The Southern Idaho Society for Software
Quality Assurance
July 2010
Newsletter
The next SISQA meeting is
on:
Tuesday, July 20, 2010
at 7:00 PM
At: H&W Computer
Systems, Inc.
6154 N. Meeker Pl., Ste. 100
Boise, ID
Google Map
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(If you
have difficulty reading this rich-text newsletter, please view it on our
Website at http://www.sisqa.com.)
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President's
Corner
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Summer may
be a slow time for some clubs, but SISQA has been going full-on with interesting
speakers.
Come and see what we mean. It’s a great time to invite a co-worker to attend.
June 15th, 2010 QA in Korea by Eric
De
Wald
June’s meeting was jam-packed with interesting lessons learned from working in Singapore and Korea. Joel Robinson conducted a moderated panel interview of Eric De Wald on his experiences as a QA engineer and Engineering manager in Asia. Eric is currently working for HP after having returned from a 2+ year assignment with Samsung.
Sample questions posed were:
· What differences are there in culture, work ethic, tools,
· Why should an American engineer choose to work overseas?
· Will the experience be positive or negative on your career?
· What language and cultural pitfalls are there?
· What are some of the differences in working relationships between QA, development, and management?
· How can you get a job overseas? Is it worth it financially?
· How does QA fit into their SDLC?
· What is the current state of the industry?
· How does the Confucius philosophy affect team dynamics?
July should be an interesting meeting for those of us testing web applications.
Steve Seideman of CISSP will discuss “Hands on Penetration testing of Web Applications”
August 17th 2010 Leadership by Ole
Dam
August meeting will feature Ole Dam presenting a session entitled:
“Leadership. Leaders are made, no born. And here is how.”
Joel Robinson
chair@sisqa.com
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President's Book Reviews:
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At
a meeting for startup entrepreneurs meeting last month a number of business
leaders conducted a panel discussion of favorite books. I read three books
recommended by the panel, and can heartily recommend at least one of them.
Scan them for free at Amazon or check them out at the library and judge for
yourself.
"Strengths Based Leadership" by Tom Rath and Barry
Conchie
The authors recommend building upon
your strengths rather than shoring up your weakness, especially if your
weaknesses are not essential job skills. To be most productive at work,
first identify your key leadership skills, and then invest in others to fill in
the gaps. There are a lot of case studies (stories), however I found it
hard to relate to his examples, and was not particularly moved or inspired by
this book.
"What Got You Here Won’t Get
You There" by Marshall Goldsmith and Mark Reiter
The books premise is that a different skill set is necessary to go
from beginner entrepreneur or ladder-climbing professional to the big
time. The authors are strict behaviorists, and stack the deck by only
working with those who will listen to and follow his advice. To his
benefit he does not collect fees until improvements are visible. He
emphasizes listening skills, apologizing, thanking, follow up and practice,
things your first great teachers also
emphasized.
"4 Hour Work
Week" by Timothy Ferriss
This book
interested me enough to make notes, study, and photo copy sections. The
premise is that readers should be able to cut out the extras in your
professional job and reduce everything to the essentials. He has some
draconian recommendations, but I feel he was more down to earth than the other
two
authors.
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QA Resources on the Web:
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Software Testing Stuff is a Website devoted to software testing,
including information on conferences and other events - http://www.testingstuff.com/
I've recently come across a pretty decent repository for software QA
and testing tools at: http://www.aptest.com/resources.html. There's a wealth of information and some pretty handy links for
those in the field.
http://www.soft.com/Institute/HotList/ is a site
dedicated to listing numerous testing and QA related links. The site itself
hasn't been updated in awhile, however, there are some pretty useful
resources out there.
The Software Quality
Engineering Website (http://www.sqe.com) is an excellent resource for
Software QA related training, conferences & Web seminars.
No stranger
to us in the SISQA group, http://www.stickyminds.com
is a great resource to help you keep your finger on the
pulse of the QA community; brought to us by the editors of Better Software
magazine.
Visit the Software QA/ Test Resource Center at http://www.softwareqatest.com/. As well as
containing some pretty good content, this site has a very nice
software and QA testing links section at http://www.softwareqatest.com/qatlnks1.html.
At http://www.qanews.com you can
find a user-listing of QA related announcements and articles.
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be sure to include at least your full name and email
address.
Please tell your friends and coworkers about SISQA and
invite them to join us at our meetings. Feel free to forward this message to
anyone you think may be interested.
We invite you to visit our Web
site at http://www.sisqa.com. Feedback is
welcome.
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Donovan
Bean
Director of Publicity & Publications
SISQA
pubs@sisqa.com