Posted inConferences Pair-blog

Diversity in Tech Conferences

The organiser, program committee and program chair perspective On an almost regular cadence, I end up reading about conferences getting heat for their lack of diversity in their speaker lineup. Sometimes I just observe from the sidelines, sometimes I get involved in the discussions. Most of the time - the organisers don't react very well to the feedback given. Let's get back to that part a bit later on.The fact that this keeps happening to…
Posted inWorking life

How to make meetings not suck #2: Filling the meeting with value

(Note: This is a follow up/deep dive from this post) A lot of people hate meetings and claim all (or most) meetings are waste of time. While I certainly agree there are a lot of unnecessary meetings out there - the problem with most of them is the way we do them. We don't plan and prepare, we invite the wrong people and we don't learn from them. There are a lot of meetings that…
Posted inConferences Working life

Agile Testing Days Open Air – How to make meetings not suck

In May 2022 the first Agile Testing Days Open Air took place, and there Samuel Nitsche and I premiered our workshop “How to make meetings not suck”. This post is my reflection on the process of creating the workshop and a slight summary of the workshop itself. Designing a new workshop is always a gamble and kind of nerve wrecking. You work really hard on creating a structure and content that you hope will be valuable…
Posted inPair-blog

The power of Rubber Ducking – Pair blogg # 6

In case you haven’t read about my pair-blogging idea before, a short summary from the first post:"A while back I asked on Twitter for people who would be up for pair-blogging. The idea was that we agree on a topic and a date and then we each write a post about that topic. We publish on the same date and promote each other’s posts." Eager to get back on writing and armed with a concept…
Posted inLeadership Working life

Summary of 2021

It’s so easy to get caught up in the daily work and miss out on the bigger picture. To help with that, I try to take a moment at least once or twice a year to reflect on what I actually achieved. It helps me ground myself, feel better and in general is a pretty nice self-conficence boost. This year I asked a few colleauges to proof-read and as a bonus got more things to…
Posted inTesting

The power of three

Background Yesterday, Christoffer Bennet invited me to a round table discussion on the topic of "How to get the best out of Engineers while they work remotely". It was a lovely discussion (I'll add the link to the recording once it is up) but what does it have to do with this blog post, you might ask. Well. In one question, around handling conflicts, I mentioned one of my favourite "exercises" when it comes to…
Posted inPair-blog Working life

Psychological safety and inclusion in agile teams – pair blogg #5

Background In case you haven't read about my pair-blogging idea before, a short summary from the first post: A while back I asked on Twitter for people who would be up for pair-blogging. The idea was that we agree on a topic and a date and then we each write a post about that topic. We publish on the same date and promote each other’s posts.  Once again I reached out on Twitter for more…
Posted inPair-blog Testing

Onboarding remotely during a pandemic – Pair-blog #4

Background In case you haven't read about my pair-blogging idea before, a short summary from the first post: A while back I asked on Twitter for people who would be up for pair-blogging. The idea was that we agree on a topic and a date and then we each write a post about that topic. We publish on the same date and promote each other’s posts.  Next up I get to pair with Lisa Crispin…
Posted inTesting

”Testers don’t break software!”

Photo by Kelly Sikkema on Unsplash Introduction I believe most of us have heard the statement "Testers don't break software, we break the illusion of it working". For a while, something has bothered me with that statement and I felt a need to get my thoughts onto "paper" to sort them out. I understand why the view of "testers break software" is hurtful and why people feel strongly about this. A lot of testers have gotten heat from…
Posted inLeadership Pair-blog

Coaching upwards? Pair-blog #3

Background In case you haven't read about my pair-blogging idea before, a short summary from the first post: A while back I asked on Twitter for people who would be up for pair-blogging. The idea was that we agree on a topic and a date and then we each write a post about that topic. We publish on the same date and promote each other’s posts.  I happened to see a conversation on Twitter between…