Alexandra Schladebeck

BREDEX

What do you do?
I talk a lot!
My official roles are product owner, consultant and head of marketing. That's a lot of hats and also a bit of a mouthful, so I usually describe my job as being a translator between various groups of people. In a normal week I spend time talking with the awesome guys and gals on the Jubula team to discuss and design features, I have contact with customers and other consultants to work on quality assurance in different projects, and I'll be in touch with Jubula users via the forum, support accounts, the blog or newsletters.
For all the talking, I spend time listening too – there's a lot of information and experience that's relevant across all these groups, and I collect that so that it can be directed to the right places.

How long have you been using Eclipse?
I've been aware of Eclipse since I started at BREDEX in 2005. Our developers use it as an IDE, and we started building solutions based on it even before I was here. In fact, on my very first day I started working with an Eclipse-based application – GUIdancer – which was later to become the Jubula project.
I've actually been using the IDE for about the past three years. I'm not a developer, so I don't always have it open, but my contact points with it have definitely grown over my time here. Writing documentation and cheat sheets, doing mockups, and working on the websites all usually involve me starting Eclipse.

Name five plugins you use and recommend:

• WireframeSketcher: as my work involves developing user stories, it's great to be able to quickly mock up what's in my head. Usually while I'm mocking, I realize that there are still questions to be answered – and I can think about them before I even present a mockup to the team. Having a wireframe also means that we can reduce the likelihood we're talking about totally different things, and the WireframeSketcher is pleasant and easy to use.
• EGit: When I commit things like documentation and cheat sheets via git, I usually do it via the command line. When we're working with branches, though, I prefer to use EGit to do cherry picking. I feel like I'm less likely to make a mistake working in Eclipse than via the command line for that!
• Mylyn: I'm constantly amazed at the cool things you can do with Mylyn. I mostly use it to blend out things I'm not working on when I'm writing/adapting tests in Jubula, and also to see what's going on in our Bugzilla repositories while I'm working, which brings me to –
• Tasktop Dev Enterprise: The Jubula team doesn't use HP ALM, but we have many BREDEX projects that do use it, and want to link their Jubula tests with their requirements in HP ALM. So I've been working more often with Tasktop Dev Enterprise to do that. We haven't looked at the other connectors available in the Dev Enterprise with Jubula yet, but it's great to know that they are there and supported.
• Jubula: ok, this is the shameless plug, but what did you expect? ;) Especially with the new possibilities to connect Jubula tests to ALM repositories, it's become easier for developers to integrate the information from quality assurance into their daily work. It's also important that testing is seen to be central to the process, and using e.g. the Launch Configurations for starting testable applications from the IDE can help teams to see what problems the tests will find before committing.

What's your favorite thing to do when you're not working?
I'm usually just as busy in my free time as I am in work! I play in a Celtic Folk Band and in an orchestra, so I spend time practicing my violin and guitar and arranging tunes and songs. I also tend to go crazy if I don't get some balance between office work and exercise. I go to the gym, do Zumba, and go jogging and dancing with my husband.
Alongside all of that I have occasional bake-fests, and do some reading if I can sit still for long enough...