personal improvement

Articles

Community Plans for Developing an Organizational Software Testing Community

When author Zane Roett began a new Senior Manager test role in a new organization in 2019, he found that it became an important task to create and lead the development of a software test engineering professional community of practice (TCoP).

Zane Roett's picture Zane Roett
Pawn chess piece with a king's crown on top Zero to SME: Quickly Becoming Your Own Subject Matter Expert

On a new project, we often lack the luxury of having a subject matter expert available to answer our questions. When that’s the case, we have to become our own SME. Here are a few key methods from the writings and presentations of experts in various fields that deal with information gathering and rapid learning. You can easily use these methods, right now, to quickly gain the knowledge you need in order to move forward.

Thomas Sullivan's picture Thomas Sullivan
Hand holding a light bulb in front of a sunrise 6 Unexpected Career Tips for Thinking Testers

Of course getting training, practicing the skills of testing, moving into the right product line, and learning are all necessary for testers to grow their careers. But when Jon Hagar asked himself what helped him grow as a thinking tester, he came up with some ideas that are more off the beaten path. Consider these six tips and your future will be bright.

Jon Hagar's picture Jon Hagar
Hand holding up a light bulb Learning without Asking: Breaking into a New Testing Field

If you're first getting into software testing, or if you've started a new job testing in a different industry, you probably have a lot of questions—about terms and jargon, expectations, requirements, and more. Hopefully your new team will answer some of them, but if you feel like you keep bugging them, there are ways you can learn and discover on your own.

Laura Oniga's picture Laura Oniga

Better Software Magazine Articles

tolerate You Get What You Tolerate

We’ve all worked with a talented developer who can be a frustrating challenge to manage. First-time managers may unknowingly encourage bad behavior. There are several innovative ways to resolve the situation.

Andy Kaufman's picture Andy Kaufman
HOW TECHNOLOGY IS CHANGING THE WAY WE LEARN How Technology Is Changing the Way We Learn

Modern technologies like virtual reality, cloud-based systems, and measurement of content have disrupted how we learn. Standards have evolved to improve how learning material can be published to any device.

Troy Tolle's picture Troy Tolle
Do You Really Want to Be a Manager Do You Really Want to Be a Manager?

The majority of managers are promoted due to their software development expertise. But becoming a successful manager requires a drastic change of focus. There is a set of expectations to consider before making that leap to the “dark side.”

Ron Lichty's picture Ron Lichty MW Mantle
overwhelmed at work Saying No to More Work

We’ve all been placed in the situation where a boss asks you to perform more work than you can possibly handle. Johanna Rothman knows firsthand that there is a better way to respond that benefits you and your manager.

Johanna Rothman's picture Johanna Rothman

Interviews

Aprajita Mathur Secrets to a Healthy Work-Life Balance: An Interview with Aprajita Mathur

Aprajita Mathur, bioinformatics software test manager at Guardant Health, discusses how to develop yourself and why it's so important to take the time to do so. She explains that your personal life will always be more significant than any work you need to get done, and she gives strategies for how to talk with your manager as well as your team when you are feeling overworked and need a break. Aprajita believes if you are self-aware and have open communication, then having these conversations will be easier and you can focus on yourself.

Owen Gotimer's picture Owen Gotimer
8 Ways to Ruin Your One-on-Ones: An Interview with Jason Wick
Video

In this interview, Jason Wick, senior manager at MakeMusic, discusses his STAREAST presentation about eight ways you could be making your one-on-one meetings completely useless. He discusses in depth what he feels is the number one way to ruin these meetings: holding back on feedback. He also offers advice on how you can educate your team leader to avoid the pitfalls that lead to ineffective one-on-ones.

Jennifer Bonine's picture Jennifer Bonine
Julie Gardiner Emotional Intelligence in Testing: An Interview with Julie Gardiner
Video

Julie Gardiner, head of QA at Testing Rainmaker Limited, discusses the STAR conferences Test Lab she leads, which allows people to attend virtually and even win prizes for best test report and best bug report. She also talks about her upcoming book, and why emotional awareness, self-management, empathy, and relationship building are important skills for testers.

Jennifer Bonine's picture Jennifer Bonine
Experiences at STAREAST 2018: An Interview with Michael Sowers
Video

Michael Sowers, TechWell’s IT director and program chair for STAREAST 2018, discusses some of the activities, presentations and networking opportunities at the event. He also discusses what to expect at the all-new Agile Testing Days.

Jennifer Bonine's picture Jennifer Bonine

Conference Presentations

Agile DevOps West Hacks to Becoming a Mindful Agile Tester
Slideshow

Have you ever felt like you've been working on multiple tasks all day long, but at the end of the day when you review your work, you realize you haven’t accomplished anything concrete?

Raj Subrameyer
STAREAST Creative Trespassing: Sneak More Imagination into Your Work and Get More Done
Slideshow

After years of smuggling creativity into the corporate sector without getting busted, Tania Katan has learned that we don’t need to be in a job that is distinctly creative in order to be distinctly creative in our job.

Tania Katan
STARWEST 2018 Evolution—Not Revolution: Transforming Your Testing
Slideshow

You may have heard the saying “The only constant on any project is change.” Yet the prospect of change is rarely welcomed—either personally or professionally. How is it that we still believe that these changes apply to others but not to us? Julie Gardiner says that now is the time to re-evaluate and transform how we do testing in order to deliver more value to organizations—from a people, processes, and tools perspective. Join Julie as she shares current experiences of transformations and lessons learned within different organizations. She discusses an automation framework that ended up being thrown away, revamping processes, and tools and techniques to transform your testing. This thought-provoking session will give you the courage and ideas for how you can add even more value to your company.

Julie Gardiner
STARWEST 2018 The Art of Software Investigation
Slideshow

Although processes and tools play an important role in software testing, the most important testing tool is the mind. Like scientists, testers search for new knowledge and share discoveries—hopefully for the betterment of people’s lives. More than sixty years ago, William I.B. Beveridge reframed discussion of scientific research in his classic book The Art of Scientific Investigation. Rather than add to the many texts on the scientific method, he focused on the mind of the scientist. Join Ben Simo as he applies Beveridge’s principles and techniques for scientific investigation to software testing today. Learn to discover and communicate new knowledge that matters; to think—and test—like scientists; and to continually prepare, experiment, exploit chance, imagine productively, apply intuition and reason, tune observation, and overcome resistance.

Ben Simo

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