Ministry Of Testing

We’re bringing 2022 to a close with a second month of coaching-related conversation, as we finally maroon the one and only Vernon Richards on our desert island, to share his many career adventures, from games testing, to Will Smith body double, to flourishing as a coach.  We talk about day-to-day challenges facing testers, such as the demands to upskill (particularly around code), how to display “coach-like” behaviours regardless of your job title, and how to balance networking with being a functioning family member. On the music front, there’s a selection of hip-hop from across the decades (with a promise of some karaoke in the future), and Vernon exploits Neil’s festive kindness to increase the size of the island’s bookshelf by 10 titles. Plus, a round-up of our favourite music and movies of 2022! Podcast Links: Vernon Richards & Stu Day - What is Quality Coaching (TestBash UK 2022) Vernon Richards - The Time I Became Will Smith’s Virtual Stunt

mabl just released the 4th Annual Testing in DevOps report. The report, which surveyed over 560 QA and engineering leaders and practitioners, looks at how DevOps adoption impacts testing activities, collaboration, and customer happiness. We’re joined by Gevorg Hovsepyan, Head of Product at mabl, to get the low-down on all the highlights and key takeaways from the report! You can download the full 2022 Testing in DevOps Report from the mabl website.

mabl recently held their annual quality engineering event, Experience 2022, all about elevating testing. The event dove into why quality is central to big industry trends like DevOps and digital transformation, and how to elevate the role of quality to create better user experiences. Darrel Farris from mabl joins us to share all the key takeaways from this year’s conference! You can check out all the sessions on-demand from Experience 2022 online now. If you’re searching for new QA talent, or looking for a new role, check out CareersInQA to find or post your role.

Performance testing is not new but with the changes on how we address work and deliveries we need to rethink how we approach performance. Join Cristiano Cunha in reviewing what we can do to add performance tests in your process so that it is compliant with these new demands of speed and stability.

When we have to choose new tools or define new processes, we consider a lot of criteria but sometimes visibility is not one of them. Join Cristiano Cunha in understanding how to identify if you have visibility issues and why is it so important. Learn why investing in visibility will, at the end, foster collaboration.

As we move unfathomably towards the festive season, we take a break from the cold and gloomy weather to welcome TestBash UK’s very own pink ray of sunshine, Clare Norman, for a discussion of the specific skills and traits that can help us to be better quality coaches We talk about how a lack of testing resources can often be liberating for our roles, how listening is as valuable a skill as speaking, the differences between coaching and teaching, and the power of persuasion, in an episode which somehow remains coherent despite Neil’s tiredness and the recording software crashing twice. Clare’s musical selections include a couple of big-hitting rock bands making their first-ever appearances on the podcast, the return of an old favourite, and some classical and world music choices too. And while Clare adds one book to our island selection, we also spend most of the episode name-checking lots of other influential books, talks and blogs in the coaching space. Podcast Links TestBash UK 202

Sergio Freire talks about how he landed in testing coming initially from a development background, ultimately becoming part of the Xray team. He talks about his experience with the testing community and also with Xray customers. He also talks about the findings during his journey, learnings that have roots on experience, the community, and customers.Testing is more broad then it seemed to be at start and also more interesting. Listen to find out more.

Welcome to episode 13 of TestSphere Roulette. Joining Kristof at the roulette table are 2 more testing superstars: Jaswanth Manigundan - Staff Quality Coach (tech) at Culture Amp Gareth Waterhouse (@gwaterhouse85) - Principal Test Engineer at ASOS.com The wheel threw out some really interesting topics for conversation: Risk Analysis - Techniques Curious - Feelings Log-Digging - Patterns Clarity - Quality Aspects Jaswanth can be contacted on the following sites:  LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/-jaswanth/ www.jaswanth.xyz Gareth can be contacted on the following sites: Twitter - @gwaterhouse85 LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/garethwaterhouse/ https://garethwater.house/ Thank you to Jaswanth and Gareth for their great discussions and to the Ministry of Testing for supporting the podcast.   If you wish to find out more about TestSphere, check out RiskstormingOnline.com or find the card decks on the MoT Store.   Follow the pod at

Fresh from last month’s TestBash adventure, Neil is joined by fellow conference attendee Conor Fitzgerald, who brings his experiences as co-founder of the Ministry of Testing Cork meetup, as well as from his many years as tester, manager and toastmaster. On our agenda today, we discuss conferences and meetups (including the challenges of running both in-person and remote events), moving into management roles, how to lead when you can’t see people, and how good listening is often even more important than good speaking. From a musical perspective, Conor does a fantastic job of debuting a few timeless bands onto our playlist, including some classic grunge and rock, and a third appearance by one of Neil’s favourite acts. Plus a load of bonus book recommendations! Podcast Links: Poppulo Ministry of Testing Cork Cork Toastmasters Club Powerpoint Karaoke YouTube: Super Voice series Ministry of Testing Meetups Lena Wiberg - Would Heu-Risk It? Amazon: Kate M

Implementing a test automation strategy is more than user adoption.  You need to do your due diligence to mediate inhibitors before you turn the keys over to your team.

Welcome to episode 12 of TestSphere Roulette. Joining Kristof at the roulette table are 2 more testing superstars: Debora Sherwood (@deborahsherwood) - Quality Coach at Squiz Benjamin Bischoff (@BischoffDev) - Test Automation Engineer at Trivago The wheel threw out some really interesting topics for conversation: Pair Testing - Techniques Dark Launch - Observability Peer Reviews - Heuristics Comparable Products - Heuristics Debora can be contacted on the following sites:  Twitter - @deborahsherwood LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/deborahsherwood/ Benjamin can be contacted on the following sites: Twitter - @BischoffDev LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/benjamin-bischoff/ https://www.softwaretester.blog/   Thank you to Debora and Benjamin for their great discussions and to the Ministry of Testing for supporting the podcast.   If you wish to find out more about TestSphere, check out RiskstormingOnline.com or find the card decks on the&n

Kristof talks to Diogo about how TestRail is trying to leverage open source to provide value to their customers. Get to know their current open source projects, where you can find some goodies, and also how they manage code contributions and how you can even contribute yourself.

We’re doing it live! For our five-year anniversary, Neil throws caution (and editing) to the wind as he roams The Lowry in Manchester during TestBash UK 2022, contending with challenges including a tea service, a hotel restaurant, tannoy systems, outside broadcasts and interviewing multiple guests at once. Betwixt the background buzz, we talk to speakers and attendees about the return of face-to-face events, the novelty of a multi-track TestBash, and the common themes that we observed during the two-day conference, including quality engineering, culture, coaching and cognition. There are music selections as usual, with a mixture of new and old, and a first appearance for possibly the quintessential 90s one-hit wonder (even though Neil is aware that they actually had multiple follow-up singles). With thanks to all of our guests who volunteered their time for this episode: Yanir Taflev, Alex Reynolds, Simon Prior, Vernon Richards, Stuart Day, Diana Dromey, Julia Förster and Steve Moss. Podcast Li

Welcome to episode 11 of TestSphere Roulette. Joining Kristof at the roulette table are 2 more testing superstars: Javier Aguirre Flores (@javier_83) - QA/Test Manager @ Capgemini Hilary Weaver-Robb (@g33klady)- Sr. Quality Engineer @ Microsoft  The wheel threw out some really interesting topics for conversation: Scalability - Quality Aspect Rejected - Feelings Bandwagon Effect - Pattern Hilary can be contacted on the following sites:  Twitter - @g33klady LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/g33klady/ https://g33klady.com Javier can be contacted on the following sites: Twitter - @javier_83 Thank you to Hilary and Javier for their great discussions and to the Ministry of Testing for supporting the podcast.   If you wish to find out more about TestSphere, check out RiskstormingOnline.com or find the card decks on the MoT Store.   Follow the pod at @TestSpherePod on twitter If you wish to be a guest on a future episode, fill the following fo

Conor Wolford has spent the majority of his young career specializing in software test design optimization. He works with many of the Fortune 500 companies around the globe to ensure teams are taking smarter, more systematic and efficient approaches to designing software tests. As the world gets more and more complex, Conor believes we must find ways to be much more thorough, while still remaining highly efficient, with our software testing efforts. We encourage you to connect with Conor Wolford on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/conorwolford/  You can sign up for a free, 30-day DesignWise trial at any time at:  https://www.ranorex.com/ranorex-designwise/ 

Kristof talks to Diogo about how effective test reporting can provide valuable insights and help make testing more efficient. From testers to managers, everyone can benefit from using test reporting and Diogo gives us some hints about what pieces of reporting data everyone should be looking into.

In this podcast, Juliette MacPhail, a Product Manager at mabl, discusses a recent product release from mabl, including the ability to support testing packaged applications, such as Salesforce, and shadow DOM elements. Learn more about mabl's Salesforce testing capabilities in this recorded webinar.

This month it’s a truly worldwide affair as Neil is joined by Nicola Lindgren, a New Zealander who’s based in Sweden, to share stories of her testing journey and her community content creation, including a newly-published book, “Starting Your Software Testing Career”. We talk about how to reserve the time to participate in extra-curricular activities, and take a deep-dive into the process of creating a book from start to finish, including finding value for your audience, how contributors can help you to create more well-rounded content, getting your content reviewed, and how to promote effectively on social media. On the music front, there are memories of Nicaraguan night-life, graduation parties, Korean dance routines and “songs for squats”! Podcast Links: Nicola’s blog Nicola’s new YouTube channel Leanpub: Starting Your Software Testing Career Amazon: Starting Your Software Testing Career House of Test The Culture Trip: Why Hig

Kristof meets with Ranorex team members Julie Fuelberth & Aaron Stearns from Ranorex to discuss the following: Stakeholders at every level are focusing on their technology that supports critical business processes knowing that they need to make a change. RPA technology can help mitigate process vulnerabilities and support scale and growth

In this podcast, Thoms Lavin, Product Manager at mabl, joins the Ministry of Testing to discuss trends in artificial intelligence and low-code, and how mabl makes it easier for anyone to contribute to test creation and maintenance. Learn more about mabl's Salesforce testing capabilities in this recorded webinar.