Quotes from James A. Whittaker

Scarcity brings clarity.

Time is the strangest substance known to man. You can't see, touch, hear, smell, taste or avoid it. Time makes you stronger-minded but weaker-bodied, gradually transforming you from blushing grape to ornery, grouching raisin. Time is the most precious thing you have, yet you're happiest when you're wasting it. Time will outlive you, your offspring, your offspring's robots and your offspring's robots' springs.

Ambition means wanting better for yourself and expecting more out of life and aligning your skills and work ethic to achieve it. Ambition means being proactive about what you do and how you are rewarded.

Small tests lead to code quality. Medium and large tests lead to product quality.

BITE stands for Browser Integrated Test Environment. BITE is an experiment in bringing as much of the testing activity, testing tools, and testing data into the browser and cloud as possible, and showing this information in context. The goal is to reduce distraction and make the testing work more efficient. A fair amount of tester time and mental energy is spent doing all this manually.

Boring work is generally delegated by creative people (for obvious reasons) and flows downhill to people uncreative enough to do it out of duty or necessity. Be really afraid of boring work! It says something about you and your propensity to take whatever is given. It's a sign of your missing ambition.

You are who you learn from. Choose wisely.

I think the gating point for determining when you can stop testing is when you can feel confident that if any bugs do remain, they are in components (or features or browsers or devices) that have a relatively low usage and thus a low impact on users if they are broken in some way. This is where prioritizing the functionality and supported environments for the application really comes into play.

Being an advocate for bug resolution is an important facet of my work. I am constantly battling against feature development versus developer time for bug fixes. So I am sure to make user feedback my ally when I am justifying a bug fix. The more user complaints I can find about a bug that might not otherwise be fixed, the more I can prove that the developer's time is not wasted by fixing the issue instead of starting on that new feature.

At times, testing is interwoven with development to the point that the two practices are indistinguishable from each other, and at other times, it is so completely independent that developers aren't even aware it is going on.

One thing is for sure: Testing must not create friction that slows down innovation and development.

It takes a diverse family of testers to raise an amazing product.

The general rule in the case where a TEM can choose to take a project is simply to avoid toxic projects. Teams that are unwilling to be equal partners in quality should be left on their own to do their own testing. Teams unwilling to commit to writing small tests and getting good unit-level coverage should be left to dig their graves in peace.

What I am proposing is that we be honest with ourselves and instead of stretching to be the dumbest person at the level above you, choose instead to be the smartest person at the level below you. You're guaranteed to get there and the effort is not large. Over ambition is a ticket to underachievement and in the case of the medical profession, it's downright selfish.

If there is a rule about being loyal to your company, it is a stupid rule. And that's what short-cutting is all about: identifying stupid rules and refusing to allow them to have power over you.

A funny thing about code is that when left alone, it gets moldy and breaks of its own accord. This is true of product code and test code. A large part of maintenance engineering is about monitoring quality, not looking for new issues.

Mindlessly working to impress someone else will ensure your success is always dependent on that someone else.

These days, managers are little more than peers with additional administrative responsibility. Sucking up to them is not a good use of your time.

Google puts itself first. So does every other company on the planet. There is no requirement that you have to put yourself second. Indeed, why would you?

CEOs are trained to assess business strategy, it's time to take a page from their book and train yourself to manage your own personal career strategy. A career that is left to manage itself will under-perform much like a company whose strategic direction is left to chance. And like a business there are some best practices to avoid. There is planning to be done, decisions to be made and evasive measures to execute in times of trouble.

There are two ways to write error-free programs; only the third one works." —Alan J. Perlis

Working hard will allow you to be useful to successful people. Working smart will allow you to enter their ranks.

Test code is only useful in the context of being executable in a way that accelerates development and doesn't slow it down. Thus, it has to be integrated into the actual development process in a way that makes it part of development and not separate from it. Functional code never exists in a vacuum. Neither should test code.

Define steps small enough that teams can see and show their progress. Don't get bogged down trying to create the perfect system with a perfect set of measurements. Nothing will ever be perfect for everyone. Agreeing on something reasonable and moving forward is important when the alternative is being paralyzed. Be flexible where it makes sense to be, but hold the line where you shouldn't bend.