Maaike Brinkhof's blog

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IT

Articles about software development, testing, coding and IT in general.

Tests are a form of waste?

I was in a meeting where a developer said: “every test is a form of waste”. Coincidentally, this meeting was about how the build was taking too long because the tests were slow, so I can see how the connection was made in the mind of the developer. It must

An Agile Test Strategy: Some Ideas

There are a couple of misconceptions when it comes to an agile way of working. Some people still believe you don’t need documentation (seriously, that myth has proven really hard to debunk). I also notice that a lot of focus is on automating everything when it comes to testing.

Mapping Biases to Testing: Confirmation Bias

I use terminology from earlier blog posts about biases. If you have missed those posts, read part 1 here. I explain the terminology there. In the second post I wrote about the Anchoring Effect. Let me state the ‘bad news’ up front: you cannot fully avoid the confirmation bias. That’

How I ended up in IT

This is a long read, be warned 🙂 Honestly, I never thought I would end up working in IT. Now I’m here and enjoying myself, but it took me years to figure it out. I would like to tell you my story of how I got here. When I was

The abysmal state of ‘testing’ in 2016

I wish I didn’t have to write this blogpost, but here goes. Time to bring out the famous hammer metaphor. As a child I learned how to use a hammer. Not that I’m an expert user, but I’m skilled enough to slap some nails into a wall

Mapping Biases to Testing: the Anchoring Effect

Dear reader, welcome back to the Mapping Biases to Testing series. If you have not read the introduction yet, I advise you to do that first. Today it is my pleasure to discuss the first bias in this series: the Anchoring Effect. Before we start mapping that to testing, I

Be a Zero

I recently read a book called “An Astronaut’s Guide to Life on Earth” by Chris Hadfield, and man….I can only say: read this book! It’s very inspirational and very educational about how going to space works. The author manages to transform space-related things he learned into practical