“Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it”. - George Santayana Post-mortem means “after death” in Latin. Usually you’d hear it in the medical context: an autopsy is a post-mortem examination to find out the cause of death. It’s a tiny bit ironic that as a teenager I was into medicine (thanks to House M.D.), and the area that I had most interest in was… pathology (pathologists are the ones performing post-mortems). I wanted to discover the root causes of what happened. Years later, I do get to do (almost) exactly that… The concept of a post-mortem as well exists in tech and ..read more

Imagine this: you’re testing the software. You find a pesky bug. You report it to the team. Someone comments, “It’s an edge case.” The bug gets put low in the backlog and becomes forgotten. A month later, users start complaining about the same issue, and it is suddenly expedited. It gets fixed in a day. You sit there with your hands crossed. You’re proud it was fixed, yet also disappointed that when you told others about it - it was ignored. You keep reminding everyone: “I told you so!” I’ve read several bitter posts from the testing community on this topic. I have been bitter myself. I used t ..read more

After years of sitting unassumingly on my bookshelf, I finally picked up the “Nonviolent Communication” by Marshalll B. Rosenberg and read it - what a gem! In this article, I’ll share my favorite learnings from it. Nonviolent Communication Book image I was hesitant to pick up this book. The colorful cover with - what seems to me - one-too-many colors felt slightly tacky. I was afraid it was yet another commercialized “woo-woo” on the basics of communication. Yet, after yet another mention of it from someone I know and respect, I read it. I highly recommend you read it, and I’ll likely reread ..read more

Have you ever been in a situation where you wanted to get straight to the point at work while your counterpart seemed to “drag” the process? What about vice versa: was someone rushing you to sign the work contract even if you did not know and trust the person yet? Likely what you have witnessed was a difference between your and that person’s cultures. In her book “Culture Map,” Erin Meyer talks about how the culture we come from affects us and our work ways. In this post, I’ll share my favorite learnings after reading this book. Trusting scale I found one of the scales mentioned in the book e ..read more

“Build the right product and build it right.” This has become a mission of so many engineering teams. How do we do it, though? It has two parts: building the right product and building it right. Let’s start dissecting it and tackle the first part of it: building the right product. I often see quality analysts bridging that gap and promoting building the right product which increases the productivity of the teams enormously. For that, we’d need to look into requirements and do the requirement analysis with the QA in mind. Simplified workflow visual: Analysis with QA includes requirement analys ..read more

It’s so easy to get overwhelmed with resources and information overload working in tech nowadays. There are so many books that people recommend or used to recommend. Over time, a lot of them get a bit… outdated. What books are still fresh and useful in 2022? I’m a bit of a book enthusiast. I love books, but let’s admit it - the pace I read them at is much slower than the pace I tend to buy them in. I still have the rule to finish any book I’ve started reading. I broke that rule twice after trying to read those books for years. When it comes to tech books, it also means that I’ve read some “cla ..read more

“Give me six hours to chop down a tree and I will spend the first four sharpening the axe.” - Abraham Lincoln Why would I start my post on a concept like Definition of Ready with a quote like that? Well, I fully believe that a lot of mistakes can be prevented if we invest enough time to prepare ourselves better. A while back, I wrote about Definition of Done, and when I told one of my friends that I’ve been presenting Definition of Ready (DoR) within the company I work in, they said: “Ready… Done… Isn’t that the same thing? Never seen it work in the teams I worked in.”. I have worked in teams ..read more

I cannot stress enough how much mentoring someone inspires me. I am a strong believer in questioning: questions seed collaboration and connection. What to even mention how they tame our own biases. And, mentoring experience gives plenty of questions in both the direction of the mentor and the mentee. Currently, I’m a mentor on the Women Go Tech program which aims to support women starting/accelerating their careers in tech. I have two mentees I get to talk to every month for half a year. And their questions make me rethink my experience with new energy. It’s scary to step into a new field. The ..read more

I felt something wrong with “the vibe.” I could not put it into words exactly, yet each time a colleague in a group conversation would say “Yes, but…” it was not helping the conversation proceed further. I even gave them feedback: “try to say “Yes, and…” instead”. Little did I know that this is one of the very common improv lessons that can be super useful in any context: be it work, or life. In this post, I’ll expand a bit more on that and how that connects with so-called “slopey shoulders”. Photo by Volodymyr Hryshchenko on Unsplash On communication in teams Often as a QA in tech teams, my j ..read more

It never ceases to amaze me how mentoring is a growth experience for both mentor and mentee, and how those roles switch during the relationship. In one of my conversations with Lena, I shared my career changes towards quality leadership and its challenges. She listened with a huge interest and mentioned that she’s been reading a book that may be helpful to the situation I am in. The book she recommended was “Leading Quality” by Ronald Cummings-John and Owais Peer. I had it on my to-read list since I stumbled upon the title somewhere, but the extra mention was a timely encouragement to actuall ..read more