Ministry Of Testing

Welcome to episode 2 of TestSphere Roulette. Joining Simon at the roulette table are 2 more testing superstars: Russell Craxford (@r_crax) - Head of Quality Management at Saggezza Hanna Schlander (@hannaschlander) - Quality Catalyst at Jayaway   The wheel threw out some really interesting topics for conversation: Curse of Knowledge - Patterns Boundary Testing - Techniques Curious - Feelings   Russell plugged the Testing Peers podcast which he is a co-host of (along with Simon), which can be found here - https://testingpeers.com   Both Hanna and Russell mentioned that they are looking for testers for their companies, if you wish to find out more, get in touch with either of them via their linkedIn pages: Hanna - https://www.linkedin.com/in/hanna-schlander-42a72554/ Russell - https://www.linkedin.com/in/russell-craxford/   Thank you to Russell and Hanna for their great discussions and to the Ministry of Testing for supporting the podcast If you

On this episode of the Ministry of Testing Podcast, Mike chats with Eduardo Fischer about his article on Ministry of Testing: Moving From Software Development To QA: A Road Less Travelled  They cover  Why they move to development first and not QA? Are Developers just testers at heart really? With hindsight, do you think that companies see you have QA potential and hired you for your skills with a view to moving into QA? What do you do when there is no QA department or person whom you could speak with to raise the bug with The tools and self-learning encountered on the journey from Dev to QA QA vs Dev - working styles Eduardo Fischer is a quality assurance engineer who focuses on API and UI test automation and is currently working for an international stockbroker. He discovered his passion for testing during his time as a back-end developer and eventually made testing his full-time job. His hobbies are developing Alexa skills and making models for his 3D printer. You can find Eduardo o

This month’s special guest is Beth Marshall, who joins us on the island to talk about how we can advance our careers as testers, ranging from learning how to build (and measure) your reputation within your team, how to create a test automation portfolio, finding ways in which your experience can help you to give back to the community, and talking about the processes involved with creating workshop content. We talk a bit about TestBash Home (even though it hadn’t happened when we recorded), the importance of celebrating everyday stories more than elevating people to heroes, our thoughts about the new audio-based social media platform Racket, and Beth finally teases an announcement from Neil about his new job (and how it ties in to a previous Testers’ Island episode). Beth’s musical selections (both the ones that made the cut, and the ones that only just missed out) contain some choice gems, ranging from pop delights to motown classics, and she becomes the first person to select a Euro

Welcome to Episode 1 of TestSphere Roulette. Joining Simon at the roulette table for this episode, we have 3 awesome Testers: Chris Armstrong - QA Strategy Consultant @ Provar Testing (@christovskia) Rachel Sherratt - Head of QA @ AccessPay (https://www.linkedin.com/in/rachelsherratt91/) Shey Crompton - Senior Quality Engineer @ Prima Assicurazioni (@sheymouse) The Roulette Wheel chose the following 3 random cards for discussion: User Friendliness - Quality Aspect Rejection - Feelings Pair Testing - Techniques Future events mentioned on the pod were: Testbash Home (https://www.ministryoftesting.com/events/testbash-home-2021) Testing Voices (https://huddle.eurostarsoftwaretesting.com/testing-voices/) Thank you to Shey, Rachel and Chris for their great discussions and to the Ministry of Testing for supporting the podcast. If you wish to find out more about TestSphere, check out RiskstormingOnline.com or find the card decks on the MoT Store.   Want to j

In this episode of the Ministry of Testing Podcast, Mike chats to Beth Marshall and Louise Harney about Community, covering    Why join a Community? The Key Points to consider when looking for a community Passive or Active participation Personal experiences - good and bad about communities Good practices for Community involvement - how to make it work for you and your approach Beth has been testing for about 13 years and is currently a senior test lead at Smoothwall. She loves being in the testing community, only really properly joined during lockdown but am now a massive advocate for. She has followed Louise's journey closely so its super excited to get a chance to speak with Louise! Beth can be found on twitter @Beth_AskHer and via beththetester.com   Louise is brand new to testing. She started to consider a career change last year and started pursuing testing with a vengeance in January. She recently started her first job as a Junior QA Engineer at Studee. She has relied heavily

This month, we’re joined by Simon Tomes, who in a complete coincidence has just begun a role as CommunityBoss at Ministry of Testing! Simon talks to us about the many different hats that he’s worn in his career, including being the co-founder of TestBuddy, a tool to support the capturing and sharing of exploratory testing notes. In a show which is a useful companion to the previous episode, we get deep into the nitty-gritty of exploratory testing: How do you estimate timeboxes if you’re testing something completely new? What categories of information do you capture during exploratory testing charters? And how do you engage others with the output of your sessions? Along the way, Simon takes a (very) deep dive into five songs which all feature elements of exploration, teaching us elements of music theory and trying not to mention the time that Prince choreographed a Batman-themed dance routine. This episode is sponsored by Provar: Struggling with the complexities of building and maintaining

Mark is joined in this off the cuff podcast by Gem Hill, Alsa Tabatabei, Ben Dowen and Lee Marshall to talk about the thorny topic of Quality. The group discuss this trickiness around defining Quality, why context matters and what are the best snacks to eat. This podcast is sponsored by TestProject. TestProject and its community built the world's largest free test automation addons library you have got to explore! With over 1,500 ready-to-use automation actions, you are in for a whole new world of automation testing. No need to develop common testing scenarios from scratch anymore, now you can simply search for any action you need for testing straight from a fully-fledged automation Addons library, contributed by the community, for the community - and supporting any web, Android or iOS app, helping you empower test cases and deliver quality at speed. Show notes Adapting Crosby's 4 absolutes of quality into a software context - Dan Ashby Automation in Testing Rackets The Quality and Testing Info

Adam talks to Lisi Hocke and Simon Berner about pairing, how to do it right, it's benefits and potential pitfalls - and their upcoming hands-on course in July. Click here to learn more about Lisi and Simon's training Show Notes: https://www.lisihocke.com/p/testing-tour.html https://www.ministryoftesting.com/events/practice-pairing-under-constraints-to-level-up-your-collaboration-skills-july-2021 With thanks to our sponsor: This podcast is sponsored by Xray, the leading Quality Assurance and Test Management app for Jira. More than 4.5 million testers, developers and QA managers trust Xray to manage 100+ million test cases each month. It is a mission-critical tool at over 5,000 companies in 65 countries, including 137 of the Global 500.   With Xray you can plan, execute and track your testing with full requirements traceability supported by both manual and automated tests, including BDD using Cucumber as well as JUnit, NUnit, Robot and others.   Discover the future of testi

Carlos Kidman talks with Venkat Ramakrishnan about Pairwise Testing. Venkat's course, "Be Wise, Do Pairwise", covers what it is while providing hands-on examples of why and how to use this powerful technique for better testing and coverage. Enrol for Venkat's course on "Be Wise, Do Pairwise" today.

In this episode of the Ministry of Testing Podcast, Mike chats with Melissa Benua and Benjamin Bischoff about Testability testing. They discuss What is defined as Testability Testing Isn't all testing classed as "Testability"? Key concepts of Exploratory Testing Good and Bad approaches to Testability Testing Baby Steps, Coverage, Framework, Awareness of Testability - Changing the mindset to testing. Make it fun and challenging - tackle low hanging fruit first The challenges new testers face in getting the right balance and approach to Testability Testing Take-aways for the listeners to enable them to approach Testability in a more efficient way Organizations today emphasize frequent delivery at reduced costs to stay competitive. The SAP world is no different. But we know that testing in SAP environments is no easy feat. Join Avo Automation's exclusive webinar to learn how to seamlessly test SAP and other applications end to end on the 5th of May.

In conjunction with the Ministry of Testing’s Exploratory Testing Week, we welcome our Antipodean friend Lee Hawkins onto the island for a discussion about exploratory testing: Do we all understand what it is? Do we all do it? How do we estimate how long it will take? And how do we showcase the results of these activities? With both guest and host bringing experiential stories which delve back into the 1990s, we chat about ways for new testers to become familiar with ET, the need for senior testing figures to share more about how they test, and whether automation has a place in supporting exploratory activities. In perhaps the most musically on-point episode of the podcast so far, Lee shares his love for the many different and less-well-known facets of the band Status Quo, and we learn that they are not confined solely to music. This episode is sponsored by Provar: Struggling with the complexities of building and maintaining tests given the impact of localization (running tests that work for various

Mike talks to Simon Tomes about Exploratory Testing:   What is defined as Exploratory Testing When should we consider it? Examples of Exploratory Testing What challenges testers face in getting the right balance between Exploratory Testing and other business needs Key concepts of Exploratory Testing How you could capture and structure your testing notes? What makes a successful debrief? How do you convince people on your team – and outside of your team – of the value of an Exploratory Testing

Adam talks to Dave Harrison, Nicola Lindgren and Callum Akehurst-Ryan about exploratory testing:  What is it?  What can it do?  How can you secure the time or budget to do it?  Where are the best places to find out more? Show notes https://www.developsense.com/blog/2012/07/few-hiccupps/ https://testbuddy.co/ https://elizabethzagroba.com/ https://nickytests.blogspot.com/p/about-me.html https://www.w3.org/TR/WCAG21/ https://www.ministryoftesting.com/testsphere/riskstorming https://www.amazon.com/Explore-Increase-Confidence-Exploratory-Testing/dp/1937785025 https://www.ministryoftesting.com/dojo/lessons/software-testing-heuristics-mind-the-gap https://callumakehurstryansblog.wordpress.com/ https://martinfowler.com/bliki/ExploratoryTesting.html http://thatsthebuffettable.blogspot.com/2017/07/pathway-exploratory-testing.html https://www.eviltester.com/2013/09/10-experiments-to-improve-your.html https://www.developsense.com/blog/2018/07/exploratory-testing-on-an-api-part-1/ ht

Adam Leon Smith talks to @FullSnackTester (AKA Ben Dowen) about the origins and success of the #TesterOfTheDay initiative on social media.  Listed to hear more about how it all works, and please send nominations to @FullSnackTester (or via this form)   Thanks to Ben and all the current volunteers involved in the initiative: Joe Paul @QAJOEPAUL Simon Prior @siprior Michael @LangCheshire Danny Dainton @DannyDainton /  https://www.linkedin.com/in/dannydainton/ Dan Billing @TheTestDoctor / https://www.linkedin.com/in/danielbilling/ Shey Crompton @SheyMouse / https://www.linkedin.com/in/sheycrompton/ https://interviews.testeroftheday.com/

In this month’s episode we welcome Lina Zubyte, who adds our desert island to the list of many countries on her tester’s passport. We talk about the nature of making human connections, how we can maintain these when we’re apart, and how to make sure we’re connecting/collaborating inclusively with a diverse group of people.  In an episode with almost as many off-the-cuff book references as musical choices, we talk about some of the more vulnerable aspects of being a tester or test manager, such as learning to let go, being comfortable with failure, and managing our approach to changes. We also talk about rising to challenges, which extends into Lina’s song choices, which include a live performance with a story that’s almost as remarkable as the music itself. This podcast is sponsored by TestProject, the world's first 100% free test automation platform for Web, Android, iOS, and API testing, just launched its major 2.0 next generation release, enabling its

In this episode of the Ministry of Testing Podcast, Mike is joined by Syed Ali, Han Toan Lim and Crystal Preston-Watson to discuss the topic of Accessibility Testing. Crystal is a Quality Engineer that supports accessibility for Salesforce.org nonprofit cloud. She is based in Denver, Colorado and has been in tech for 10 years, first starting out as a front-end developer then moving to testing in 2013. She has been involved with accessibility since 2017 first as a QA consultant for Aetna then as an accessibility engineer.  Han Toan is a senior tester based in the Netherlands. Being visually impaired for the past few years has led to him learning to use all kinds of tools to make his life comfortable. It has changed his way of making things. He blogs about it on https://mindfultester.com/category/accessibility/ Syed has worked in Testing for 8 years. Throughout that period, he has always advocated for software that is more accessible to people. The most notable recent project he has worked on was the Na

When you think about testing tools, do you think about the brain first? Deep thinking is necessary for good testing. That’s why it’s very important to develop critical thinking skills to improve the way you test. But, no matter how good you already are at critical thinking, you will make thinking errors. This is because cognitive biases influence us all. This has impactful consequences for testing because wasn’t testing supposed to be unbiased and factual? This course will help you navigate the harsh reality that biases and thinking errors have on your testing. As an introduction to the Couse on the Ministry Of Testing website, we discuss What are Cognitive Biases? Introduction to the course some examples of biases how the course can help participants challenges and how you could overcome them This course will help you recognise cognitive biases and explain what they are and how to use them to your advantage in your testing.

Carlos Kidman talks with Isabel Evans about Critical and Lateral Thinking and how different types of thinking are crucial to our roles as testers. Are you thinking about "thinking"? Join us for our Virtual SauceCon Event on April 20-22. SauceCon brings together the global community of Sauce Labs users and automated testing experts. Teams from around the world will come together to learn from each other and level up their automated testing and continuous delivery skills. Register Now for SauceCon 2021. Resources 6 Thinking Hats, by Edward de Bono Creative Trespassing, by Tania Katan Power of Habit, by Charles Duhigg CTRL SHIFT, by Mike Bonifer and Jessie Shternshuc Software Design Decoded, by Marian Petre and Andre van de Hoek Thinking, fast and slow, by Daniel Kahneman

Adam Leon Smith talks to Eldar Kravetsky and Marat Strelets from TestProject, the free mobile and web automation platform.  Digging into its capability for mobile automation in particular, and the AI functionality it offers.

On this month’s podcast, we’re delighted to be joined by the renowned (and SEO-friendly) Viv Richards, for a chat about visual regression testing which definitely doesn’t take any diversions into discussions about cricket. If you’re stumped by the concept of visual regression testing, if you’re bowled over by the number of different tools that are available in the marketplace, or if you’re worried about being caught out by focusing on automating the wrong things, there’s a variety of advice on offer within this month’s episode. Viv’s musical selections include some classic earworms, one of which achieves a significant Testers’ Island milestone, and you can find out which boy-band member manages to have one of his solo tracks selected before any of his band’s offerings. This episode is sponsored by TestProject, the world's first 100% free test automation platform for Web, Android, iOS and API testing, trusted by over 80,000 users in the t