Latest Posts - Page 60 of 205

July 5, 2022June 25, 2022 Grow From Failures

Clearly Defined Objectives – It Is A Mistake To Not Ask Questions

This episode of learning from mistakes focuses on clearly defined objectives. The error highlights what can go wrong when we fail to have them. We also see these same potential issues pop up when we have weakly defined requirements. Finally, there is a need to communicate all of this as well. When we don’t know what we don’t know, many things other than hilarity ensue. Clearly Defined Objectives Are Needed Through Our Daily Life There are many ways to fall for this lack of clarity. One of the most common ones is to fall back on labels and similar mechanisms. There are many opportunities in life to communicate an idea through a generalization and send the wrong message. Some of... Read more

June 30, 2022June 21, 2022 Grow From Failures

Testing Your Backups – Disaster Recovery Requires Verification

There are a few times I have been taught the value of testing your backups. That is why even disaster recovery needs to be validated. The first story I share is probably a worst-case scenario. However, it can happen, so we need to be aware of failure points. We must validate our backups regularly to ensure the process we are counting on is there when we need it. Testing Your Backups Before They Are Needed There are many ways to test backups and our disaster recovery plan. We can do the extreme version, cut power to the required systems, and attempt to replace them via the procedure. However, that may not be needed. We may be able to do partial... Read more

June 28, 2022June 21, 2022 Grow From Failures

Sweeping Consequences – Avoid All In Until You Are Sure

There is an old joke about sweeping consequences in IT related to wildcard commands like “rm -rf *.” However, there are ways to avoid getting bit by them. For example, we can do test runs and subset queries before doing the real thing. While it is undoubtedly faster to rip off one of those commands, it is also dangerous. This episode looks into some tricks of the trade I learned after countless times of being tripped up by this concept. Sometimes Easy Creates Sweeping Consequences A database is the best tool for examples of doing something quick and dirty that ends up costly. We can see this even with resource usage before more significant effects like data loss or corruption.... Read more

June 23, 2022June 16, 2022 Grow From Failures

A Car Sale – Acceptable Loss And Walking Away

We continue the series about errors and recovering with an excellent example of acceptable loss and when to walk away. We see these appear in negotiations regularly. They are shown in movies, television shows, and in real life. We walk away regularly without even realizing it. So yes, when you decide not to purchase an item or enter a store because of products or pricing, you are walking away from the negotiation. Determine Acceptable Loss Up Front The key to being able to walk away from any negotiation is to determine your breaking point beforehand. This preparation allows us to detach emotion from the negotiation and have a way to hold ourselves accountable. It can prompt the internal conversation of... Read more

June 22, 2022June 21, 2022 Testing

WebDriver IO: Building Automation Scripts in JS

In this presentation, we are going to be talking about using the WebDriver IO: Building Automation Scripts using Javascript. Now, this is not really going to be a slide-driven presentation. Instead, we are going to go through the website and talk about the different technologies, and things you can do with WebDriver. Then, we’re going to jump into a full hands-on example, building your first project, and looking at some of the different ways you can use WebDriver for testing. In the past, I’ve talked about code test frameworks. Such as, topics about the different ways you can build your tests, and how you should test. Plus, we’ve talked about different things like unit testing, PHP testing, JUnit, every language,... Read more

June 21, 2022June 16, 2022 Grow From Failures

Key Performance Indicators – Measure Your Spending

This episode looks at a marketing campaign and my lack of paying based on key performance indicators or KPIs. This was a slightly costly mistake and, thus, one that sticks in my memory. The mistakes that cause us some level of pain are also the easiest to remember. However, that is not the only lesson to learn from this past mistake. KPI – Key Performance Indicators Any form of sales or marketing campaign can be a black box when we do not set KPI values. There must be a way to measure success (or failure), and our metrics are the key performance indicators. For example, most advertising campaigns focus on clicks or leads for a measure of potential additional sales. ... Read more