December, 21st 2017
Simon Tomes
Collaboration, Encouragement, Exploratory Testing, Note-taking
There was a turning point where I realised I’d inadvertently started a Go Encourage Life Campaign.
Cassandra Leung came up to me at UKSTAR 2017. She thanked me for being so upbeat, positive and encouraging. I was taken aback, physically trembling with a weird sense of pride and awkwardness.
Sinc...
November, 8th 2017
Simon Tomes
Exploratory Testing, Note-taking
The importance of note-taking
Imagine for a moment you share a link to your testing session notes. Perhaps you're sat next to a developer, tester and/or product owner. You walk them through your recent testing session.
What learnings do you feel are important to share? How do you communicate to...
July, 31st 2017
Simon Tomes
Creativity, Collaboration
I recently ran a workshop on creativity. I pondered how to collaboratively explore something that’s innate but often perceived as something not all of us possess. I decided to shine a light and offer up some triggers.
In this post you’ll learn some of those triggers. They'll help amplify creati...
May, 16th 2017
Rajit Singh
Collaboration, Creativity, Prioritisation, Startups
Don’t you hate it when everyone seems to have more time than you to get sh*t done? How do they do it?
Over the last 2 years my business partner and I have had something verging on a spiritual experience of collaboration and productivity. As part of this, we coined various phrases that help us sta...
March, 20th 2017
Simon Tomes
Collaboration, Prioritisation, Tools
Along came dot voting and I was thrilled. I remember the first time we dot-voted at the end of a meeting. It was brilliant and I thought it was a great way for everyone to have their say. It felt like a smart way to agree on something.
When teams believe it’s worth voting they deliberately and pu...
January, 3rd 2017
Simon Tomes
Collaboration, Exploratory Testing
There's a perception that testing always delivers bad news. During an exploratory testing session we tend to spend a lot of time raising problems. But what about appreciating all the good things we discover? There's a huge opportunity to be more grateful – to share the joy of unscripted, goal-driv...
December, 5th 2016
Simon Tomes
Collaboration, Exploratory Testing, Tools
Exploratory testing helps us explore what's in front of us – far beyond only the application – to discover what a product is and what it might be. It's a fantastic way for a team to connect over what they're building. It's something your customers will be grateful for as they reach their ever-ev...
September, 21st 2016
Simon Tomes
Collaboration, Prioritisation
Yeah man, we do Agile and Scrum and have stand-ups every morning. Of course we have the odd bump here and there. It's nothing we can't handle. Everyone seems happy and everything is awesome. We're like way better than other dev teams out there.
Right now you might think your product development tea...
September, 2nd 2016
Simon Tomes
Collaboration, Events, Testing
The timer buzzed and Mark was cut off from speaking. Such is the abruptness of Lean Coffee. A majority of upwards facing thumbs appeared on the many video screens in front of me. The discussion continued as I frantically captured notes.
Luckily I didn't have my early morning fuzzy head on. It was ...
August, 8th 2016
Simon Tomes
Collaboration, Prioritisation, Tools
Done. Right. What's next?
Development teams are great at picking up tasks. Give them the next ticket, story or issue and they run with it. Let's turn whatever it is into a set of tasks and get crackin'!
Teams might step back to question details but miss an opportunity to take a leap back.
What if...
