
Exploratory and Automated testing: Using the right techniques in the wrong contexts
Checks Vs Testing, contract testing, feedback, quality, Quality Awareness, Test automation, testability, Testing, unit testingExploratory testing is about testing in an unpredictable context and therefore detecting unpredictable failures in our software. Automated testing is about testing in a predictable context and therefore detecting predictable failures. The mistake we make with automation is we try to apply it to the wrong context

August - Toread
Agile, code coverage, links, Quality Awareness, Reading, Testing, Tips
31st August
📻 How Can You Stop Comparing Yourself With Other People? If you manage people then this podcast is worth a listen. Having a better understanding of why we compare ourselves to others (social creatures living in hierarchical structures) and…

July - Toread
Agile, links, Quality Awareness, Reading, Testing, Tips
At the intersection of software, technology and people
What is this?
Things I’ve been reading this week that I’ve found interesting or intriguing. Sharing because I thought you might like them too. Most of the links…

Future of testers: somewhere between users, teams and businesses
Agile, Collaboration, Quality Awareness, testability, Testing
3 minute read
I've been thinking a lot recently about what the future of the testers role could look like. Especially in teams that not only fully embrace CI/CD or DevOps but actually get some way towards implementing the ideas behind the…

What do testers do next?
Agile, QA, Quality Assurance, Quality Awareness, TestingIf the perceived value of testers is just to test the changes made by the development team then the future of the testers role looks bleak but could it be more than this?

Agile Manchester 2020: Testers Edition
Agile, Reading, talks, Testing, Tips
I’ve always found that tester representation at agile conferences to be lacking. It’s a bit like it doesn’t have the word test in the titles so it’s not for me. Personally I’ve always found a treasure trove of information from talks…

Building confidence with automation
Automation, Collaboration, documentation, testability, Testing, TipsFor automation to be accepted and therefore successful people need to feel confident in the process, but how do you do that for test automation? "Show" them the process or build trust with the person doing the work.

How to document Unit Testing
Collaboration, documentation, Test automation, testability, Testing, unit testing
Whenever you talk about unit testing with teams they never tell you what it means to them. They go straight to of course we do and show you 100s of passing tests. Interesting thing is by calling it unit testing everyone thinks they are talking…

How to move away from the In Test column
Agile, feedback, Kanban, Testing, Tips, TOC, visulisationWe as testers are always looking at ways to improve our testing processes and one way to do that is to move away from the In Test column. You can read more about the why in my post "In Test" column but the how I left pretty vague. I'd like to…

What is Contract Testing?
consumer-driven contract testing, contract testing, feedback, Test automation, Testing, unit testing
And Consumer-driven contract testing
This is a follow on from Contract testing: Why do it
First some quick definitions:
Consumer Is someone (a dev team for instance) that makes use of a third party component or a combination of components…