I published the book in late January 2015, so just a few months ago. I wanted to share some of the happenings around the book.
Sales
Have been incredibly brisk, both in the US and abroad. The first month or so was quite slow. But we’re now starting to see momentum gaining sharply.
There also another trend, folks are buying larger “chunks” of the books in PDF format to help in their organizational agile transformation efforts. We’ve had 4-5 large purchases of copies for just this purpose. We hope to see that trend continue as well.
Rex Black – Amazon Review
I was literally blow away when I saw this review. I thought back to a few years ago, perhaps 2009-10, when Rex and I debated agile practices. He took the more traditional position. Fast-forward, and I’m incredibly honored to have him weigh-in so positively on the book.
Excellent Ideas for Agile Testers, Test Leads, and Test Managers, April 20, 2015
By
Rex Black
This review is from: Three Pillars of Agile Quality & Testing: Achieving Balanced Results in your Journey Towards Agile Quality (Paperback)
I've known and respected Bob Galen for probably a decade now. He was an early enthusiast for agile methods, while I was more tepid on agile, since I was hearing reports of agile methods causing problems for my clients' testing teams. Well, Bob's book would have solved most of those problems, had it been available then.
When I heard Bob was working on a book on agile testing, I asked him to let me know when I could read it. I was then pleasantly surprised to receive a free copy as part of attending the Software Test Professionals conference (www.stpcon.com) in San Diego in March 2015. I also had a chance to hear Bob's keynote about the premise of the book at the conference, which got me inspired to start reading it in the evenings while there.
This little book, easy to read and written in a great, relaxed style, is jammed full of excellent, actionable ideas for testers, test leads, and test managers in agile software organizations. (Yes, there are test managers in agile organizations!) If you're moving towards agile methods in your company, if your organization already successfully practices agile methods, and especially if your test team is struggling in an agile world, pick up a copy of this book, read it, and benefit from the great suggestions.
Bravo, Bob!
Example of 3-Pillars in Practice
I was pleasantly surprised when I received this email not from a Midwestern US QA Manager sharing on her early adoption of 3-Pillars recommendations. While I know the pillars are a sound strategy, I was surprised by how quickly she was putting it to work in a large agile context.
I met you at this spring’s 2015 STPCon where I also received a free copy of your book and I have to tell you that the 3-Pillars strategy has become the center of quality conversations in the IT department here. I’m a new manager of Software Test Engineering and my goal is to add test automation to our 28 agile teams who are testing almost entirely manually and with an inverted pyramid where automated.
With this book I started to see how much we needed to mature our QA and Agile processes alongside efforts to improve automation, so I bought a second and third copy of the three pillars book to give to the QA manager and Agile manager and now we use it as the core of our conversations with each other and with agile teams. Each of us has in turn bought more books for agile team members and scrum masters across the organization and we have a printout of the 3-Pillars that we use to talk to Product Owners. It is still very early in this effort but already we are starting to see significant momentum.
We’re also using your 3-Pillars as the basis for our Quality Center of Excellence, to the extent that we’d like to organize our process training material and documentation links into 3-Pillars groupings on our SharePoint Site. And I expect it will remain the center of our road mapping, vision, and strategy plans.
3-Pillars Keynote & Webinar Recordings
Here’s a recording of my Sprint 2015 STPCon keynote.
And a webinar recording of a 3-Pillars overview presentation.
Wrapping Up
We continue to invest in getting the word out on the 3-Pillars. If there’s anything we can do to introduce you or augment your usage, please don’t hesitate to reach out to us…
Stay agile my friends,
Bob.