People & Teams
Articles
 |
To Get Quality Software, Let Them Fail As an advocate for quality, you look at the product, take into account time, budget, and other business constraints, and recommend fixes to ship a product with the best possible quality. ... And the businesspeople in production don’t want to fix it. How can you communicate bugs and risk to people who don't want to listen? Instead of getting frustrated, you need to frame issues in a meaningful way—and, if you have to, let people fail. |
|
 |
The New Role of Test Assurance Officer and Test Coach Testing has changed a lot in the last ten years. Although some traditional techniques are still useful, many testing activities are being done by developers, users, and other nonprofessional testers. Consequently, the role of test manager has changed into more of a test assurance officer and coach. The way this new role is implemented can differ from situation to situation. Here’s how it can be useful. |
|
 |
Dealing with a Test Manager’s Most Annoying Problems A test manager has to perform in multiple dimensions, using a variety of professional and interpersonal skills daily. With all these career facets, there are lots of different areas that can pose a problem. Here are the most common (and most annoying) things a test manager typically hears on a regular basis, as well as some strategies for how to deal with them. |
|
 |
6 Ways Testers Can Add Value (Other Than Functional Testing) Many testers spend their time doing functional testing and don't come out of this cocoon. But software testing is all about discovering quality-related information to assist stakeholders in making informed decisions, and there are multiple ways to discover information in addition to functional testing. Here are six actions that will help you add more value to your projects. |
Interviews
 |
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. |
|
 |
Embracing Tools and Technology in QA: An Interview with Melissa Tondi
Video
In this interview, Melissa Tondi, senior QA strategist at Rainforest, discusses the foundation you need in order to have a positive introduction for new tools and technologies. She explains why the team leader has to understand what motivates each individual and how to get them excited about their job. Melissa says team members also have to realize that if they are in any way involved in testing software, they are a technologist, so they have to embrace the tools and technology that will continuously improve and streamline repetitive tasks. |
|
 |
What Testers Can Learn from Airline Safety Improvements: An Interview with Peter Varhol and Gerie Owens
Video
Technologist and evangelist Peter Varhol and Gerie Owens, a test architect and certified ScrumMaster, discuss their STARWEST presentation, “What Aircrews Can Teach Testers about Testing.” They talk about how testers can apply airline safety practices to their teams’ delivery of high-quality applications through complementary expertise, collaboration, and decision-making. They also explain how blind deference to authority and automation can be detrimental to a testing team, and how to use everyone’s skills to achieve success. |
|
 |
Testing in the Dark: An Interview with Rob Sabourin
Video
Rob Sabourin, the program chair for STARWEST 2018, discusses the selection process for conference speakers, his favorite aspect of the conference, and the interactive Test Lab. He also details his “Testing in the Dark” talk, which gives strategies to use when you’re required to test software without any requirements, design, or product knowledge. |
Better Software Magazine Articles
 |
QA Is More Than Being a Tester QA testers often take on more of a role than just testing software code. When the team needs help, QA should lend a hand in assisting with business analysis, customer communication, user experience, and user advocacy. |
|
 |
All Customers Are Not Created Equal Software developers may not think they have much to do with customers, but it is wise to consider the customer in all you do, from collecting requirements to design and implementation. |
|
 |
The Unspoken Truth about IoT Test Automation The internet of things (IoT) continues to proliferate as connected smart devices become critical for individuals and businesses. Even with test automation, performing comprehensive testing can be quite a challenge. |
|
 |
Scrum: Back to Basics So you think you know Scrum? Using the whimsical notion of farm animals and light-hearted visuals, take a refreshing review of the entire Scrum lifecycle as an intuitive set of roles, responsibilities, and handoffs. Particular attention is placed on what the ScrumMaster and product owner are expected to do at each handoff. |
Conference Presentations
 |
How to Lead Without Authority
Slideshow
Do you need to lead a project but have no level of authority? Is this the first time leading a project, but not sure where to start? Are you interested in potentially being a leader, but wondering what it takes? Leadership can come from many different roles within a company—regardless of title. Everyone wants to be the leader, but it’s not as easy as it appears. Parts of leading projects or teams can be challenging and at times requires tough conversations. Whether you are within IT or in another department, join Jolene for this session to learn tips to effectively lead a project through an organization without having direct reports or authority. Better understand how to influence, mentor, coach and direct regardless of your title and leave with new perspectives and ideas on how to be an great leader regardless of your title, position or authority level. |
Jolene Trzebiatowski
|
 |
Are You the Best Leader You Can Be?
Slideshow
We are all leaders. At a minimum, we must lead ourselves every single day, but many of us also have teams that we lead and serve. Have you ever stopped to analyze yourself to determine if you are the best leader you can be? Amy Jo Esser has had the joy of learning from many great leaders outside the testing arena,including John C. Maxwell, Tony Robbins, Mel Robbins, Brendon Burchard, Michael and Megan Hyatt, and Rachel Hollis. Amy Jo continues to learn from leaders in our testing community, including the inspiring leaders and speakers who have been a part of the Women Who Test community. Join Amy Jo as she shares ways to be the best leaders we can be by employing approaches from these leaders, including “Win the Morning, Win the Day,” “The Continuous Learning and Growing We All Must Do" “Honoring and Embracing Your Fears" “Other Favorite Leadership Books, Blogs and Podcasts.” |
Amy Jo Esser
|
 |
Testing in Production
Slideshow
How do you know your feature is working perfectly in production? And if something breaks in production, how will you know? Will you wait for a user to report it to you? What do you do when your staging test results do not reflect current production behavior? In order to test proactively as opposed to reactively, test in production! By testing in production, you will have increased accuracy of test results, your tests will run faster due to elimination of mock and bad data, and you will have higher confidence before releases. You can accomplish this through feature flagging, continuous delivery, and data cleanup. Only when your end-to-end tests pass in production will you know that your features are truly working. Talia Nassi will show you how to mitigate risk, improve your understanding of the steps to get there, and shift your company’s testing culture to provide the best possible experience to your users. |
Talia Nassi
|
 |
The Reality Distortion Field of Testing
Slideshow
The reality distortion field (RDF) is a term coined by Bud Tribble at Apple Computers in 1981 to describe Steve Job's charisma and its effect on the developers working on the Macintosh project. The RDF was said to be Steve Job's ability to convince himself and others to believe almost anything with a mix of charm, bravado, marketing, appeasement, and persistence. The RDF warps an audience's sense of proportion for difficulties and makes them believe that any task is possible. When it comes to testing, we have this RDF all around us, with managers saying things like, "We can and should automate everything," "We can be much more effective and productive when we work on multiple projects," "We need to provide lots of evidence to demonstrate the thoroughness of our testing," "Testers need to become developers," and so forth. |
Lloyd Roden
|
Recommended Web Seminars
Featured Resources
Visit Our Other Communities
StickyMinds is a TechWell community.
Through conferences, training, consulting, and online resources, TechWell helps you develop and deliver great software every day.