Request for Requests

Reply to this post if you have a topic you’d like to see me address, questions you’d like me to answer, or a story you’d like me to tell.

Lexicon

I use technical terms frequently in my writing, but I know not everyone reading is going to know what I’m talking about, and even when they’ve heard the term before, they may have heard it in a different context or with a different meaning. So in this living post, I will collect the technical terms I use and give definitions for them. If you encounter an unfamiliar term in one of my posts, you can look for it here. If you don’t find it, comment either on the post where you find it or here, and I will both respond to you with the definition and add that definition here in the lexicon.

Black-Box Testing: An environment where the tester has no access to the internal processes and rules used by a system. With black-box testing, initial testing must be exploratory, to determine the response of the system to any given input. (Contrast gray-box testing, white-box testing.)

Gray-Box Testing: An environment where the tester has access to some, but not all, of the internal processes and rules used by a system. With gray-box testing, some responses of the system to given inputs are known, but others must be discovered via exploratory testing. (Contrast black-box testing, white-box testing.)

White-Box Testing: An environment where the tester has full access to the internal processes and rules used by a system. With white-box testing, the expected response of the system to any given input is either known or derivable before testing begins. (Contrast black-box testing, gray-box testing.)

Rebirth and reinvention

The experiment with an artistic career has been over for years, and that’s why this space has been idle. The idea of a professional blog is still valid, though, so here we go again.

One of the things I’ve seen over and over in the business is managers who really don’t understand their people and how to get the best out of them. I have a lot of ideas about how to fix that, and I plan to share those ideas here. (I’ve certainly made my share of mistakes, so you can expect to see me deconstruct my own disasters at least as often as I call other managers out for theirs.)

My goal is to help people do a better job of hiring, developing, motivating, and retaining great technical people. (To be honest, I believe that most of the things I’ve learned working with techies are generally applicable to working with anybody, but I only have direct evidence for what I’ve done myself.)