Here is our monthly selection of knowledge on programming, software testing and project management. This month you will find some interesting information and opinions about team design, exploratory testing, code reviews, product owners, test plans, virtual teams, reactive architectures and the worst programming language.
Text: Generative Team Design There is a lot of talk recently about the importance of psychological safety in relation to teams and innovation. This talk is largely stemming, it seems, from a NYTimes article covering new research from a team at Google. While I think it is wonderful that people are starting to think and talk about the importance of psychological safety and indeed empathy, there is more to these cultural practices than meets the eye.
Text: 58 Product Owner Theses The following 58 Product Owner theses describe the PO role from a holistic product creation perspective. They cover the concept of the Product Owner role, product discovery, how to deal with external and internal stakeholders, product portfolio and product roadmap planning, and the Product Backlog refinement. The Product Owner theses also address the Product Owner’s part in Scrum events from Sprint Planning to Sprint Review to Sprint Retrospective, and the Daily Scrum
Text: Applying Session Based Exploratory Testing to Gaming “Anyone can cook” was the saying that Chef Gusteau from Pixar’s animated movie “Ratatouille”, used to mention. And that, indeed, can also be applied to testing. “Anyone can test” is something that is heard in many companies, from different actors and players. And that is true. Testing is one of those disciplines that does not necessarily need a specific background or knowledge to start working and obtain a decent performance while doing it. However, if you want to be a professional and get the best results, you need two basic things: to be prepared and to train and gain expertise in certain abilities that will help you excel in your task.
Text: How to Make Good Code Reviews Better I have been doing day-to-day code reviews for over a decade now. The benefits of code reviews are plenty: someone spot checks your work for errors, they get to learn from your solution, and the collaboration helps to improve the organization’s overall approach to tooling and automation. If you’re not currently doing code reviews in your organization, start now. It’ll make everyone a better engineer.
Text: Stop Writing Overdone Test Plans I would much prefer a more lean and up-to-date approach to test plan documents. Looking at what we know now, a separate test plan is more of a sign of missing trust between parties than a collaborative value add for the business needs. If you have to write too much down, and debate the documents over and over – it might be an organizational maturity issue, but it’s most likely a people problem and a trust issue.
Text: The Challenges of Managing Virtual Teams Remote work is on the rise and has definitely come to stay. However, when you are the project manager of a virtual software development team, there are some common challenges that you have to face. Learn here how to overcome them with some specific skills.
Text: Lessons Learned from Building a Design System Although it has been among the trending topics for a few years, the Design System subject doesn’t seem it’s vanishing from discussions between designers and developers anytime soon. And there is a reason for that.
Text: Ultimate Guide to Penetration Testing For an Application Every business needs to be on the lookout for cyberattacks. The unfortunate reality is that there are many hackers out there looking for vulnerable targets. If you want to find vulnerabilities in your system before a hacker does, then it is time to learn about penetration testing.
Video: Rethinking Reactive Architectures Modern web software architectures are amidst a paradigm shift — more and more web applications are built upon asynchronous and reactive patterns. This movement is understandable, as it takes scalability, resilience, and real-time integration to an elusive new level. Unfortunately, we observe that many new customer projects only use parts of this paradigm shift sensibly.
Video: The Worst Programming Language Ever There is something good you can say about every programming language. But that is no fun. Instead, let’s take the worst features of all the languages we know, and put them together to create an abomination with the worst syntax, the worst semantics, the worst foot-guns and the worst runtime behavior in recorded history. Let’s make a language so bad it would make people run screaming to Visual Basic for Applications.
Video: Do You Really Do Functional Programming in Java? Many Java developers believe that Functional Programming (FP) arrived in Java 8, with the addition of first-class lambda expressions and the Streams API. But is this really true? This presentation discusses what FP really is, examines whether Java can really be said to be FP or not – and considers whether things have improved with more recent versions, as well as some possibilities of how you could have done things differently (in another world).
Video: Four Steps to Move from JavaScript to TypeScript You have got a JavaScript project and you are coming round to the idea of TypeScript. You like the idea of static typing and improved IDE experience. It is finally time to make the move, but how do you go about it? Is this going to be a big and inconvenient change to the codebase? What if you could take it step by step? What If you could stop halfway and still gain a lot?
Video: Firing People in Software Development Teams Software developers don’t talk about getting fired. We come up with euphemisms: “I am funemployed!”, or “I am looking for my next journey!” That’s strange, when you think about it, given that it is a fairly normal event that happens from time to time in software development projects.
Video: Increase Quality of Testing Leveraging Security Tools Security testing is often seen as a mysterious and foreboding domain, where people enshrouded in hooded masks wield mystical powers to influence technology in ways that should be impossible. Vulnerabilities, hacks, disclosures, exploits and other spooky concepts seem to be the primary powers in this dark digital Mordor.
Video: LeSS – an Agile Descaling Framework Although LeSS is an Agile scaling framework, in reality it requires organizational de-scaling. It is also an organizational design framework that helps to address core elements of organizational design: HR policies, finance/budgeting, vendor management, site strategies – areas that are not too comfortable for many companies to address.
Tools: Mobile Security Framework (MobSF) is an automated, all-in-one mobile application (Android/iOS/Windows) pen-testing, malware analysis and security assessment framework capable of performing static and dynamic analysis. MobSF support mobile app binaries (APK, XAPK, IPA & APPX) along with zipped source code and provides REST APIs for seamless integration with your CI/CD or DevSecOps pipeline. The Dynamic Analyzer helps you to perform runtime security assessment and interactive instrumented testing.
Tools: Dakka is an open source Chrome Extension which helps to generate end-to-end tests for Cypress, Playwright and Puppeteer.