During ‘The one thing you need to know’ talk at the Agile Testing Days 09 in Berlin, Mary Poppendieck presented a summary of how software development tried to deal with complexity historically. Poppendieck started by quoting Fred Brooks, who wrote that “Complexity is the enemy in software, inherent complexity software rises exponentially”. Divide and conquer is the traditional solution to this problem, used from the first software projects and still in use today. However, the lines along which the complexity is divided changed and there is still a debate on which way is the best. Continue Reading »
I spent the last two days in Berlin attending Agile Testing Days, one of the most enjoyable and fun conferences I’ve seen in a while. Jose Diaz and his team did a fantastic job organising it and deserve a ton of praise. I’ve learned a lot, met great people, put faces on many e-mail and twitter contacts and got a chance to release some of my ideas on an unsuspecting crowd (and they seemed to enjoy it). It was fun. The most important quote I’ll take away with me, which sums up the conference as well, is from Mary Poppendieck’s keynote:
System should support intelligent people doing their work rather than trying to replace and de-skill workers.
Declan Whelan’s presentation at Agile Testing Days focused on promoting learning in software teams. “Delivering long-term value to our organisation is gated by our ability to learn”, said Whelan, presenting several great ideas how to ensure that teams keep learning and improve. Continue Reading »
, my book (also see 
by Gary Klein
by Gerald Weinberg and Donald C. Gause
