The Testing Show

In this episode, Matthew Heusser and Michael Larsen welcome Pat Rinaldo and Naresh Kumar Nunna to discuss the importance of synthetic test data for organizations that handle large amounts of customer data and cannot use real data due to privacy concerns. Ally Bank, working with Qualitest, has successfully leveraged synthetic data to enable faster innovation and testing for its automotive and insurance applications.  Pat and Naresh discuss ways that they have been able to generate diverse and representative test data to cover a wide range of scenarios, provide significant improvements in test coverage, regression testing speed, and reduction in defects escaping to production, to allow teams to focus on innovation rather than data management and compliance.

For the second part of our Women in Testing podcast  Matthew Heusser and Michael Larsen welcome guest moderator Gwen Iarussi and guests Alexis Bell, Sangeetha Gururaj, and Lihi Segev to discuss the challenges faced by women leaders, and strategies for overcoming bias and creating opportunities for diverse talent, including stepping outside of their comfort zones and giving people a chance, microaggressions that women leaders face, and approaches for addressing them, as well as ways to make the first or next move in a dynamic and changing environment.

For this Episode, we welcome guest moderator Gwen Iarussi for an International take on women in testing roles from the front lines to senior management. Gwen hosts Alexis Bell, Sangeetha Gururaj, and Lihi Seghev to discuss their individual paths to success, the importance of sponsorship, mentorship, and advocating for oneself, strategies for overcoming bias and creating opportunities for diverse talent. 

Test Coaching requires understanding team dynamics, building trust, and providing tailored coaching to help testers improve their skills and address perception issues.  Mike Talks joins Matthew Heusser and Michael Larsen to discuss ways to assess team strengths, weaknesses, and ways of working. They focus on building rapport and a feedback culture to encourage open communication, as well as avoiding a one-size-fits-all approach to providing individualized coaching to best help them succeed.

Qualitest recently participated in the SAP for Utilities conference in Florida and we have several key players who part of the proceedings. Matt Heusser and Michael Larsen welcome Qualitest and Tricentis regulars Rick Lesley, Ryan Williams, Kevin Flynn, and Jeff Fillegar to talk about utilities moving their SAP systems to the cloud, major digital transformation efforts with aggressive deadlines, and the need to ensure quality and minimize disruption to users and providers alike.

CrowdStrike showed the world that problems can be found in unexpected places and can manifest in ways never intended with devastating results. While there is much pontificating about the root cause and how it happened, the point is "it happened". The popular joke of "Maybe they should have tested more" will invariably be said but what specifically does that mean?  Testing Show hosts Matthew Heusser and Michael Larsen welcome 1-800-CONTACTS Software Test Engineer Rachel Kibler and Qualitest CTO Vikul Gupta to discuss the various findings and speculations related to the Crowdstrike issue. We then delve into ways that testers can learn from and be better prepared for situations like this going forward, as well as leveraging next-generation technology like Generative AI to assist in the process.

CI/CD is a topic that comes up a lot and many organizations profess to doing it. Are they really doing it effectively? That was the question we had in mind and to that end, Nikolay Advolodkin, staff developer advocate at Sauce Labs, joined us to talk about implementing automated software testing and improving testing practices, specifically around the CI/CD processes. 

SAP testing has its own world in the testing ecosphere. It's a huge component (or set of components) and yet there may be many who know little about it and those who are familiar may only be scratching the surface with what is happening. Daniel Do Valle, Bill Hayden, and Kenneth Small join Matt and Michael to discuss all things SAP, including AI, the future of tooling, and how to get the most out of testing SAP implementations.  

In this episode of The Testing Show, Matt and Michael welcome Alisha Mittal, Vice President at the Everest Group, and Vikul Gupta, CTO for Qualitest North America, about the role of generative AI in testing. We look at the current state of the market and the challenges enterprises face in adopting generative AI, and how generative AI can enhance testing efforts and improve test collateral creation. 

In this episode of The Testing Show, Michael Larsen interviews Señor Performo, Leandro Melendez, about cognitive biases and how they can affect testing. They discuss various biases such as confirmation bias, the halo effect, the sunk cost fallacy, and more. We like to think that we are immune to cognitive biases and logical fallacies because we testers prize critical thinking but as Leandro points out, you would be wrong, we are as prone to them as anyone else.

Making the move to mobile-first application development is creating interesting challenges for co-located global teams. To this end, Matthew Heusser and Michael Larsen invited Mav Turner, the CTO of Tricentis, and Smita Mishra, CEO of Fandoro, to discuss the importance of user experience, security, and the need for optimized and secure code for mobile apps. They also highlight the challenges of working with distributed global teams and provide tips for effective collaboration, such as being aware of time zones and cultural differences.

In this episode of The Testing Show, Matthew Heusser and Michael Larsen welcome Dmitriy Melnik from BCU, Sri Aravamudan from Qualitest, and Mike Mokrzycki to talk about the importance of automation and cloud technology in reducing costs and improving scalability. They also highlight the differences between commercial banks and credit unions in terms of resources and investment in technology and the importance of staying relevant and providing a high-quality member experience.

In a time where remote work is much more normal, there is a give and take between what work can be done simultaneously and in tandem with others versus what needs to be accomplished with focused efforts on an individual basis. Caitlin Klink joins Matthew Heusser for this episode to discuss the benefits and advantages of gearing towards more asynchronous work and how enabling teams to leverage asynchronous work can help with productivity gains and better products for everyone. 

The world of Utilities is undergoing a massive shift and has been doing so for the better part of a decade. With the advent of new renewable technologies and solar at home, individuals are not only power consumers but are often producers. To this end, Matthew Heusser and Michael Larsen welcome Wayne Tofteroo, Ronald Teteroo, and Scott Swanigan to discuss the changing landscape of utilities and how testing in and around them is full of unique and interesting challenges.

Recently, our show host Matt Heusser headed out to Detroit to participate in the Agile and Beyond Conference being held there. In the process, he gathered together several contributors and testing experts including Holly Bielawa, Damian Synadinos, and  Jeff MacBane to discuss areas such as Emotions in Testing, Product Coaching and why its difficult, and how we can just be excited about doing testing well in this day and age.

We've had a chance to focus on a great deal of speculation and interest in Artificial Intelligence models over the past several shows and for this episode, we asked Dan Geater to join Matthew Heusser and Michael Larsen to help get to the bottom of what AI is actually doing, why the spike in interest, and how testers can prepare and benefit from the AI gold rush currently underway.

We can talk all day long about the importance of quality and testing but for many, this question will always come down to "How much is this going to cost?" Is this expense in quality and testing really worth it? To that end, Matthew Heusser and Michael Larsen invited Nabhanshu Bambi and Curtis Stuehrenberg to join us and discuss the true costs and the Return on Investment that testing can provide both in the short and long terms of projects and teams.

In celebration of June being Pride month, The Testing Show is doing a special program focusing on “Qualipride”, which is the Employee Resource Group (ERG) for LGBTQ+ identifying employees and their allies.   To discuss this, our guest host Fiona Dawson joins Bleighton Eppard, Jessica Hose, Miguel Urdinola, Mafalda Chambel, and Elizabeth Argall to discuss how Qualipride champions diversity and that diversity benefits Qualitest in its entirety.

In this episode, the metaverse and VR become more and more present and active. To that end it makes sense that there are companies working towards making those interactions as usable and seamless as possible. To that end, Ross Fernandes, Vikul Gupta and Prem Vishwanathan join Matthew Heusser and Michael Larsen to talk about ways that the virtual and the real are coming together and why it's an exciting place for a tester to potentially be.

For today's show, Beth Marshall and Chris Kenst return to continue the ChatGPT conversation, and today's focus is on what effect, if any, Chat GPT may have on testing jobs. Is it a job killer as some fear, or is it yet another tool that will aid the smart and effective tester in being more effective?

Software testing covers a lot of areas. Perhaps one of the most important, yet often overlooked, is the quality of the data that is both part of testing and the actual business. To that end Matthew Heusser and Michael Larsen welcome Naren Yalamanchilli, David Small, and Ken Wrem to talk about Datagaps, a company that is focused on making sure that Data Management and Data Analytics are in place so that companies can make sure that they have the best data possible to do business successfully. 

In the past several months, ChatGPT has been getting a lot of attention as a new cool tool that everyone is talking about. It can generate song lyrics on the fly. It can create code to solve problems and be compiled. Still, do we really understand what it is and what it can or can't do? To that end, Matthew Heusser and Michael Larsen welcome Ted Ariaga, Chris Kenst, and Beth Marshall to talk about ChatGPT, especially as it interests the world of software testing, and explore areas where it is ready for prime time and where it is not, or at least, not yet.

Agile Testing and some would say Modern Testing is built around understanding the processes and quality practices necessary to deliver a quality product to customers. How do we know if the practices our company or organization is using actually deliver what we hope them to. To help answer that, Selena Delesie and Janet Gregory join Matthew Heusser and Michael Larsen to talk about their new book "Assessing Agile Practices With the Quality Practices Assessment Model (QPAM)" and help determine if the practices an organization is using are effective and ultimately will help deliver quality products in the first place.

Many individuals on the team have a vested interest in what the tester provides and reports on. One such important team member is the product owner, who can wear many hats in an organization and represent many different perspectives. In this episode, Holly Bielawa joins Matthew Heusser and Michael Larsen to talk about the world of the product owner, their involvement with the organization, and their view of the world and their interaction with QA and testing.

In this second part of a two-part series, Matthew Heusser and Michael Larsen continue their conversation with Perze Ababa, Jon Bach, and Jen Crichlow to discuss the broader ideas of testing, specifically the areas of advocacy and addressing situations that are important to people who matter.

In this first of a two-part series, Matthew Heusser and Michael Larsen welcome Perze Ababa, Jon Bach, and Jen Crichlow to discuss the broader ideas of testing, and to ask, "Are there areas of software testing that deserve greater attention?

When it comes to Software Testing, there is no guarantee that what a tester is doing today will resemble what they are doing five or ten years from now, or if they will still be involved in software testing. Many people come and go, while others make it a point to be "lifers" in the software testing industry. Still, even for the so-called lifers, there is a broad array of options and opportunities for career growth and development. Where to go and how to get there are the broader questions. Michael Larsen sits down and talks with Vernon Richards and Leandro Melendez at the Pacific Northwest Software Quality Conference (PNSQC). held in Portland, Oregon, USA in October, 2022. They discuss the challenges and opportunities available to software testers, as well as the responsibility of curating their own testing careers, both in the work they are doing now and the work they might want to do going forward.

For years, organizations have lured their time talent and resources into Continuous Integration, Delivery, and Deployment efforts, with an additional goal to apply these principals to Continuous Testing. Still, often these efforts can one wasteful and take much more time than is necessary. Vijet Honnavar and Vikul Gupta join Matthew Heusser to discuss ideas of focusing on eliminating waste and taking a more “Intelligent” approach to testing and focusing efforts on needful and necessary areas and less on areas that have not changed or been affected by updates.

Software testing and program management share many of the same skills and what helps make a software tester effective can also be applied to the world of Program Management and how to be effective in that role. To that end, Jon Bach joins Matt Heusser to talk about his entry and involvement in the software testing world and his current involvement in the Program Management space, and how software testers can help and work effectively with Program Management. 

Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning have often taken on a near-mythical status in the software development pantheon as of late. Of course, ask ten people what AI and Machine Learning mean and you're likely to get at least twenty different answers. Understanding how and what to test surrounding it thus becomes daunting. To help demystify this topic, Jen Crichlow joins Matthew Heusser and Michael Larsen to discuss developments in the AI and ML space and how to make sense of the myriad options and, more important, considerations around how to test these technologies.

Back in 2012, Matthew Heusser, Michael Larsen, and a number of other testers and test professionals came together to write a book devoted to the topic of "How to Reduce the Cost of Software Testing". To celebrate the ten year anniversary of that experience, Matt and Michael welcome fellow author Petteri Lyytinen to share their experiences writing the book and to see if, ten years later, we have made progress on our goal or if there is more that we can do in regard to the goals we set out a decade ago.

For many years, Computer Science was the only way, educationally speaking, to learn about methodologies related to programming software and building large scale applications.  Software Engineering grew out of the need to have a more streamlined methodology, and our guest Robert Sabourin of McGill University in Montreal, Quebec, Canada has been at the forefront of helping developing those Software Engineering courses as well as teaching them to up and coming software engineers.

Applications are moving rapidly from company datacenters to the Cloud. With these changes come new challenges with building applications and testing them effectively.  Sriram Sitaraman and Lamech Carnelian join Matthew Heusser and Michael Larsen to talk about "Infrastructure Assurance" and ways to get the most out of the methodologies around putting applications into the cloud and making sure they work optimally once they are there.

This episode goes in some unusual but interesting directions. Lena Wiberg joins Matthew Heusser and Michael Larsen to talk about Lana's book and card deck, "Would Heu-Risk It?" which is all about heuristics and ways of looking at problems in a different light. Also, Lena talks about her keynote at Agile Testing Day 2022 titled "Living Fearlessly - While Living With Fear"

In our ever-changing world of applications, processes, and systems, we spend a lot of time talking specifically about improving those applications and how they are built. However, how many of us have taken a step back and asked about the actual data that we deal with? The quality of our data has everything to do with the ability of applications to be successful and work in ways that actually matter. To that end, Naresh Nunna and Sendhil Selvanathan join Matthew Heusser and Michael Larsen to discuss ways in which we can better assure overall data quality and perhaps introduce a DevOps for Data in conjunction with CI/CD pipeline modernization and analytics.

Once upon a time, and in many ways still, there was the sense that Cyber Security was the realm of elite professionals who were trained and experts in all things security related. They were special unicorns who far outstripped mere mortals. Of course, this is not true but it is a perception that persists. Today, Uri Bar-El joins Matthew Heusser and Michael Larsen to talk about how and where Cyber Security is changing and how it is becoming less about the external nebulous threats (which still exist, of course) and more on the way that everyday testers and software developers need to hone their own cyber security skills and bring the issue of security into the development and testing process much earlier and with an eye towards total quality.

In celebration of June being Pride month, The Testing Show is doing a special program focusing on "Qualipride", which is the Employee Resource Group (ERG) for LGBTQ+ identifying employees and their allies. To discuss this, guest host Fiona Dawson joins James Barret, Audry, Maulana, Brandon McGuire, Chandra Nair, and Lacy Norris to discuss how Qualipride champions diversity and that diversity benefits Qualitest in its entirety.

In many cases Accessibility and Accessibility Testing are done as late in the game processes and done to make sure that a level of compliance is met for those who most need that accommodation. This misses out on the fact that many more people could benefit from having Accessibility features integrated into their products and that the benefits of accessibility go well beyond those who need last-mile technology the most. Subhash Chhetri and Karan Ahuja join Matthew Heusser and Michael Larsen to discuss their philosophy of Accessibility For Everything, and how making every element and process accessible makes products and services better for everyone that uses them.

We spend a lot of time talking about the quality engineering of systems and processes. We spend considerably less time talking about the quality engineering related to ourselves and our everyday actions and reactions. To that end, Manoj Gupta, Qualitest MD of UK and Western Europe, joins Matthew Heusser and Michael Larsen, to talk about his book “New York to New You” and how we can apply the same rigor we do to our coding and testing efforts to build and improve the quality in ourselves.

Gwen Iarussi and Rachel Kibler continue their discussion with Catherine Carlos, Christina Codreanu, Rajini Padmanaban, and Maaret Pyhäjärvi. In this episode, the conversation is centered on how COVID has had an impact on them in general and as Women in testing in particular. Additionally, what can companies and other Women in the industry do to help enhance opportunities that are available and help out all Women in technology?

This is the first part of a two-part series that we are recording for Women's History Month. To that end, we have changed things up. Gwen Iarussi and Rachel Kibler are taking the reins and moderating these episodes. They welcome Catherine Carlos, Christina Codreanu, Rajini Padmanaban, and Maaret Pyhäjärvi to discuss the changing nature of Women in the testing space and what they have learned and adapted to along their journeys.

The pharmaceutical space (Pharma) is an area where many people have ideas of a tightly regulated environment, where initiatives can range from in-house software tracking systems to literal life-saving devices. Testing in this sphere is often seen by many as an intense challenge but does it really (or should we say "fully") deserve that reputation? To help answer that, Guy Anbar joins Matthew Heusser and Michael Larsen to discuss the variations and different areas that make up the Pharma space and how to test in and around it. 

Have you ever noticed that there seems to be a certain level of dysfunction that can take hold in various companies? If that may feel like too strong a word, consider it traits that numerous software testing individuals often exhibit, whether they intend to or not. Kristin Jackvony joins Matthew Heusser and Michael Larsen to discuss six personas (and perhaps some additional variations) that could spell trouble for projects and programs. The tricky part? We might very well recognize these personas in our organization and possibly in ourselves.

Agile as a development practice (and by extension Agile Testing) has been around now for two decades. By virtue of that, many changes and adaptations have been made and it brings up a simple question: is the term "Agile Testing" all that relevant any longer? To this end, Matthew Heusser and Michael Larsen have a chat with Janet Gregory and Jenny Bramble about Agile Testing as a name and as a practice and dare to consider... is an Agile Testing practice by any other name just as effective?

Automation is a key component of most software development initiatives. It's not just for testing, it also figures into the build process, Continuous Integration (CI), and Continuous Delivery (CD). To that end, having a stable automation framework makes a lot of sense but what exactly goes into making that framework? Today, Matthew Heusser and Michael Larsen have a chat with Chris Loder, the "Rogue Automator" about where to start, what to include, and four specific areas every good automation framework must have to succeed.

When we think of making a website accessible, we often think of making sure a screen reader works to help navigate a site or to make sure we have alt tags for images. There are of course many other areas to consider and ways in which looking at accessibility can go well beyond making a site usable for people with disabilities and towards making sites and services more usable and effective for everyone. Matthew Heusser and Michael Larsen welcome Aditya Bangari and Riya Sharma to discuss how we can adopt an Accessibility Mindset and how that mindset can help guide us towards a more inclusive user experience.

One of the great challenges of software testing is the fact that software is often designed to accomplish goals for a user but is developed in a way that is resistant to testing. In addition to knowing what to test and where to test, we should be asking how we want to test and if our testing goals are even possible. Matthew Heusser and Michael Larsen welcome Gil Zilberfeld to discuss how do we make our products more testable and how we can leverage those capabilities.

This week's show comes live from the QA Summit, held in South Jordan, Utah on July 28, 2021. Matthew Heusser and Michael Larsen welcome back Rachel Kibler and Gwen Iarussi, as well as Pax Noyes to discuss takeaways from the QA Summit talks and to also highlight QA at the Point, Women Who Test, and other initiatives happening around the Salt Lake valley to inspire and help develop current and future software testers.

It's been quite some time since we have been able to attend in-person conferences. For a brief window, vaccination rates and easing of travel restrictions allowed Matthew Heusser and Michael Larsen to attend the Xpanxion sponsored "QA Summit 2021", held in South Jordan, Utah, at the end of July, 2021. As part of the speaking group at the conference, Matt and Michael met up with Gwen Iarussi and Rachel Kibler to discuss their talks and the conference in general.

How many times has the death of testing been touted? How many talks have been giving declaring the death of testing? Granted, those talks have a specific context that is not often noticed, but the statement gets said a great deal. In this episode, Senthil Ayyappan, Head of Market Strategy for Qualitest, joins Matthew Heusser and Michael Larsen to talk about how Quality Engineering is much more than basic testing and how it is very much a growing industry. In short, reports of testing's death, especially Quality Engineering's death, have been greatly exaggerated.

As the idea of melding operations and software development led to the discipline of DevOps, so has the idea of melding testing and operations led to the concept of TestOps where many of the operations areas also fall under the role of the testing teams(s) and help organizations actually get a handle on how they can better test for infrastructure needs and make sure that feature enhancements and code changes aren't just deployed efficiently but work their best as well. For this episode, Alex Langshall and David Vydra join Matthew Heusser and Michael Larsen to discuss TestOps, its role in the development lifecycle, and ways that organizations can leverage the benefits for better systems and better release management.