Wow! What another exceptional conference by the team behind ATD! Lots of great talks and workshops at this years event, and I'm very proud to have been involved in presenting again for the second year running. This year I ran my workshop on "A note on note taking using mind-maps", which focussed on teaching how [...]
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Tales from TestBash NY
TestBash is one of the best context driven testing conferences ever. And although I've always wanted to speak at TestBash in Brighton, my talk submissions have never really fitted the theme... Until TestBash NY!! I was extremely lucky and honored to be speaking at TestBash NY, doing a talk on "How to succeed with difficult [...]
Let’s Test Day 1… What a day!
Wow. It's 5am and I've just got back in from socialising with Michael Bolton, Lars Sjodahl and Philip Quinn (a fellow Glaswegian) where I left them after the past hour of telling some classic jokes and Michael playing his mandolin (and me and Philip getting into the full swing of things being reminded of back home). Today [...]
Estimations, Guesstimations, Shmesstimations…
I recently found these "No bullshit estimation cards" I can't agree more with the message they send regarding estimations. Almost everywhere I have worked, there has been a big emphasis on the need for estimating the time and effort for implementing and releasing a new feature, but in almost every case we get it wrong. Whether that is missed [...]
Testing Misconceptions 7 – “Lets add that Test Case to the Feature File”… [facepalm]
I've not blogged about a misconception for a while, so here's a really annoying one to add to the series... FEATURE FILE SCENARIOS ARE NOT TEST CASES!! Sorry for the caps... I hope the picture above can portray my annoyance at this misconception. I don't know where this comes from. Maybe it's the terminology of [...]
TITP Podcast Episode 11 – Part 1 of “Hiring & Recruitment in Testing”
We posted a new podcast episode up a few days ago: "Testing In the Pub Episode 11 – Hiring and Recruitment – Part 1" In this 2 part chat, me and Steve got talking about hiring and recruitment in the testing world. We speak about our experiences with looking for the right person, interviews (from [...]
Dispelling the misconceptions #3 – Testing ISN’T running through a script to check against requirements!
This is a big misconception that usually comes from other members of the project team not understanding what testers do. The fact is that some people don't really know what testers do. And I believe a huge part of a tester's job should be to be vocal about what they actually do. Running through a [...]
