Testing One-on-One

What would you do when you are asked to provide estimations on “How long it will take to test” something, without getting much more than the title of a feature or an Epic. Sounds made-up? Believe it, it is not!

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 levels of our teams.

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 reality than the one we used to have at the beginning of 2020. Today we want to review a number of points and talk about things you may do to improve your working from home status.

What does Continuous Improvement have to do with Testing? Good question. This topic is not only related to testing, but it is definitely needed in every team, and testers are specially positioned to drive change and especially improvements, as we are tasked with looking at the product and the process and find what doesn’t work correctly in them. Once we know what needs to be improved, it is only natural that we push to make this happen.

Is there a more controversial topic in testing? Yet a tool more widely used by testing teams? We count everything - how many tests have we run, how many bugs, what is the relationship between developers and testers, how many minutes before lunch… Let’s talk about metrics, what do you say?

In today’s podcast episode we’re going to talk about how to tell better stories

Let’s try to analyze together what Test Ops means, or what it may mean, and get an idea of what practical things we can get from it in order to improve the value we provide as testers in our teams.

E26 - What’s The Deal With Regression Testing by Rob Lambert & Joel Montvelisky

Today we review how we became testers in the first place. How was the world back then, and then try to understand if the world today is so different from what it was back then.

I’ve had many chats with testing peers who chose to invest (or maybe waste) their time explaining why writing down test cases upfront is a waste of good testing efforts, and why it is simply better to test and then choose what to report or communicate upfront. Since I’ve had to do this again lately I thought it might be a good chance to recount why I think that the vast majority of times (not all times) it is better, maybe even essential, to document your test cases upfront.

A theme that you hear all the time is that, Development adopted Agile, but everyone forgot to think about testing as part of this adoption. So today, let’s talk about this, what happens when your team adopts Agile, but they do not do it “by the book” and the testing aspects are left outside of this adoption process.

It is a fact 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?

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?

E20 - How To Share Data Generated By Users In Testing? by Rob Lambert & Joel Montvelisky

How can we help our developers to test and to test better? We all have been asking ourselves for a long time if developers can test. What can we do to help our developers?

When we think about an application, we need to first of all think about the users who will be interacting with it, and how their context, cultural baggage, constraints, etc will influence the way they use it.

There is an approach to testing called Exploratory Testing and it is important to know how to use it, when to use it, how to manage it, what are its strengths and some of its weaknesses and we want to talk about this today

The world is now a Global Village, and this is bringing many good things, but also quite a lot of challenges.

[Part 2 from Joel and Rob all about software testing bugs.] 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.

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.

Some tips for hiring managers and testers both seeking the next best thing. Get the other side's perspective to help move forward.

Joel and Rob discuss the current meaning of creating a master test plan in the age of Agile and DevOps. "The fact we moved to Agile and that we are working more on the UserStory level should not mean that we do not need to plan our testing".

Testers or Quality Assurance? Can we influence or drive quality? Should we? People can and should, but not everyone can. And some organisations 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 person. Context is key. Some teams it is easier. Some companies do not welcome change. We need to do it.

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.

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.

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.

E7 - Testing without requirements by Rob Lambert & Joel Montvelisky

Joel Montvelisky, Chief solution architect at PractiTest - test management tool, and Rob Lambert, Director of cultivated management, a tech consulting company with today’s topic: Risk based testing.

We explore the best methods and some great sources of knowledge if you want to learn about Testing, and also if you want to gain more experience and expertise in the world of testing.

How to promote and sell testing, either regular testing or new ways of performing testing, to stakeholders who are not interested or maybe skeptical about it within our organization.

Being a sole tester of a company is without a doubt a big responsibility, but panicking won’t help here. Your job is to lead the testing process of the company, it doesn’t mean you should be the one that performs all the necessary tests. Therefore, not every bug that would be found after releasing the product is your responsibility.

What is my role as non-technical tester if my team is moving to Agile? Do I need be afraid? Will I be asked to write code for the product? Am I going to have a job at the end of this process?

Regardless if you have experience speaking at conferences or not, what is the best way to be chosen to speak in a testing conference?