failure stories

hello!
At homework for a course I teach I want the students to analyze failure project story and propose a new methodology and approach toward it in order to redo it better (this is part of demonstrating the agile methodologies) can someone point to me a written reports of such projects?
thanks

Dani

▶ Reply to This

Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by Michael Bolton on May 13, 2009 at 5:05pm: Why not set up an experiential exercise? Instead of reading about it, let them discover it. That's the basis of the Rapid Software Testing course; that's the basis of Elisabeth Hendrickson's agile testing courses (which she does with Dale Emery); that's the basis of the work done by Jerry Weinberg and the community at the Amplifying Your Effectiveness conference. People learn much better in trying to solve problems in which they're actively involved. Instead of demonstrating, try engaging.

There's a list of games at http://www.tastycupcakes.com/index.php?title=Tasty_Cupcakes

Also, for the social issues, consider lifting ideas from improv theatre.

---Michael B.; ▶ Reply to This

Permalink Reply by Dani Almog on May 13, 2009 at 7:04pm: Michael!
Thank you very much for the excellent links, I will be using them in the future when I'll have a course that can allow more the 6 hours on agile.
Starting a new academic activity - one need to compromise almost with every action.
If my plans will succeed I'll have a lot of use to your help.

Again thx. But I do need the failure stories.

Dani; ▶ Reply to This

Permalink Reply by Gerald Weinberg on May 25, 2009 at 6:09pm: Dani (It seems funny writing that to you, since Dani is also my wife's name.)

Great exercise idea. To follow up on Michael's recommendation, you can read more about our workshop on designing experiential exercises at http://tinyurl.com/pnda89.

Also, consider some success stories, and how they could have been done even better (using agile methods or whatever). I find that failure stories are hard to come by, since people don't want to talk about their failures. Also, they tend to destroy or lose the critical data, and the team disperses so you can't find them to confirm.

As Trisherino says, everyone has failure stories, but usually they're distorted by a single point of view, and the teller never has any responsibility. But testers should be totally familiar with this phenomenon.

In any case,you will find several failure stories in my recent book, Perfect Software: and Other Illusions about Testing; ▶ Reply to This

Permalink Reply by Dani Almog on May 26, 2009 at 4:53am: Jerald!

You are very right about the succses stories. I also look into few of your failure stories at your book.

I'll tell you the outcome of this expedition at Cast2009 where we'll propebly meet.

Thanks!

Dani
P.S - Dani is nick for Dan; ▶ Reply to This

Permalink Reply by Gerald Weinberg on May 26, 2009 at 6:02am: Probably meet? That's not good enough. Surely meet, right?

Dani is nickname for Daniela.; ▶ Reply to This

Permalink Reply by Dani Almog on May 26, 2009 at 8:37pm: Definitly meet!
Cheers
Dani; ▶ Reply to This

Permalink Reply by Trish Khoo on May 25, 2009 at 4:04am: Have you tried http://www.thedailywtf.com ? :)

Most people who have been working in software for some time have accumulated a few failure stories. Maybe you could just ask around?; ▶ Reply to This

Permalink Reply by Dani Almog on May 25, 2009 at 6:08am: love it
tnx; ▶ Reply to This

Permalink Reply by KT on May 26, 2009 at 10:41am: Hi Dani

There is a software testing hall of shame here - http://www.origsoft.com/reading_room/nightmares.htm
which is basically a whole list of software testing failure stories - I'm not sure if it will go into enough detail for you, but there are links to the full press articles on each story.

Regards
Katie; ▶ Reply to This