Get off the couch, take off your training pants and ware a pair of jeans, and go to talk with some testers in-person. You’ll thank me later.
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The User Story Value Hypothesis
I’ve been working on a concept for a series of webinars and workshops around Test Process Orchestration and the New Role of the QA Architect. Among the concepts I’ve been developing and covering around these areas there is one that is really important and most of us fail to pay enough attention to, and so […]
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Asking for help when needed – this is also a valuable skill
It’s not easy asking for help. When as part of my work I ask someone to come and take care of something for me and to provide better results than those I have been able to achieve, it means that I am openly stating the fact that I’m not able to do something as well […]
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The secrets of successful testing-community projects: OTC and SToT
Many of us have ideas of projects that will help our peers. Some of us even try to take this ideas and make plans around them. But only a lucky few get to actually put these ideas into practice.
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Test debriefings are great and simple when done right
There is one simple and straightforward practice that I have seen helping testers and teams all the time, but in most organisations it is something that is not used at all. Debriefing your testing. Debriefings should be simple and quick In principle and in practice debriefings are easy implement, they do not take a lot […]
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Become an Expert Customer-Advocate in 5 Steps
I have always promoted the concept that our job as testers is to provide quality to the products being released with the end user in mind. A successful release being one that meets customer expectations, and even better if it exceeds them. Since I initially wrote the first version of this post a lot has […]
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Quality with Minimal Testing – Q&A with Pete Walen
Pete Walen addresses many of the questions that came up during his recent session current concepts in testing, and how they apply to all of us.
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Coordinating your automated and manual test management
Some QA teams that have automation still run part of their automatic test cases manually. I wondered WHY do they do this? here are some of your reasons. I also added some of the ideas and points to be taken into account in order to successfully coordinate your manual and automated testing efforts.
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The Pitfall of Estimations and How (try to) Avoid Them
OK, so this is a topic that comes from a conversation I had last week with a PT customer who is also a listener of the Podcast – Yes, I found one! And, this ones’ for you! Now, To make a long story short, we talked about cases when you are asked to provide estimations […]
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Frustrations in testing & what to do about them?
Ever felt like testers have a frustrating job? I have had my share of places and times when I found myself working with people and testing in organizations and products that were really annoying! What are the most common frustrations in testing and what can we do as testers and managers to decrease the suffering […]
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Testing from Home Pitfalls & Tips
As you might have noticed we have this new thing called Covid-19 or the CoronaVirus… If you are listening from somewhere in the Civilized world (with some exceptions around China and the Scandinavian countries) you are probably listening to this podcast from home. You are keeping social distance, and coping with new work & life […]
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Podcast – Continuous improvement – sounds good but how to do it?
How’s life Joel: Working on more PractiTest stuff Online Test Conf is coming soon – we are doing it differently this time – 3 time zones Shout out to Jesper Ottosen! Rob: New online course coming soon for managers What does Continuous Improvement have to do with Testing? Good question. This topic is not only […]
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Podcast – Metrics – The good, the bad and the ugly
How’s life Joel: Back from some the QA or the Highway Conference in Ohio, visited some customers in the US and Canada (literally buried in snow). Working on the State of Testing Rob: Exciting news, got my own office and properly going knee-deep into getting my online management course completed and launching my Parent brand […]
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Testing success can be reliant on good storytelling. How to tell better stories?
How’s life Joel: Busy starting to plan conferences and customer trips, the usual. Rob: Good Christmas, slowly getting into the new year. As usual, big plans but we’ll see how the year goes. I’m going to be speaking at two confirmed conferences this year. EPIC conference, by Techwell, in San Diego in April – and […]
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What’s the deal with regression testing and why are we still spending so much time on it?
How’s life Joel: December is great, I love December! I get to stay in Israel and work from the office as most of our customers are busy closing the year and getting ready for Christmas. Planning next year, many trips and conferences. It will be great year, but right now trying to regroup and prepare […]
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Development should include testing. So why do we have test ops?
How’s life Joel: January is proving to be very busy! We are running the State of Testing, so I want to plug that one since we need the help of everyone filling out the survey. Rob: Great Christmas break, now back into a new year with new opportunities. I’ve been somewhat bemused by the rise […]
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How did Rob and Joel get started in testing? What was the world like back then… and is it different to today really?
How’s life Joel: November was crazy! I managed to be in the UK, Spain, Germany, Austria, and 4 different cities in the US. 4 Testing conferences – QA&Test, Agile TD, Testing United, and ConTEST NYC. Visited some amazing PractiTest’s customers. Was hardly at home all month long 🙁 And if that wasn’t enough we had […]
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Do I need to write my test cases before I run them?
Joel: Needless to say and come clean, I work for PractiTest and we have a Test Management tool / Service. This means that I basically get paid by the fact that people write their test cases upfront and then track their runs. But working for a company such as PractiTest, and before that for Mercury […]
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Agile not done “by the book”?
Joel: I got back from Japan a couple of days ago. Just like I do in most of my trips, I got to sit and talk to testers. I talked to testers in small companies, to testers in huge organizations, had sessions in 2 meetups, and in general had a chance to listen and learn […]
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How to get started in testing when you do not have any previous experience
What came first, the chicken or the egg? Or to put it differently and in our context, the fact is that many companies are looking for junior testers with some testing experience, but then again how can you get that initial experience to get started in testing? This vicious circle is both annoying and frustrating, […]
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What to include in a training program for new testers
We all have new testers joining our teams and it is always a question what should we include in the initial training program for a new tester? On the one hand, we want to get people, especially young testers, to get their feet wet and their hands dirty with real testing work. But on the […]
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How to share data generated by users in testing?
First of all, we want to thank our listener Patryk for suggesting this topic! Guys, feel free to write to us with questions and ideas for topics to review! Let’s start with a simple question, why do we need customer data? What’s wrong with the data we already have? Why use customer data? There are […]
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Can we help developers test? How?
Can Developers test? I guess we’ve all been asking this question for a long long time. Back in the long passed Waterfall days the answer to this question was simple. We would ask “Can developers test?” and the answer would have been “WHO CARES?” Since the people who had the job and responsibility to test […]
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What to consider when testing a multicultural application
testing an application used by people from many countries and backgrounds Funny thing happened on the way to this podcast, I suggested the topic given that we are introducing PT to Japan and seeing how the cultural differences are big between the Japanese market and the rest of the world. And when I suggested it, […]
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Managing and Reporting Exploratory Testing
Exploratory Testing – Why, what and when? Unless you have been stuck under a rock for the last 15 years, and even if you have been stuck under a rock testing, then we are sure you have been doing some sort of Exploratory Testing as part of your work. We all do ET, but we […]
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Managing global testing teams
The world is now a Global Village, and this is bringing many good things, but also quite a lot of challenges.
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Bugs, not as simple as we tend to think (part 2)
Bugs are an important part of the work of testers, but for some reason we tend to take them for granted, and don’t invest the proper value and thoughts to them. I am not saying they are the most important part of the process, but they are an incredibly useful output and measurement if you […]
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Bugs, not as simple as we tend to think – Part 1
Bugs are an important part of the work of testers, but for some reason, we tend to take them for granted and don’t invest the proper value and thoughts to them. I am not saying they are the most important part of the process, but they are an incredibly useful output and measurement if you […]
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How to hire testers
Some tips for hiring managers and testers both seeking for the next best thing.
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Master Test Plan
Back when we used to all work Waterfall or V or W Model, it was a standard part of the process to have a planning phase for each of your project stages. And for the Testing stage or stages (if you were more into V than Waterfall) we had our own document describing all the […]
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How to Drive Quality in Your Organization Regardless of the Organization You’re In?
Testers or Quality Assurance? Can we influence or drive quality? Should we? People can and should, but not everyone can. And some organizations do not welcome it. We can and should, but not everyone CAN right now. It’s all about communication skills – being able to articulate ideas and change. And also to the right […]
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Quality Culture
Culture is nothing more than group habit – it’s what people do every day. So in order to change a culture to one of a “quality” one, you must identify the behaviors that lead to good outcomes and encourage these throughout the organization 1% improvements I first heard about the 1% approach when I read […]
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Is software testing more about testing or programming?
As the testing world evolves, the lines between tester and developers are starting to fade. Testers now need to have some programming abilities as well.
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Niches in Testing – Finding the next step in your career development
Joel and Rob discuss what skills and roles testers should focus on for career development and what niches of software testing are open to testers.
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Testing without requirements
How to find materials for reference that can be used as requirements, whether it’s a person, a system or any other source, go ahead and find out.
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Risk-based Testing
With the basic understanding that we can’t test everything, we need to decide what are we going to test. This is where risk-based testing enters the picture.
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How do I get selected to speak at a testing conference?
Some tips and tricks from veteran conference speakers on how to better your chances to get selected to speak at a testing conference.
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Do I need to be afraid if my team is moving to Agile?
You shouldn’t be afraid when your team is moving to agile, nobody expects you to become a developer. With that said, don’t consider yourself non-technical as testing is technical work even when coding is not required from the tester.
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What if you are the single tester on your team or at your company?
Being a sole tester of a company is without a doubt a big responsibility, but not every bug found after releasing the product is your responsibility.
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How to communicate or sell testing to the rest of the organization?
Testing is rarely in the organization’s spotlight but when communicating the testing results and their meaning for releases, you can get their full attention.
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How and where should we learn “testing”?
There are many possible paths you can take in order to start learning how to test. The path you choose is related to your background.
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This 8 min routine has made me a more accurate and productive tester!
Good testing requires skills, concentration, knowledge, even a bit of luck. I wrote some time back about I always try to work while being in my Testing Zone and I think this is one of the most important ways of improving your testing, especially in this age of open spaces and noisy environments. But just like […]
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Recomended Testing Conferences you can’t afford to miss
Are you part of the 38%? In early 2017 the state of testing report was released showing, among many other interesting facts, that 38% of the respondents attended a testing conference in the past year. This is the 4th year we have been running this survey and it keeps growing year after year, allowing us to show an increasingly accurate […]
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Keep your mind open when you are testing!
Knowing a bunch of general things, even trivial things, will help you be a better person, a better parent, a better friend, and even a better tester. This is one of the reasons I listen to a number of different podcasts during my commute to work every day. I listen to testing podcasts (you can see […]
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See you at STAREAST 2017
This year’s STAREAST event is just around the corner and I am really happy and excited to be attending this year again! This is one of the most important testing events of the year and personally one of my favorites. This year I get the chance to give a lecture. It is an honor to be […]
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The 2017 State of Testing Report is out!
“What’s happening in the software testing world lately?” This has become a question we are frequently asked ever since we started to publish the State of Testing report, four years ago! The interesting (and equally exciting) fact is that this year we are actively getting approached by many testers asking when the State of Testing […]
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Complexity is also a Bug
Last month I attended the DevOps Days Tel Aviv conference, I took some notes about the interesting stuff people said – like many people do during a conference – and then I put the notebook away – like most people usually do after a conference… But yesterday I was going over my notebook, I guess I […]
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Are you the Signal or the Noise?
There is an ongoing theme around Signal vs Noise in the organization, that originates from the Signal to Noise ratio in radio signals, and tells us about the problem of having too much noise hampering the effectivity of the signal. I think many testers should try to understand this principle (the organizational one, and not the […]
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Who Should be Afraid of Agile Testing?
There are Test Leads and QA Managers who are afraid of losing their jobs as their organization shifts towards Agile development and testing. You should be afraid of this only if you are a “disconnected QA manager”. If you provide real value to the Organization, and if you know how to be a leader instead […]
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Shutting off the noise – why meditation is good for testing
Do you have a hard time concentrating on your testing task with all the noise in your office or workspace? I am sharing here how a short meditation before testing is helping me to test better and to concentrate on my testing tasks.
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Stop testing and start doing your job!
We testers are always too busy running tests, and so we don’t see if there are additional things we could do in order to improve our process and to provide more value to our teams. Sometimes you need to make a hard stop and force yourself to think about the things you can do differently […]
Read More »Are we all Accidental Testers?
Are we all “accidental testers”? If this is the case, then what does it say about the testing profession as a whole? Maybe the fact that most testers grow into this profession as part of a personal development process actually makes us better testing professionals? This post will explore some of these questions and leave […]
Read More »Raise your Anchors – Learning how to change your mind
Have you ever heard of anchoring? This is the behaviour by which it is hard to change our minds once we reach an initial conclusion. Anchoring in testing tends to be very problematic for a number of reasons. Read this article to understand the issues with anchoring in testing and to learn some techniques to […]
Read More »One metric = One Big Mistake
Sometimes measuring only one thing can be worst than not measuring anything at all. Whenever you work with metrics you need to remember that it is not as easy as waving a number and having everyone agreeing with you on the conclusion of your observation. You need to take into account that some people, specially […]
Read More »Why test only 20% of your day???
In many organizations testers do testing work ONLY 20% of their time, and spend a lot of time on less important tasks. Treat your time as a valuable resource and make sure others do the same!
Read More »Agile Test Automation – Learning to fly by jumping and letting go (of my previous assumptions)
I started working on an automation project in a company where they recently adopted a strong and healthy agile development approach. One of the first things they did was to distribute the once-unified testing team and incorporate the testers as part of the organic development teams; up to now all good and fine. The VP […]
Read More »Communication lessons to learn from Monty Python
I love making weird connections between apparently unrelated stuff. This morning I was watching a Monty Python short in YouTube and it reminded me of one of the most important lessons in group communications. So here is the short – http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hU0QZQRTNr0 And for those who didn’t make the automatic connection, the important communication lesson is to […]
Read More »The Value of Peer Reviews (& why we don’t use it more!)
I am presenting the subject of Testing Intelligence on next month’s CAST Conference. One of the things I like about the CAST approach is the fact that they promote the dialogue and (safe/constructive) discussions around the topics and sessions presented, allowing presenters and audience to gain from the experience. The other thing I like, this […]
Read More »Sanity, Regression, Smoke etc… Do we need all these testing types?
This topic may seem simple, but I’ve been asked about it a couple of times in the last month, and I also saw it in multiple questions on QA Forums, SoftwareTestingClub, and other places where I go visiting once in a while. Let’s start by admitting we have a problem in the Testing Community. Not […]
Read More »The simple differences between Product Risks & Project Risks
Going into the subject of Test Project Strategy and more specifically around MTPs there are 2 points where we are not always sure what to do and what are our responsibilities as testers and test managers: Product Risks & Project Risks The first step is to understand these are 2 different entities: Product Risks are […]
Read More »The Pesticide Paradox: how to keep your tests relevant.
Almost 20 years ago Boris Beizer stated what became known as the Pesticide Paradox: “Every method you use to prevent or find bugs leaves a residue of subtler bugs against which those methods are ineffectual.” In plain English this means that as you run your tests multiple times, they stop been effective in catching bugs. […]
Read More »QA as Customer Representatives within the R&D
In many R&D organizations the QA takes the role of the Customer Advocate, testing the system and even arguing in favor of fixing defects based on their internal perception of how customers use the product. In some companies Test Engineers even take the role of Users during Internal Design Reviews. Why does this happen? Your […]
Read More »Functional Testing Types
The other day on QAForums, Mark Crowther posted an interesting question: “If I asked “What Test Types sit under Non-Functional Testing?” you might reply with Accessibility, Compatibility, Performance, Load, Stress, Recovery and a bunch more. So what sits under Functional (Testing)?” His question is not trivial. Maybe it is because we tend to think of […]
Read More »Business Process Testing – are you doing it already?
This week I took part in the SIGIST 2008 yearly conference in Tel Aviv. Like many other events, it was a great place to interact with other testers and get new perspectives on old tricks we managed to forget along the way. One of the sessions I participated in was around Business Process Testing (BPT) […]
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