Posted inLeadership Pair-blog Testing

Testing skills I use in management – pair-blog # 1

Background A while back I asked on Twitter for people who would be up for pair-blogging. The idea was that we agree on a topic and a date and then we each write a post about that topic. We publish on the same date and promote each other’s posts.  My reason behind this was both to get to see different views on things, learn some writing skills to improve my own writing and perhaps above…
Posted inTesting

Listen beyond the pass and fail – a story of looking at the bigger picture

Note: This was originally published as a guest blog post for DevTestOps Community. I started a new job a few years back, with one of my responsibilities stated as “Move the existing automation to the next level”. The company already had a lot of automated tests in place and had worked really hard on making automation a part of the normal team delivery. Great! I´ve worked with a lot of problematic automation and I know…
Posted inTesting

How to deal with criticism with being a tester

A while back, I had the pleasure of doing an online interview with Viv Richards and Graham Ellis around my contribution to the book "Around the world with 80 testers". My contribution is based on a talk called "My journey from dev to tester" and it is about my experience and learnings from that career switch. It was a lovely chat, even if we got some zoom bombers, and a great opportunity to further explore…
Posted inTesting

Delivering fast and slow – Ethics of Software Quality

Note: This blog post was originally published as a guest blog post on the LogiGear Blog under the name Continuous Quality – Ethical aspects of software testing Daily, we are pushing the boundaries of how fast we can deliver software. Delivering something new, better, faster than our competition can mean incredible payoff and we are constantly being asked to cut costs and deliver more, faster, cheaper. But then suddenly you wake up to 189 dead…
Posted inTesting

What (other) skills are most important for a tester?

I recently had the pleasure of attending TestBash Germany both as a workshop fascilitator and as a part of a speaker panel. On the panel we got to answer a wide range of question and I spoke a bit about teaching and mentoring junior testers. After the panel I was approached by a wonderful woman who asked me the fantastic question: "What (non-testing) skill/area is most important to learn as a tester?". My short answer…
Posted inTesting

When live gives you lemons – don’t let Bobby Drop-Tables steal them

So my recent Power Hour at Ministry of Testing got me thinking. To start: I'm sorry, tomorrow-morning-me, apparently I had to write this now, while on the rush of that experience. Why am I feeling this rush? From a Q&A? Well. I'm doing a workshop about security testing and OWASP Juice Shop this fall and I've been worrying about it. - Maybe it's too easy and scripted? - Will people learn anything? - What if…
Posted inTesting

Testing vs. Checking – separate entities or part of a whole?

There has been a lot ofdiscussion, heated and calm, about the concept of testing. What it is. What it is not. Arguments about real testing vs. what a lot of people imagine when they hear the word. Twitter and blog posts talking about “real testing”, “the future of test”, “no testing” and so on, seemingly endlessly. To be honest, I’ve had a hard time grasping a lot of it and some distinctions don’t make sense…