It’s not the lesson – it’s the learning

It is not the GOTO talk on “Embedded Systems – Embodied Agents, Robot Programming in Java for the LEGO NXT Mindstorms” or the LEGO Lab, University of Aarhus class that’s important. Neither is the GOTO talk “What is Value” important in it self – the key lesson is in what you learn and bring home.

The students in the LEGO lab (at my alma mater will try out the LEGO Mindstorms NXT series to learn about robots. First the industrial ones, that have a deterministic program, secondly about self-controlling agents. Compare it to the difference between an industrial robot in and assembly line – and a toy seal for psychological care treatments for trauma patients: One is sequenced and in a known environment , and the other reactive and don’t know the environment in advance. Reminds me of routinized and bespoke activities,  Testing AND Checking,  left and right side of the brain. Computer Science students in this course struggle to control the robot environment, but quickly learn that the real world is not ideal. They have to test and experiment, calibrate and think outside the LEGO box.

Similarly JEZ HUMBLE, talked about ”What is value?“. A huge whiteboard of prioritized and estimated SCRUM tasks is not customer value in itself – it’s a tool to discuss the value for the client/Product Owner/Sponser/ the-guy-paying-for-it. Awesome is value. To get awesome – set a business model hypothesis and test it. Make the smallest viable product (When “minimal viable product” doesn’t work, the story of apple). But remember they are people too – even oracles can be wrong, and set up a measurement that will be counterproductive. Management only focus on “cost” because it’s easier to measure – test the business idea and what you care about: delivering valuable software solutions.

It’s not the talk, it’s the learning.

It’s not the CS class, it’s the experience.

It’s not the test, it’s the idea.

…

See also: Testers are developers too – and the other way around, dealing with uncertainty

[Disclaimer: I had press access to GOTO-Arhus2012 on behalf on GOTOCON]

Get moving

After Linda Risings‘ talk on “Problem-solving and Decision-making in Software Development” I had the opportunity to talk to her on her key messages of today’s GOTO training.

MOVE - Humans are not meant to sit still, we need to get up, walk, run, stand. Some companies have thread mill desks! Pilgrim walks are the talk of the town – and instead of having a 1-1 meeting – try walking. A walk after a family dinner is good for both health and social chit-chat. The same is true at work – talk a walk, MOVE!

“Get moving or someone else will move you – especially at work”, was  another topic we discussed. If your job is not making you happy, if the agile and innovative practices are being cut. BE BRAVE and boost your competencies. In these days you can either go with the downwind of companies cutting the wrong costs or go with the upwind of places that walk-the-talk.

See also: If In Doubt – Learn!, Eating wicked problems for breakfast, Innovation is about the unknown – deal with it, Softwaretesting is only dead, if it stands still

[Disclaimer: I had press access to GOTO-Arhus2012 on behalf on GOTOCON]

Conferences are like onions

Conferences are like onions, .. and ogres – they have layers: your coworkers, your former coworkers, speakers, vendors, competitors… relations. The best way to see the various layers is through twitter, or Xiive.

Tagging the tweets #gotoaar makes it possible for others preparing for the conference to look into – what are people looking forward to, who is stranded/delayed.  People in the tracks and at the keynote typed what they wanted to say, but couldn’t in the forum. Some did a rapid blogging summary of the track session and provided the link to the blog on twitter. It was like a “Back channel” to the session, you could be in one track and follow the “gold nuggets” – and occasional outcry – of the others.

First thing is to see the layers – the next thing to do is to network.

See also: Rob Lamberts guide to EuroStar, Making the most of the conference experience Eurostar
2012 – People (Twitter pictures differs significantly from faces in real life.)

See also: It’s a matter of finding the pieces that make the picture, What you have learned becomes irrelevant,  If In Doubt – Learn!

[Disclaimer: I had press access to GOTO-Arhus2012 on behalf on GOTOCON]

GOTO for your development

GOTO Aarhus is the place for the new tricks in town:

Gilad Bracha and Lars Bak announced Dart in Aarhus, Denmark about a year ago as a “new programming language for structured web programming”. Yesterday, Anders Hejlsberg, once again in Aarhus, Denmark, announced Microsoft’s new programming language, TypeScript, “a language for application-scale JavaScript development”. Obviously, there’s something about the water in Aarhus that causes language designers to want to tackle the problem of large scale web development.

[ http://news.dartlang.org/2012/10/the-dart-team-welcomes-typescript.html ]

Now GOTO is not for script-kiddies or #programming for dummies” – it is applied computer science. Formerly the original name was JAOO being “Java Object Oriented” – but now the topics are more various, but still cutting edge. TypeScript has made headlines in both http://arstechnica.com and http://www.readwriteweb.com.

See also:

• Eating wicked problems for breakfast
• Testers are developers too – and the other way around

• What you have learned becomes irrelevant
• Work Smarter, not Harder
• The Secret Scandinavian Ingredient

Brain Science by GLENNZ

[Disclaimer: I had press access to GOTO-Arhus2012 on behalf on GOTOCON]

Tips and tricks for community building

Do you have a Internet community, a group, a range of followers, a tribe - then you are probably doing a lot of community management. In the end there is really no difference if you do:

• Company product marketing community management,
• A community of freelance testers
• A community for LEGO fans
• An internal corporate social engagement platform

All are driven (mostly) on volunteers, advocates and participants making the leap from consumers to producers. Many of these communities needs nuturing by a community manager.But sometimes it’s hard to get an overview of what needs doing. It’s all community management, as illustrated by Hinchcliffe:

See also:

• Community Advocates: Your Secret Weapon in Going Global and Viral, By Claire Flanagan, CSC
• http://www.zdnet.com/blog/hinchcliffe/community-management-the-essential-capability-of-successful-enterprise-20-efforts/913

Eating wicked problems for breakfast

Software testing is a wicked problem* – we eat the test environment problems and puzzling defects first thing in the morning. Like this one I’m Puzzled and Bugged: An odd mouse click problem on Win7 We try to understand what problem the sponsor really want is to provide information on.

There is no definitive formulation of a wicked problem [ Wicked Problems | Mary Poppendieck ]. Wikipedia have another, the key message is: Wicked problems cannot be solved in a traditional linear fashion, because the problem definition evolves as new possible solutions are considered and/or implemented.    

Testing at best have stopping heuristics, like running out of chocolate and other incentives. The results of testing is never passed/fail, it’s a finite sampling over an infinite space – complete coverage is a myth. And context is the most important factor in all testing activities. We learn as we test and explore the system.

So what better way to spend a morning than attending [ GOTO Aarhus 2012 | Problem-solving and Decision-making ]:

For those of us who struggle with complex problems for a living, unfortunately, don’t have time to keep up with the enormous amount of research in cognitive science that would help us be better thinkers. 

*(Originally coined by Michael Osborne, SQNZ April 2002). 

I’m an Official blogger for GOTO Aarhus 2012 - see also Testers are developers too – and the other way around 

Testers are developers too – and the other way around

[ GOTO Aarhus 2012 – Is it time for developers to move beyond unit tests? | Rasmus Møller Selsmark | August 27, 2012 ]

Now I’ve got the chance to participate in a GOTO conference, which seems to be a true developer conference, by not having “Tester” as an option in the Role field when you register – I registered myself as “Other”

So apparently for GOTO – “Test is not an option” not even for Software Developers in Test (microsoft) or Google Software Test Engineers – we have to go by “others” – go undercover (DK only link).

But the thing is – is when you think about it. Many testers write code – the whole test automation is BIG (see StarWest, StarEast, EuroStar …) – and yet an old story. (We need new testing ideas , http://angryweasel.com/blog/?p=449). Also even more developers test – as Rasmus points out, many many developers more beyond unit tests. Consider the Software testing pyramid by Watir that is gaing a lot of traction.

Dear developers and testers, and all in between – we have a common goal: If your software doesn’t solve the problem it was intended to solve, it does NOT work — even if all your test cases pass.

See also:

• GOTO Arhus 2012 Presentation: What is value? by Jez Humble
• The core purpose of softwaretesting,
• Do what you say – say what you do

(Official blogger for GOTO Aarhus 2012 )

Work Smarter, not Harder

[ If In Doubt - Learn! | 7th September 2010 | Therese Hansen ]

Last year, when the world was in crisis mode, I could understand why people, when asked if they want to go …, said, that their boss wouldn’t let them and that the conference budget for the whole year was cancelled.

…

The business is always busy when there is no economic crisis. Some IT-companies was even busy when the crisis was peaking. Such is IT.

…

The diffence between now and then is that now the workers that did not get to go to the conference last year and probably wont get to go this year are outdated. They haven’t taken the time to get their qualifications updated the last few years and the tech world is moving terrible fast. Some don’t know what the whole NoSQL-thing is about, some haven’t heard much about HTML5 and some haven’t heard anything about the mobile phone development department.

Now the crisis is over and companies are getting business deals that demands skills in that department and their current workforce can’t deliver. They should have been working smarter, not harder!

It is better to train people and risk they leave - than do nothing and they stay.

See also Cutting costs will not get you value