.
I keep a notebook on my night stall. I use Evernote on all my devices. It’s available on
different platforms and able to store snippets of text, websites, even spoken text. I
tend to get lots of ideas while running or driving in the car, and I record spoken notes
with my phone’s voice recorder and mail them to Evernote. My Evernote library is
what Steven Johnson would call a “spark file”, a file that contains all your half-baked
ideas in one place. The trick is to reread your stack every three or four months to get
new insights and detect previously undiscovered relationships.28
Work With Your Own Circadian Rhythm
Your circadian rhythm is your internal biological clock. The trick here is to get familiar
with your biological clock and plan accordingly. This sounds like common sense,
but surprisingly this kind of common sense isn’t too common: avoid scheduling an
important meeting or a focused test session at a time when you will be operating on
only one cylinder. And don’t waste your peak work time at a doctor’s appointment.29
Guilt-Free Breaks
As I mentioned above, taking regular guilt-free breaks is essential to being
productive. The problem with that is that you need to get back to work at some
stage. When you get back from a break, you cannot just restore your “working stack”
from backup, you have to overcome some resistance to starting again. Here are two
techniques for getting the best out of breaks: priming and leaving breadcrumbs.
Priming
Priming is very easy. Before you take a break, just identify the next problem that you
face in your work and think about it for a few seconds. Just think “I’ll need to have
decision on this by the time I come back” and let unconscious processing do its work.
Leaving Breadcrumbs
Hänsel and Gretel used the breadcrumbs technique first, but it didn’t really work
for them. We can apply the same technique to mitigating the downside of having a
break: simply dump your “working stack” on a piece of paper or a text editor. You
don’t need to write a whole novel, a few well chosen words can jog your memory will
make it much easier to restore your working memory from its backup.
25. Closed / Open Mode Thinking
In a lecture on creativity in 1991, Monty Python’s John Cleese contrasted “closed”
with “open mode” thinking. Closed mode is the thinking mode we are typically in
when at work: active, tense, anxious, purposeful, trying to get things done, stressed
and a bit manic. This is when our mind has focus. In contrast, open mode is relaxed,
not purposeful, more humorous, playful and curious, because we’re not under
pressure to get anything done.30
“This is the extraordinary thing about creativity:
If just you keep your mind resting against the subject in a friendly but
persistent way, sooner or later you will get a reward from your unconscious.”
- John Cleese -
Cleese argues that creativity is not possible in closed mode. Only when our mind
is in open mode – which maps to a defocused state - creative magic can happen.
In practice, there should be a time and place for each mode: developing ideas and
reviewing concepts are best done in open mode, while deciding and carrying out a
plan of action are typically done in closed mode.
Creative / Critical Thinking
Fig. 5 - Test Stages and Styles of Thinking – John Stevenson
In a blog series earlier this year, John Stevenson wrote about creative and critical
thinking, and which style of thinking to use in the different phases within testing.31
Testing&StylesOfThinking
Test Stages &
Styles of Thinking
The larger the thinking area the more
focus on that style of thinking
Documentation Review
Creative
Thinking
Critical
Thinking
> Requirements
> HLD
> Feature docs
Test Analysis
Creative
Thinking
Critical
Thinking
> Bug investigation
> Defect Reporting
> Repeatability
> Questioning
> Automation
Test Execution
Creative
Thinking
Critical
Thinking
> Test Models
> Heuristics
> Note Taking
> SBTM
Creative
Thinking
Test Planning
Critical
Thinking> Test Ideas
> Automation
> Feature files
> Missions
> Charters
Test Reporting
Creative
Thinking
Critical
Thinking
> Dashboard
> Wiki - Sessions
> Plan updates
> Qualitative
> Quantitative
26. Creative thinking is the generation of new ideas. It is divergent – going in different
directions. Critical thinking is thinking about thinking, with the intention of avoiding
being fooled. It is convergent – bringing ideas and thoughts together.
John came up with the diagram above, in which is clear that we need both styles
of thinking in all of our testing efforts, but some activities rely heavily on critical
thinking (e.g. reviews and analysis) while others mainly need creative thinking (e.g.
generation of test ideas while planning). Activities like exploratory test execution
(session based testing, note taking) need a good mix of both to be done well.
John Cleese’s theory and John Stevenson’s diagram illustrate the point I would like
to make: to test effectively, we need to be able to switch between open and closed
mode, between creative and critical thinking. In other words, managing our focus is
a very important skill in testing. To think critically, we need to be focused. To think
creatively, we need to embrace defocus. The trouble is that we often get stuck in
tunnel vision when we would really need to step back and contemplate the
wider view.
27. Focus is a paradox - it has distraction built into its very core. The two are
symbiotic; they are like the yin and yang of consciousness. Focus and defocus are
complementary (instead of opposing) forces interacting to form a dynamic system in
which the whole is greater than the parts.
If humans are not designed to avoid distractions, why don’t we harness, rather than
fight, the power of distraction? That is the question I asked myself a while ago, and
that was what I started doing over the last months. Thinking about how focus and
defocus interrelate and how they can be used to our advantage gave me a better
understanding of myself. It has changed the way I approach things. As a tester, it
has made me more aware of traps and prejudice. Looking back, I now make more
conscious choices in my work:
>> I no longer see my procrastination as something bad. I’m now more aware when it
happens, and it doesn’t freak me out anymore. Much to my surprise I was able to
start using it to my advantage.
>> I now make conscious use of unconscious processing: instead of diving head over
heels in a problem or a task, I study the problem, read up on it and then I decide
to unwind, without feeling guilty about it.
>> I started paying attention to the nature of the activities that need to be done. For
the focused, logical tasks that require analytical thinking, I get disconnected and
set time boxes with regular breaks. For tasks requiring a good amount of creative
thinking, I make sure I’m connected and distractible.
Epilogue
focus
defocus
28. 1. In Defense of Distraction
Sam Anderson, NY Mag, May 17, 2009 (Click To View)
2. Shakespeare’s false friends: distracted
David Crystal, e magazine 24, 2004,
3. King Henry IV, Second Part
William Shakespeare, Act 2, Scene 1, 1596 – 1599 (Click To View)
4. Slow Tech
Joe Kraus, TED among friends, 2012 (Click To View)
5. A Wandering Mind Is an Unhappy Mind
Matthew A. Killingsworth, Daniel T. Gilbert (Harvard University), Science 2012
6. Does decision fatigue affect your willpower?
Maia Szalavitz, August 2011 (ClickTo View)
7. Do You Suffer From Decision Fatigue?
John Tierney, New York Times Magazine, August 17 – 2011 (Click To View )
8. Needles and haystacks and such
Jessica Hagy, ThisIsIndexed.com, October 9 - 2009
9. Future Shock
Alvin Toffler, 1970
10. It’s not Information Overload, it’s Filter Failure
Clay Shirky, New York Web 2.0 Expo keynote, 2009
11. How to Get Things Done: One Week in the Life of a Writing Man
Robert Benchley, Chicago Tribune, February 2 – 1930
12. Secrets of a Buccaneer-Scholar: Self-education and the Pursuit of Passion
James Bach, 2009
13. The Now Habit
Neil Fiore, 1989
14. How to Procrastinate and Still Get Things Done
John Perry, Chronicle of Higher Education, February 1996
15. Inattention blindness due to brain load
Nilli Lavie, UCL Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience, July 2012
16. Neural Reactivation Links Unconscious Thought to Decision
Making Performance
J. D. Creswell, J. K. Bursley, A. B. Satpute (Carnegie Mellon University), Social
Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience, 2013
17. Procrastination hack: ‘(10+2)*5’
Merlin Mann, 2005 (Click To View)
18. The Pomodoro Technique, 3rd Edition
Francesco Cirillo, 2013 (Click To View)
References
29. 19. Session Based Test Management
James Bach blog (Click To View)
20. More Secrets of Consulting: The Consultant’s Tool Kit
Gerald M. Weinberg, 2001
21. Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience
Mihály Csíkszentmihályi, 1990
22. Why great ideas come when you aren’t trying - Allowing the mind
to wander aids creativity
Matt Kaplan, Nature International Weekly Journal of Science, May 2012
(Click To View)
23. Inspired by Distraction: Mind Wandering Facilitates Creative Incubation
Benjamin Baird, Jonathan Smallwood, Michael D. Mrazek, Julia W. Y. Kam, Journal of
the Association for Psychological Science, 2012
24. Where Good Ideas Come From – The Natural History of Innovation
Steven Johnson, 2010
25. Twitter-driven Exploratory Testing
Pradeep Soundararajan, Moolya blog, October 22 - 2011 (Click To View)
26. Is Noise Always Bad? Exploring the Effects of Ambient Noise
on Creative Cognition
Ravi Mehta, Rui Zhu, Amar Cheema, Journal of Consumer Research, Vol. 39, No. 4,
December 2012
27. Long Leash Heuristic for critical thinking
James Bach, Michael Bolton, Rapid Software Testing course (ClickTo View)
28. The Writer’s Room - The Spark File
Steven Johnson, 2012 (Click To View)
29. Power sleep: the revolutionary program that prepares your
mind for peak performance
James Maas, 1998
30. Five Factors to Make Your Life More Creative
John Cleese, 1991 (Click To View)
31. Creative and Critical thinking and Testing
John Stevenson, Blog article, 2013 (Click To View)
References
30. Focus (a simplicity manifesto in the age of distraction)
Leo Babauta, 2010
Forget Flow – The Secret to Skill Lies in Discomfort
Gregory Ciotti, February 2013
Why work doesn’t happen at work - TED talk
Jason Fried, 2010 (Click To View)
Getting Things Done: The Art of Stress-Free Productivity
David Allen, 2002
Dealing with digital distraction
Alex Talbott, September 2012
Your Brain: The Missing Manual
Matthew MacDonald, 2008
Shutting out a world of digital distraction
Carl Wilkinson, The Telegraph, 6 September 2012
Neuroscience: Exploring the Brain, 3rd Edition
Mark F. Bear et al., 2006
Do It Tomorrow and Other Secrets of Time Management
Mark Forster, 2008
Pragmatic Thinking and Learning: Refactor your Wetware
Andrew Hunt, 2008
Pomodoro Technique Illustrated: Can You Focus - Really Focus - for 25 Minutes?
Staffan Noteberg, 2009
Too Much To Know: Managing Scholarly Information before the Modern Age
Ann M. Blair, 2010
The Checklist Manifesto: How to Get Things Right
Atul Gawande, 2009
“The Paradox of Choice”,
TED talk, Barry Schwartz, 2005 (Click To View)
Creative Intelligence: Harnessing the Power to Create, Connect, and Inspire
Bruce Nussbaum, 2013
Weinberg on writing: the fieldstone method
Jerry Weinberg, 2005
Lifehacker
(Click To View)
Coffitivity
(Click To View)
“Does Luck Matter More Than Skill?”,
Study Hacks blog, Cal Newport, 2013 (Click To View)
AdditionalReading
31. Noteboard
(Click To View)
More than Just ‘Zoning Out – Psychological Science Examines the Cognitive
Processes Underlying Mind Wandering
Association for Psychological Science, October 2012
Multiple media use tied to depression, anxiety
December 2012 (Click To View)
From procrastination, distraction or disengagement to purposefulness
Leanne Ansell-McBride, August 2012
AdditionalReading