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I hired Per Frykman to find out what my professional reputation was by asking colleagues and clients I worked with what they think are my strengths and weaknesses. The result was overwhelmingly positive, which was a real boost for my self confidence.
Publicerat den 1 kommentar till Newsflash October 2013

New Web Design

After many creative discussions and some wild ideas this is where we finally landed. My goal was to have a web page with a modern and minimalistic touch. Important information should be easy to find and the focus should be on me as a professional and what I do.

My Professional Reputation

The new web is part of a larger effort to reach customers and colleagues in a more professional manner. I hired Per Frykman to find out what my professional reputation was by asking colleagues and clients I worked with what they think are my strengths and weaknesses. The result was overwhelmingly positive, which was a real boost for my self confidence. I must admit that it did feel a bit strange in the beginning presenting the result publicly, this is not so common in Sweden. But hey, when looking for a new job you give references to your future employers and my professional reputation is actually a condensed ten-person reference!

Photos

I also had some new photos taken by a professional photographer. Armand Dommer usually has clients that are younger and better looking than me but I think he did a great job with the material he had this time!

What´s With the Blogging?

The last three months the web has been under development so I have intentionally not wanted to update or change anything. However I have been very busy reading and writing.

New Learnings

I have been digging deep into visual problem solving reading the works by Mike Rohde, Becky Agerbeck, Dan Roam, David Sibbet, Lee Lefever and bikablo dictionaries. Test design modelling goes right along the same track of visualizing problems in order to analyse and increase collaboration.

In November I will be giving a full day tutorial at EuroSTAR and I really wanted to update the material with all the new ideas I have. Creating the material included not only new content and new slides but a 50 page paper on the subject! This paper is submitted for the EuroSTAR contest besides being material for the tutorial. The paper will be available as an e-book in November.

I have also written a shorter article on the same subject in Swedish. This is part of a book that will be published in November by TestZonen.

The Lean Effort I Started?

Since last blogging I have participated in a value flow mapping workshop taking notes and analysing the workflow. This was an enlightening day on how these workshops are conducted but I will not be able to share any details due to confidentiality agreements. My job was paying attention to the group, keeping my mouth shut, thinking hard and documenting. Later I discussed my findings in detail with the workshop leader.

The Toyota Kata book is the next item on my reading list for Lean. Problem is that there are so many interesting books on other subjects I still have not read.

What About Work?

I have a part time assignment testing a web application which is planned to end around Christmas. Besides that I give classes in testing.

I will be participating in a management consulting effort done by my colleague Mattias Nordin and am discussing a lot around enterprise architecture with my friend, teacher and guru Peter Tallungs. I want to increase my skills in these areas and what’s better than learning from the pro’s in real situations!

As of right now I have openings for new assignments starting January next year.

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Publicerat den 1 kommentar till What´s new

The last year has been very busy with almost full-time consulting, my own classes and the Rapid Software Testing class that was once again sold out. Soon it is summer and I will get a well needed break from work.

My consulting assignment at Statistics Sweden will most likely end in June after more than two years of interesting work. So starting September I will be available for consulting in testing, requriements or project management, preferrably in the Orebro area.

I am distilling material from a six-day class in test management, adding some rapid testing, agile methods and my own experience. This will result in an exellent new test management class that will be given at NFI as well as internal classes to interested clients.

I was interviewed by Khurram Bhatti and Nauman Ghazi, doing a masters thesis on exploratory testing at BTH. They are both testers from Pakistan taking their masters degree in Sweden. So maybe I will be invited to speak in Pakistan, that would be an interesting experience! Hopefully they will present their thesis at SAST in October.

I have started speaking at conferences again, first out was with the brand new SAST Karlstad last week. Next up is SAST West in May and I am helping out with the SAST Q15 celebration in Stockholm in October.

Directly following the SAST conference I am planning a weekend Peer conference together with Michael Albrecht. SWET - Swedish Exploratory Testers is open by invitation only. The goal is to discuss ET experiences in Sweden. Anyone that have an experience they think will benefit ET and are willing to present and discuss this are welcome to apply by mailing me. We have invited James Bach and the conference language will be English. If we recieve a large numbers of applications we MAY consider having two parallel tracks and let the langauge of one of tracks be partly in Swedish. Details will be given earliest in August.  Peer conferences are non-profit and everyone pays their own way and their share of the common expenses.

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First of all I want to show a photo of the teachers we have. Johanna Rothman to the left, Jerry Weinberg in the middle and Esther Derby with grey hair to the right. It is interesting to study the interactions of the teachers and wonder aout how many of the events are carefully planned and how many are intuitional. It is at the same time a relaxed environment filled with lots of demanding tasks. I am discussing a lot of agile principles with the specialists here and enjoy every hour so far.

How can I possibly write down all the new insights I have gotten so far? Yesterday we did a lot of team exercises and this morning started with the full group analysing ur behaviour. We noted down the five most omportant actions we had done they previous day to act as leaders. Then we were told to explain why we had done a certain thing and our cards were placed in a big matrix taped to the floor. The goal was to show us the MOIJ model. The letters standing for Motivation - what did we do to motivate the team, Organisation and Information. The inexperienced leader focuses on helping motivation by motivatong the team The more experienced leader tries also to organise the team beter or to get more information in order to increase motivation. For example it is possile to get information that if the team solved a particular problem well we would get a lot of points thereby giving the team an extra motivational kick to perform.

MOIJ

The afternoon was spent observing another team while they were performing a task. We had to focus o one thing at a time which was a challenge in itself. This led to interesting obervation regarding group dynamics, non-verbal acting, roles, structure etc. Rewarding and very exhausting. Lessons wre that you can learn a lot by observing facts and telling the observed of the facts. But it hard not to make your own interpreatations at once but wait for a while.

I skipped the vening session tonight which is scheduled to continue until 9.30.  I need to sit down and reflect for a while and of course blog about it.

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Vad händer, är det hackare som tagit sig in, är det webhotellet som strulat till det eller är det fel på programmet eller hemska tanke skit bakom spakarna? Nej jag har faktiskt inte gjort något alls den här gången.

När jag idag skulle logga in på min blogg möttes jag, och alla andra som försökte, av meddelandet "Välkommen till femminutersinstallation av WordPress". Efterforskningar visade att en tabell i databasen närmare bestämt wp_options var korrupt. Efter den magiska funktionen Repair table (undrar vad den gör, skulle vilja ha samma funktion för vissa programvaror jag testar) så gick det att komma till sidan igen.

Nästa problem var då jag skulle logga in och lösenordet inte längre fungerade. Det finns en fantastisk liten funktion Forgot password? som gör att jag kan återställa och få ett nytt. Det funkar i två steg. Jag skriver först in mitt id eller e-post och sen får jag en länk att klicka på för nytt lösenord. Rent tekniskt så läggs det in ett värde i fältet user_activation_key i tabellen wp_users. För att vara riktigt på den säkra sidan innehåller länken en massa konstiga tecken som % etc vilket är så effektivt att det inte fungerar att aktivera lösenordet ens för mig, här får man kanske ge eftre lite på säkerhet till förmån för användbarhet. Jag antar att det i länken finns tecken som inte fungerar. Lösningen är då att med hjälp av SQL-editor byta ut innehållet i key mot exempelvis abcdef och sedan kopiera länken från mailet till webbläsaren men byta ut key= blaha%%% mot abcdefg och vips så har man ett nytt mejl med lösenord som faktiskt funkar. Så enkelt att alla kan använda det.

Nästa mycket märkliga problem som inträffat är att alla sidor i bloggen lagts in som poster istället. Nån måste ha kört nån uppdatering av databasen på något sätt. Finns kanske nån automatisk uppdatering som jag inte vet om. Börjar tröttna rejält på WordPress nu.

Och förresten, sa jag att det finns sju platser kvar till James Bach i Göteborg i november!

Till sist vill jag tacka alla de företag som inte längre skickar sina anställda på kurs och därmed ger mig extra dagar möjlighet att renovera huset hemma.

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Volvo Personvagnar har beslutat att återkalla alla V 70 och XC 70 som sålts sedan de nya modellerna lanserades förra hösten.

Det handlar om 65 000 bilar i hela världen. 22 384 har sålts i Sverige. Orsaken är att man vill rätta till mjukvaran som styr hur snabbt sidokrockgardinen ska utlösas. V 70 fick anmärkningar på att sidokrockskyddet löste ut för sent vid en krock mot ett smalt föremål när bilen testades av den europeiska säkerhetsorganisationen Euro NCAP i slutet av förra året. Den fick ändå högsta betyget fem stjärnor.

 

I jämförelse med detta så känns mitt försök att byta leverantör av mobiltelefoni men behålla numret som en petitess. Jag var dumdristig nog att byta från Tele2 till 3 och blev lovad att få flytta numret. TYvärr så var jag inte normalfallet då mitt gala abonnemang stod på företaget och det nya på mig som privatperson. Då körde allt ihop sig. Det första av många SMS från 3 där de beklagar att de inte kunde flytta numret. Jag kontaktade Tele2 och blev hänvisad en blankett att fylla i som tillätt nummerflytten. Samma firmatecknare,samma adress, olika org nr - det går inte att veta, blanketten gäller - inget annat går. Inte ens om innehavaren ringer på det aktuella numret och ber snällt. Efter tre månaders uppsägningstid med dubbla taxor var numret ännu inte flyttat men det gamla abonnemanget stängt. Via kundtjänsten på Tele2 får jag reda på att de inte registrerat nån begäran om flytt, jag måste häva uppsägningen för att kunna flytta numret... tre månaders uppsägingstid till. Snacka om kunden i fokus - ja om de menar " vi ska klämma dem på så mycket stålar som möjligt" Men jag har ju bara 1200 visitkort kvar och alla kontakter har mitt gamla nummer... vi testar igen. Skickade in en ny blankett idag med ett följebrev. Jag orkar inte ens vara arg längre. Det är ju säkert mitt fel alltihop. Så nu ska jag kast mig över boken "Det var inte mitt fel. En bok om att ta ansvar" 🙂