There are many misconceptions in the software industry regarding both Manual Testing and Automated Testing. Some people believe that Automated Testing is the bee’s knees and exists as a replacement for Manual Testing (which is simply not true). And others believe that Manual Testing is a simple set of step-by-step tasks that anyone can run [...]
I'm inspired to write a blog about the benefits of networking in our industry due to the London Tester Gathering (LTG) that takes place every month... I've been attending London's monthly tester meetup for well over a year now and wanted to discuss why I think that networking at events such as this one has [...]
A few months ago, I read a great blog post by Iain McCowatt (@imccowatt) about "Models of Automation". The blog detailed a problem that Iain had witnessed between two of the teams that he was working with regarding automated testing - There was a lack of communication between the two teams and this was down [...]
I recently re-read one of Tony Bruce’s blog posts the other day: “Which do you have? A job or a career?”. The post poses the question about whether you see yourself as someone who has a “just a job” mentality; where you don’t enjoy what you are doing day-to-day, you clock watch, your day seems [...]
I wanted to write about the consistently hot topic of "severity vs Priority" - which I’ve noticed that many people seem to get confused about, and that there is so much conflicting information about out there on the web. It’s been bugging me (excuse the pun) for quite some time now. And even the great, [...]
I attended the London Tester Gathering last night, and was very intrigued by Trish Khoo's talk about "Testing Positive". I regularly read Trish's blog too, so was keen to hear what she had to say! Trish highlighted that sometimes testers can have a bad reputation, and that's mainly down to the belief that us testers [...]
It feels like it's been a while since I last wrote a blog post - almost a full month, but that's because I've been preparing for my first time ever talking at a conference, which I've signed myself up to do next month... It'll be at the Next Generation Testing Conference on the 23rd of May [...]
I was lucky enough to be able to attend the TestBash2.0 Testing Conference on Friday, which was fantastic. I would say that this year's TestBash event topped last year's event. It was bigger, packed full of influential people, and was such a friendly fun environment that was full of people sharing knowledge and stories. There [...]
I recently read an e-book from Elisabeth Hendrickson, entitled "Exploratory Testing in an Agile Context" (definitely worth a read if you havent already). In this e-book, Elisabeth uses an example of a test that James Bach performed called "the shoe test". For those of you who have never heard [...]
I've been researching a lot about "Inattentional Blindness" lately, and have been relating it to the world of software testing... Inattentional Blindness is a phenomenon where, if you are focussing intensely on something that is mentally demanding, you fail to notice other things happen around the thing that you are focussing on. There is a [...]
Dan Ashby 