Leanpub The Leanpub Logo is a Registered Trademark
AccountLibraryOverviewPurchasesStoreSupport
BooksBundlesCoursesFeaturedNewslettersPodcastSupportWhy Leanpub
BooksBundlesCoursesFeaturedNewslettersPodcastSupportWhy Leanpub
There's Always a Duck
There's Always a Duck
$5.00
Minimum price
$8.99
Suggested price
  • 185

    Readers

  • English

  • PDF

  • EPUB

  • MOBI

  • WEB

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

Authors have earned$8,243,198writing, publishing and selling on Leanpub,
earning 80% royalties while saving up to 25 million pounds of CO2 and up to 46,000 trees.

Learn more about writing on Leanpub

The Leanpub 45-day 100% Happiness Guarantee

Within 45 days of purchase you can get a 100% refund on any Leanpub purchase, in two clicks.

See full terms

Free Updates. Free App. DRM Free.

If you buy a Leanpub book, you get free updates for as long as the author updates the book! Many authors use Leanpub to publish their books in-progress, while they are writing them. All readers get free updates, regardless of when they bought the book or how much they paid (including free).

Most Leanpub books are available in PDF (for computers), EPUB (for phones and tablets), MOBI (for Kindle) and in the free Leanpub App (for Mac, Windows, iOS and Android). The formats that a book includes are shown at the top right corner of this page.

Finally, Leanpub books don't have any DRM copy-protection nonsense, so you can easily read them on any supported device.

Learn more about Leanpub's ebook formats and where to read them

Write and Publish on Leanpub

You can use Leanpub to easily write, publish and sell in-progress and completed ebooks and online courses! Leanpub is a powerful platform for serious authors, combining a simple, elegant writing and publishing workflow with a store focused on selling in-progress ebooks. Leanpub is a magical typewriter for authors: just write in plain text, and to publish your ebook, just click a button. It really is that easy.

Learn more about writing on Leanpub

Leanpub is copyright © 2010-2019 Ruboss Technology Corp. All rights reserved.