Callum Akehurst-Ryan

I find that the original appreciative inquiry 4D fluffiness is lost on many tech teams, and scrum masters dancing into the room with their stack of sticky notes, endless optimism and no less endless fluffy jargon are getting the compliance at best, rolling eyes and disengagement at worst. Context matters, people you work with matter, their mindset matters, unless a scrum master is there “to change the mindset,” whatever that means. Transforming the fluffy discovery -> dream -> design -> destiny to something more grounded like analyze -> design -> architect-> implement would land better in the tech world I am familiar with. #appreciativeinquiry #fluff #scrummaster

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If I started working with a busy team today, the first thing I'd often suggest might be a Daily Scrum. (Regardless of whether they were doing Scrum or not!) I'd expect the team to tell me that they were far too busy for a 15 minute meeting every day. But that 15 minute Daily Scrum equates to about 3% of the working day. 🔥 A Daily Scrum raises transparency on progress and problems 🔥 A Daily Scrum ensures everyone is pulling in the same direction 🔥 A Daily Scrum helps the team hold one another accountable 🔥 A Daily Scrum encourages everyone to look up from solving small problems and ask big questions 🔥 A Daily Scrum increases cohesion and autonomy 🔥 A Daily Scrum is an opportunity for the team to inspect and adapt the plan 🔥 A Daily Scrum is a platform for raising issues 🔥 And an effective Daily Scrum increases the chance that the team accomplish their goal/s IMHO It's an investment that pays off for most teams and at the very least it's worth a try! That 15 minutes often turns out to be the most valuable and productive 15 minutes of the day. ⚡ I'd also expect the team to say that they already talk all the time anyway but if they really are that busy, do they!? And are they talking about their shared goals or just specific technical challenges!?? And is everyone actively involved in all of those asynchronous conversations and giving them their full attention!??? In my experience, not so much. ⚡ The second thing I might look at is getting rid of other meetings, interruptions and distractions that don't add value... but maybe that's a topic for another day! 😉

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🚀 To all my connections, I will be attending Scrum Alliance micro-credential course Agile OKRs, organized by Bojan Smudja on the 12th of September. This is the first official training that is combining metrics and Agile practices. 🆕 This course is designed to teach participants how to craft effective objectives and key results that dive alignment and strategy and support agile practices. 📢 If anyone is interested to join, please ping me directly for special conditions and benefits. #scrumalliance #agile #training #agilepractices #metrics #okrs #scrum

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BDD unlocks so much goodness You discover ideas you should throw away earlier You have testable specs that transform coding from exploration to implementation. You can easily decompose work to the point where you know things will take a day to complete. It’s the first skill I had to learn to unlock CI.

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Do you know an agile coach? We're looking for feedback on our new tool/software for agile teams and scrum masters and exploring a potential collaboration if they like it. If you know an agile coach who is open to something like this. Please tag them in the comments 🔖

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I wonder, if I finally wrote a #BDD book 20 years on, how much of my original formulation of BDD would be at its centre? I suspect quite a lot, but I definitely missed some things out, and I think my emphasis has shifted, towards getting the job done rather than just delivering the software that does that. I think there are three design feedback loops, not just two: - example feedback guides the code design - scenario feedback guides the feature design - customer feedback guides the product design It is important to listen to your guides, and too easy to get lost in the features.

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Agile Testing Coaching Cards buff.ly/3zrDI4S Used by agile teams to discuss testing mindset and practices used for testing software With these cards, they can explore their way of testing and define actions to improve it Digital download, great agile coaching tool!

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Interesting article to reflect on. The true challenge with agile roles isn’t just about role definitions or leaders' understanding of agile; it’s about the ecosystem’s that not only focus on “training” and “coaching” as the core of agility. While important, true agility demands more—robust engineering, hands-on experiences, exceptional product management, and a comprehensive approach. Business agility is a complex, wicked problem that requires nuanced solutions, not linear, cookie-cutter methods. It’s time to go beyond the basics and address the deeper needs of agile transformation. #agile #beyond #rethink #reflect #shifting

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Just exploring Supertest for API Testing and using the Pokeapi (10yrs old in December just gone) - here is something: https://lnkd.in/e3263J6f If you have more than a basic knowledge of automating your api tests, this is probably too basic for you (right now) - but if you're a newbie to setting-up a framework from scratch/new to supertest/have a silly sense of humour maybe it will be informative/useful/amusing in a loose sense of the word.

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When working in agile it's easy to overengineer our boards and end up forgetting it's ultimate purpose: to be our team's ultimate source of truth. Here are 5 tips for keeping things simple.

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Now I am chuffed again! My blog post "How do you decide which tests to automate?" was the second most read post in the last edition of Dawid Dylowicz's Software Testing Weekly. This is the link to my blog post: https://lnkd.in/eSyJyiZB #SoftwareTesting #TestAutomation

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this right here

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Aaron Baker shared a great article today at work, it really resonated with me, because EXACTLY the same has happened to me, but from a QE / QA perspective. I've joined several companies and the message has been 'Person X isn't doing their jobs, they haven't ran testcases or found bugs', and on investigating, its been because they are pairing to PREVENT defects and building in quality by pairing with everyone in the team; the PO, the BA, the engineers, and other QA's and helping everyone upskill into the quality mindset. This is simply a great read that highlights a similar mindset displayed by Tim Mackinnon in this article https://lnkd.in/eA3M_vWM

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Every tester knows that spotting critical bugs late is costly, yet testing the full user experience across systems can feel daunting. This is where process-focused testing stands out. 🧑‍💻 In this session with Tobias Müller from TestResultsIO, discover approaches that streamline testing without sacrificing coverage. If quality software is your goal, you’ll gain tools to boost efficiency and reduce maintenance by testing for the end-user journey. From 2FA to API integration, learn how to make each layer of your software run smoothly with fewer resources and less manual effort. Reserve your spot. 👇👇👇 https://lnkd.in/eAHtmiMW #digitaltesting #testautomation #automatedtesting #e2etesting #softwaretesting #customercentrictesting #customercentrictestingstrategies #TestResultsIO TestResults.io

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Stop calling automated testing 'checking'. One of the things you will have heard as a QA engineer is that 'automated tests don’t test'. The idea behind this is a bit nebulous to me, to be honest, but clearly, it has to do with the assumption that no new information can be gained from running an automated test script. In this school of thought, we’re told that only active human intervention gains this new information. I’ve forever been baffled by this. Automated tests are created by humans, who (hopefully!) think about what risk they are covering, and why we need the information this test provides us with. Because knowing that your signup flow is functional isn’t more or less relevant whether a human checks it or a machine does.

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Great reminder and pointers for a healthy (automated) testing strategy and cost/benefit analysis! Overall, my takeaway is that automated testing is a product and as such we should follow common practices such as cost/benefit analysis, design, POCs, MVPs, incremental deliverables, deprecation and maintenance among other aspects in software product development.

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HERE. WE. GO.......... The latest episode of the Quality Talks Podcast is now live with special guests Nicola Lindgren & Vernon Richards joining the show to talk about their new book "The Software Testers Journey". Its a great one, so don't delay....get it on your playlist and get watching or listening 🙂 Head on over to our official podcast page for the links. We hope you enjoy it. #QualityTalksPodcast #Podcast #TheSoftwareTestersJourney #SoftwareTestingCareers #Careers #Book

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Everyone know I'm all about agile working and in particular love scrum and the benefits it can being to teams and businesses and I'm pretty confident I could find an element of agile that can improve near enough anything! So I'm looking for opportunities to talk to anyone a bit agile curious and how I could support bringing in agile principles and practice to their team. With a few exceptions though. If the reason you want to introduce agile working is more about using the metrics to monitor team performance and embedding frameworks to merely meet KPIs - I am not the agile coach for you. BUT If you are curious about ways agile principles and values can enhance your team's morale, sense of purpose and bring a passion to what they do and create amazing working environments then we should talk. Taking on new agile coaching clients from September, to make sure you secure a spot, message me for an initial chat on ways I can help.

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Below are the books that are really needed for anyone working in agile. Candid, clear, detailed and a must read for all testers. In fact the whole Addison Wesley Signature series is awesome. Sadly free pdf is not available for either of the versions.

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