When we talk about testing or QA, we often think of an activity which occurs mostly at the end of the development cycle. Code “drops into test” once it’s merged, tests are prepared ready for this critical (and late) moment when testing can begin in earnest. But in collaborative, agile teams, testing and quality focus […]
Interesting webinar this lunchtime from Mike Jarred, courtesy of Jennifer Wheeler at TestingProfessionals.com. Below are my notes from the session, entirely paraphrased. Hope there’s something of interest for you there! Why talk about the value of Testing? Different business sizes and industry verticals all seem to undervalue testing. There’s strategy to represent this value – […]
“In writing, you must kill all your darlings.” William Faulkner Testing is often thought of as a “how long is a piece of string” activity. Whilst there’s no clear definition of just how many tests per point, and no ratio of coding:testing which makes any amount of sense (this is always contextual anyway), a common rule of thumb […]
QA is a much-maligned acronym which is routinely shorthand for “Quality Assurance” (whatever the hell that actually means – you don’t assure quality by discovering and sharing information about the software), it’s variously “nicked” to stand for Quality Analysis, Question Asking, Quality Activism… but the one which I think is the neatest translation of these […]
This evening I attended an AMA (hosted by Ministry of Testing) by Lisa Crispin, one of my testing heroes and probably the first “named tester” I was ever aware of. It covered a topic close to my heart as an advocacy-focused “Team Glue” tester: Whole-Team Testing. It was a real honour to have a question […]
I’ve been describing myself as a Quality Activist for some years now, and thought it was about time I set down some principles of how I work. The language may be strong, but the intent is hopefully very clear – that by smashing the image of the “wallflower tester” we help our teams build better […]
One of the biggest conversations in tech at the moment is increasing diversity in the industry. As a 35 year old white middle class male, I represent a very large percentage of people working in our industry, but a much smaller percentage of the actual users of technology worldwide. If we are making products for […]
