Helping software testers remain relevant and employable – find out more below
After delivering my talk at EuroSTAR last year about weekly releases I got lots of positive responses, but also some intense negativity and skepticism about the subject. It wasn’t just “wow – that must be so tricky” it was more along the lines of “you are full of ****” and “what a load of ************
No product domain is better than any other, but we do each have preferences and favourable products to test. We each prefer to use, test and work with some types of products over others. When I was testing products I didn’t enjoy I wanted to leave software testing. Period. I wanted out. Software testing sucked.
Most software testing, in my experience, is rushed and often under time pressure, typically driven by a desire to meet a metric or measure of questionable value. Yet to rush through the testing of a feature or product is to often miss the changing nature of that product (or your own changing nature). If you
This week sees the development team moving in to new offices. In these new offices is our newly created test lab. A room for testers to hang out and also a place for us to keep our supported devices. There’s loads of work to do to get the test lab functioning and adding value for
“I’m new to testing – where do I start?” I get asked the above questions A LOT. It’s a very common question for those who are brand new to testing, those who are shifting from another business function and those who are returning to testing after many years away. I repeat roughly the same answers
Our community is not best served by one single group or organization. [Opinion piece follows 🙂 ] As an individual it’s important to be skeptical when we have just one single source of learning and direction for our community. If we tie ourselves to a single source (i.e. group, organization, business, scheme) we are tying
One of my major bug bears is the reliance on colour to communicate meaning. As a tester it’s super easy to question any product or communication that relies on colour. Just ask whether meaning will be lost if viewed without colour. If you have a graph for example where each line is representing a finding
One of the perennial challenges I have faced with exploratory testing is how best to manage it and then report on it. I’ve hacked around with many different systems for years and never quite felt happy with any of them. As most of the testing that the team do here at NewVoiceMedia is exploratory testing I’ve
Like many people, you may be struggling to find a job, get an interview and then ultimately land the job. It’s hard work trying to find work and even harder work trying to stand out (for the right reasons) from the masses.  I wrote this book to help anyone who is wanting to find
I’ve recently been doing my food shopping online. No more wandering around the store and queuing. This week though I swapped online supermarkets in a bid to save some money and all I did was waste a load more time. Â Image from kardboard604Â “Groceries” October 31st, 2009 via Flickr, Creative Commons Attribution. Â In my opinion
You know you’ve had a productive test team meeting when you’ve run out of wall space for stickies. And yes, before you mention it, they did indeed need to be in a linear row / column. Â
For the last few sprints we’ve been demonstrating our user stories (i.e. completed work) using the medium of video. It’s been really interesting to see how the teams have moved to video with ease. The videos are often hilarious, some featuring more tech wizardry than others but all of them a great show of creativity.
Quite often I hear presentations and discussions from testers who talk about those moments when they feel it appropriate to say “Ha Ha, Told You So”. You know? Those moments when the testers advice was ignored and it all went pear shaped. Or the time a tester said the company should be testing earlier, only
A few years back I spent some time helping a company move to a social intranet. Here is the old mind map I put together to help explain why a social intranet is so valuable to a company who mainly work in the knowledge industry. Identifying why something could work and what benefits it can
Seeing the feed coming through on Twitter about Test Bash has got me all nostalgic for those good times I had working with Rosie and team behind the scenes at The Software Testing Club, over the last couple of years. It was a blast while it lasted and we created some amazing content for the
