10 Things to Mess Up Your Retrospective

Retrospectives can be incredibly useful tools; if well prepared, executed in an open and trusting environment, and followed up with tangible action within set time periods. Or you could do it the way Marc Loffler discusses in this article. There are things here which everyone who has done a retrospective can relate to, so why not take a look and see whether your organisation is making the same mistakes?
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Do You Have the Right People on the Right Projects?

Johanna Rothman spends her days helping managers figure out what will work for them and how to solve their problems. Friend of SoftEd and former SDC speaker, Johanna also writes a newsletter called the Pragmatic Manager which this month talks about three myths and tips she has for all the people who have recently asked her how to cope with fast change, multiple projects and too few staff.
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10 Things About Testing That Should Die

Scott Barber has caused a bit of a stir recently for discussing the 'is test dead' concept. But don't worry, Scott, one of the world's leading software systems performance testers, is not claiming test is dead, although he does think some beliefs and practices of testing should die. These include egocentricity, isolation and misguided metrics and can give us all something to think about.
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Here at SoftEd we're pretty sure the 'test is dead' debate will continue for some time. If you want a thought provoking and insightful view on the subject please watch Goranka Bjedov's 2011 STANZ presentation on the subject.

Elisabeth Hendrickson's Google Tech Talk on Agile Testing We're so super excited about Elisabeth Hendrickson presenting at Fusion that we've included her profile (below) and this video of her Agile Testing presentation. This is where Elisabeth announced, “I am in fact test obsessed… I live, eat, breathe and sleep testing. I think it's FUN!”. Watch this video and get swept up in the excitement of testing with her.

Fusion

Fusion is SoftEd's brand new conference for 2012. We think it’s important that you hear not only from your peers, but from people with lots of roles, so we’re hosting a conference where you get to hear from experts across the software development life cycle all in one place over the same two days.

There will be over 20 speakers and five streams of thought provoking keynotes and practical workshops on Business Analysis, Software Testing, Agile and Management topics. We’re also hosting a dinner on the first evening of the conference and pre-conference workshops in Business Analysis and Software Testing.

We can already confirm that Dennis Stevens, Elisabeth Hendrickson, Michael Rosemann and Julie Gardiner will be speaking at Fusion and we’ll be announcing more speakers and their topics over the next few months on the Fusion web pages.

	PROFILE: Elisabeth Hendrickson, Fusion
Meet Elisabeth, the most excited tester on the planet. There are thousands of testers in the world, hundreds of people who talk about testing and a handful who are inspiring, innovative and insightful presenters. But you would be hard pushed to find someone as test obsessed (the title of her blog) as Elisabeth. Elisabeth has been a Tester, Programmer, Test Automation Manager, Quality Engineering Director and Technical Writer. She's worked for start-ups and multi-national software vendors. She's spoken at conferences in the U.S., Sweden, Portugal, Australia and New Zealand. She founded Quality Tree Software, Inc. in 1997 to provide training and consulting in software quality and testing. At Fusion Elisabeth will be running a two and half hour workshop about Acceptance Test Driven Development (ATDD). She is a thought leader in this area which is all about collaborative practices, and where better to talk about that than at a conference called 'Fusion'? This conference is a unique opportunity to share her test experience and knowledge with people who work in all areas of software development. In Elisabeth's own words, “how cool is that?” To find out more about SoftEd's new conference in 2012 visit the Fusion web pages.

	Merry Christmas from the team at SoftEd!

	Agile in Saudi Arabia and at BA Brazil It has been a busy year for Shane Hastie, earlier this year he went to Israel and the U.S. to deliver training for M86 Security and run a workshop at Agile 2011. More recently he has been over to Saudi Arabia and Brazil. In Saudi Arabia Shane delivered two Practices of Agile Teams courses for Jodayn, a local training firm. He was there for a little over a week and in that time spoke to over 200 people about Agile software development methodologies. Shane has also been to Brazil where he delivered a keynote speech and SoftEd’s The Agile Business Analyst course at BA Brazil. Read his thoughts on his time in Brazil in this blog post.
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