Feedback Feedback one of the best avenues we have for learning how we can grow, but it can be stressful and put us on the defensive. There are a few things you can try to practice giving and receiving feedback effectively.
Tips & Tricks Tips for Asking Questions Questions surface concerns, misunderstandings, and incomplete information. They can also be uncomfortable or annoying. Fortunately, there are a few guidelines you can follow to make your questions more effective for all parties.
Process Avoiding Single Points of Failure in an Organization Security policies, specialized knowledge, or staffing that does not undergo frequent change can all obscure a single point of failure until the eleventh hour: but they can be enormously detrimental to both security and productivity.
QA Agile QA The waterfall model for QA testing is out-dated and can hold back an otherwise Agile team. QA departments often accidentally become release gatekeepers instead of analysts – adversaries to development as opposed to allies. Agility matters for your entire development team, including QA.
Tips & Tricks So... what do you DO all day? Answers from remote workers. With remote work becoming increasingly available and more accepted, we thought we'd share some things we've learned from our remote experiences – and wish someone had told us.
QA Exploratory Testing QA's scope of duties is wide and involves an equal dose of structure and chaos. For this article we will be focusing on the chaos.
Process On Being a Work In Progress SpiderOak doesn't quite follow the "What Works" philosophy; we instead focus on "What Works NOW". The upside is that as our company grows and changes, we alter our processes to best suit our current needs. The downside is that this puts us in a state of constant evolution.
QA Test Case Development, an Overview Rote testing helps us check our assumptions and plans, while exploratory testing helps us see what might happen *beyond* those assumptions and plans.
Process Retrospectives You’ve just finished a big project, and everyone’s heads are swimming. You know things didn’t go perfectly, but at the end of the day you shipped on time. You’re feeling pretty good... and then your project manager schedules a post-mortem.
Process Estimation & Planning It’s 4:30PM on a Friday and the Sales rep says “I have a client meeting Monday – can you tell me how long it will take to implement the new feature we talked about today?” *Groan*.
