Month: May 2013

If you are ever in London, I highly recommend Kew Royal Botanic Gardens. It’s perfect on a warm Spring Sunday evening. Miles of stunning trees and plants in bloom. Amazing colours, rolling landscapes, parakeets, and great food. I particularly recommend the treetop walkway. For a relaxing day out, you can’t beat it. Except, that is, when you have a 6-year-old and a 3-year-old with you. That removes the relaxing part from the day. Fun, yes. Relaxing no. So last Sunday evening we’re sitting outside on the veranda of the Orangery restaurant at Kew having a lovely evening meal in the open air. A little old lady wanders over. She asks me if the two children at the table are mine....

Have you read Quiet by Susan Cain yet? In it Cain refers to studies that show just how much peer pressure influences our decisions — a concept that has some interesting ramifications for us as software testers. We’re all exposed to peer pressure. Even as testers we are subjected to peer pressure. Peers in development roles question the defects that we uncover. Our project management peers question our test plans. In an attempt to overcome issues with peer pressure, an advertising man named Alex Osborn invented brainstorming. He believed that creativity was stifled by the fear of judgment from colleagues. So he sought to remove the threat of criticism from teamwork. Brainstorming has just 4 rules:        1. Don’t judge...