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There's Always a Duck
There's Always a Duck
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There's Always a Duck

Last updated on 2012-01-08

About the Book

This book is a collection of my favorite and most popular essays selected from my blog (testobsessed.com) and other places I've published. Within these pages, you'll find stories about cultures, people, and teams. You'll discover how something as simple as coffee can demonstrate how "normal" is inherently context-dependent. You'll read about unfortunate failures to communicate and what ducks can teach us about translation. You'll meet people who I admire and who have inspired me. You'll read the story of the software sales guy who admitted that he wouldn't use his software either. In all, the book contains 31 essays in 179 pages spanning 15 years of writing. I've edited all the essays and added new bits to stitch the whole thing together. Even if you've been a long time reader of my blog you will find something new within these pages.

About the Author

Elisabeth Hendrickson
Elisabeth Hendrickson

Elisabeth Hendrickson (@testobsessed) is an Agile consultant, trainer and coach. Her roots in software extend back 3 decades to the day she wrote her first line of code on a TRS-80 Model III, back in 1980. Over the years, she has held positions as a Tester, Programmer, Test Automation Manager, Quality Engineering Director, and Technical Writer working for companies ranging from a 20-person startups to multi-national software vendors. She is a respected thought leader in Agile Testing, served on the board of the Agile Alliance, won the Gordon Pask Award in 2010, and is a co-organizer of the Agile Alliance Functional Testing Tools program. She is known for her Google Tech Talk on Agile Testing and Test Heuristics Cheatsheet.

Table of Contents

  1. Preface
  2. Something Familiar
    1. Always a Duck
    2. More Similar Than Different
    3. We're All Human
    4. A Duck by Any Other Name
  3. Translations and Failures in Communication
    1. Lost in Translation
    2. What They Forgot to Say
    3. What's in a Name? Everything.
    4. Becky and Matthew
  4. A Nice Cup of Coffee
    1. Normal is in the Eye of the Beholder
    2. ``Normal'' in Context
    3. Brewing Trouble
  5. Software in the Wild
    1. But Do You Know if It's Any Good
    2. The Problem with 63,000 Bugs
    3. Inside Information
    4. Minimally Viable
  6. Play Time
    1. Thinking Games
    2. Trucks in the Sandbox
    3. Adventures in Virtual Testing, a Fable
    4. Little Green Men
  7. Observations
    1. Noticing the Little Things
    2. Looking for What's Not There
    3. The Problem Isn't Always THE Problem
    4. Schrödinger's Cat
  8. Navigating
    1. Going Down with the Ship
    2. Ensuring Project Success: 10 Rules of the Road
    3. You Can't Test the Wings Back on an Airplane
    4. Don't Confuse Speed with Progress
    5. Fear is a Lousy Compass
  9. Community
    1. How Tim Lister Changed My Life
    2. Agile Up to Here
    3. The Gordon Pask Award
  10. Parting Thoughts

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