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 Happy New Year!
I hope you had a blessed Christmas and a Happy New Year! The new year is a time of closure and hope. I also like to reflect on the past year - the people I met, those I lost and the things I learned both good and bad. Reflection on the year helps me get the most value from the past year. I'm sure you have noticed that this is the year we have "The Decade's Top" this or that. So this new year is unusual in that it is the close of a decade. It seems like yesterday so many of us were bracing for the impact of Y2K and hoping we had nailed most of the date-sensitive code. I have been also reflecting on the past decade - the good, bad and ugly. I personally don't make new year resolutions, but I do make goals I would like to achieve. I hope you do the same. Perhaps your goal will be to pick up some new skills or perfect some of your current strengths. One of my big goals is to be more consistent in getting this newsletter out and getting back on track with the podcasts and webinars. So, hopefully you will be seeing more newsletters. Regardless of what this year brings, I wish you all the best in your family, health and work. If there is anything I can do for you, please let me know at
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The Developer to Tester Ratio Revisited Awhile back I placed a call for research input as to the numbers of developers to testers in organizations. Thanks to all who responded. I have also added data from the attendees of my test leadership tutorial at StarWest 2009. There's still time to send me your data (which will be kept confidential)! You can learn more on my blog at: http://randallrice.blogspot.com/2010/01/tester-to-developer-ratio-initial.html
What's New From Rice Consulting We Are Now on the GSA Schedule! After months of hard effort, we are finally on the GSA schedule so that Federal, State and Local governmental agencies in the United States can now easily obtain our services. These offerings include ISTQB Foundation and Advanced Level Training. To find us, just go to http://www.gsaadvantage.gov and search for Rice Consulting.
Go Deeper in Your Software Testing Career by Pursuing ISTQB Advanced Level Certification. Rice Consulting Services has teamed with Grove Consultants (http://www.grove.co.uk) to provide an outstanding training experience for advanced level certification.
The trainer for Rice Consulting is Randall W. Rice, CTAL, with over 20 years software testing training experience in major organizations worldwide. The materials are licensed from Grove Consultants in the U.K. If you have seen any conference tutorials or presentations by Grove Consultants, you know the high quality and engaging nature of their presentations and materials.
Welcome to Equinox Limited, Our Newest Licensee New Zealand software development and IT consultancy, Equinox Limited (http://www.equinox.co.nz), has become our first licensed training provider outside of the United States. As a result of the partnership Equinox will deliver modular software testing training courses covering functional testing, specialist testing topics, as well as the ISTQB Foundation in Software Testing course. "New Zealand's IT industry is continually short of capable software testers," says Brendon Livingstone, Equinox Training Services Manager " The Rice Consulting courses are flexible, practical and designed to be accessible to small development teams as well as those looking to advance their testing practices within an enterprise development environment. The agreement we have reached with Rice Consulting will allow us to build a much broader base of software testing capability, which is desperately needed by New Zealand's IT industry." We at Rice Consulting are excited about our courses now being available in New Zealand and are looking forward to working with the talented people at Equinox Limited.
New Presentation on Free and Cheap Test Tools You can view a free narrated slide show of my popular conference presentation Free and Cheap Test Tools at: You will find many other free presentations at that link. You can view these as a guest. Now on Facebook and Twitter You can also follow me on Twitter. There are quite a few Randy Rices out there. My Twitter name is "rricetester".
Now is a Great Time to be Building Skills!
It's a new year with new challenges. You are probably being told to do more with less. You may be finding that it's been awhile since you've had any training. I offer three main vehicles for building skills:
Live, in-person training with me as the trainer. Pre-recored e-learning with 12 months access, even after you finish the course. We have 13 courses now in e-learning format, including our ISTQB Foundation Level course.
Live, online training with me or an associate as the trainer. Very economical. 
As a software testing consultant, I have had the same mentoring session about one thousand times (or at least it seems) with different IT, development and testing managers. These conversions are on the same topics as Jerry covers in this book and the insights he gives are ones I will be adding in my consultations. The value of this book in my view is that it concisely cuts to the key issues in getting software right. Too many people in decision-making capacities hold misconceptions about what it takes to have a successful software project and/or product. The biggest misconception, which is why the book is titled as such, is that perfect software is possible. Companies hire testers to "find all the defects." When they don't, the testers get blamed and perhaps fired. This book explains the reasons why we don't have perfect software, but gets much deeper. It's funny that when people want "to go deeper" in their understanding of testing, they want to learn about tools and techniques. This book beautifully explains the deeper issues of software testing by how we think and communicate about this very important aspect of software development. My copy is now tattered after carrying it from trip to trip, but I keep finding the gems of wisdom. It is easily readable, but will make you think about what we do in testing - and why we do (or don't do) things. I highly recommend it to testers and the people who manage them - all the way up to CIO! Quote of the Month "Unless you change how you are, you will always have what you've got." Jim Rohn American Business Philosopher September 17, 1930 - December 5, 2009 http://randallrice.blogspot.com/2009/12/jim-rohn-has-left-building.html Rice Consulting Services, Inc. P.O. Box 892003 Oklahoma City, OK 73189 405-691-8075 |
