Today we welcome back our popular guest author, Renée Mineart.

There are many, many challenges in developing and delivering a successful application. That’s what makes it interesting, if you ask me. One of the greatest of these challenges, in my experience, is time management (apart from a planet wide pandemic of course!).

Not your time as a developer, not my time as a manager. That comes part and parcel with the project. However, getting your userbase to set aside time in their busy schedule to test the project you’re developing, now that is a challenge. Also, negotiating that time with your userbase’s manager can be a hurdle.

Today we welcome back our guest author Renee Mineart, for the final piece in her series on Redefining Success. If you’ve just come across this series, I would encourage you to start at the beginning, so here are links to the previous posts:

Today we welcome back our popular guest author, Renée Elizabeth Mineart.

It has taken me a considerable amount of time to get my head around this topic. I’m not sure, even now as I place fingertips to keyboard, it is the right direction for this blog. But I think it’s an important topic to cover and is perhaps not talked about often enough. So, I ask you to please, bear with me as we broach the murky waters of … (queue dramatic music) … Project Failure. 

Today we welcome back our popular guest author, Renée Elizabeth Mineart. 

I realised this week that I have a character flaw. Probably, one of many, if I’m being honest, but let’s just focus on the one for now.

I hope you don’t mind if I divert slightly from the topics of User Acceptance Testing, Sprint Cycles and other software testing subjects, to discuss the very important topic of keeping up morale while in lockdown (a.k.a. being a bit silly).

User Acceptance Testing (UAT) is a vital step in the successful release of any new software. But why; why is this one stage so important?

One of the perks I’ve enjoyed about being a consultant is that I’ve been able to work in a number of different organisations in a range of roles. I’ve had the pleasure of working in some very small private companies to massive companies with offices around the world, as well as a number of public and government organisations, again both large and small. One would think that each of these different environments would have their own unique challenges, and they do to a certain degree, but you’d be surprised how many things are exactly the same across the board.

I love solving problems. In fact, I like to consider myself to be a natural problem solver. It’s just how my brain works; I see an issue and instantly my mind switches into problem solving mode. And in IT, there are always problems to be solved.

Digital Transformation, is in my view, a lot like the ocean’s tide. When on a sailing yacht, you have a few choices when it comes to dealing with tides, but deal with them you must.

For a number of years, I was responsible for converting a large number of, mostly manual, processes into an automated ticket logging system for a major UK company. Many of these processes passed through a number of teams on their road to completion, and they ranged from routine tasks like creating a new user account to the more complex process of getting new software approved for purchase and installation.