Please, stop calling us QA ninjas!

By on May 11, 2012 in Management, Testing Intelligence

I saw a job posting that was looking for a QA-Ninja and it made me think about how sometimes development managers don’t understand how we testers see our jobs, and maybe most importantly what we really contribute to the development team and process. This post is about these points and about how we can start modifying this erroneous understanding even before we choose to take such a job.

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Learning from a 5 year old who’s Testing the World

By on May 1, 2012 in Management, Test Process, Testing Intelligence

This weekend I caught myself in the car with my oldest son, having one of those incredible conversations one can only have with a kid his age who’s discovering the World and its workings. What I hadn’t realized until now is that he is actually testing HIS world, and using some simple tools we can all re-learn as testers in our daily work…

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If there only was a TV series about Software Testers…

By on April 23, 2012 in Communication, Curious & Off-Topic, Testing Intelligence

Has any of your kids (or nephews) every turned to you and said that “when they grow up they want to be testers?” I guess not…

Would a TV Series about a team of testers solving mysteries help to make our jobs look more interesting to the “non-testers” among us? I’m not sure, but it may be interesting to play with the idea…

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Don’t waste time on a Team/Company Quality Agenda!

By on February 23, 2012 in Best Practices, Metrics & Statistics, On-Going Improvement

What is a Quality Agenda, how to create a good one, and maybe most importantly: “should you be wasting time creating and pushing one in your company???” We try to answer these and some additional questions on this QA Intelligence post

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Stop being a NON-Technical Tester!

By on December 19, 2011 in Best Practices, On-Going Improvement

There is an on-going discussion in the World of Testing around whether a tester should be more or less technical in his work… (and this is without even asking if we should call someone technical or not!)

The truth is that I believe testers SHOULD be technical, and that there is a marked added value for a tester that is technical over one that is not.

This doesn’t mean we should be only technical and stop concentrating on understanding our users, or that we should strive to be more technical than our programming peers. But there are many ways in which we should start getting rid Non-Technical tester each of us carries inside of us.

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10 reasons why You are NOT a Professional Tester! — Part 2

By on December 5, 2011 in Management, On-Going Improvement, Testing Intelligence

This is part 2 of the article I published last week with the 10 Reasons why You are NOT a Professional Testers. As I started on the first part of this series, I think the bulk of the blame is on us, the testers, for not looking at our jobs as a profession.

Without going into the specific reasons, for that you can read inside, I think we need to improve the way we look at our tasks, how we communicate with our teammates, and how we look at the future of our profession.

I am looking for your feedback, so please feel free to let me know what you think!

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