Ministry of Testing

Our new host, Kristof Van Kriekingen talks to Wim Selles, a solutions architect from Sauce Labs. A man who helps customers successfully implement and get the most value out of their investment in Sauce Labs. He loves to solve puzzles and answer hard questions for customers. Problems don't exist, only challenges he said. They talk about puzzles, features and the future of Sauce Labs. Do you know what the difference is between a real & virtual mobile device? Can you run API Tests on Sauce Labs? Is our data secure? Is garlic sauce still Wims favourite sauce?

In our longest episode to date, Neil gets deep into pretty much everything with fellow podcast aficionado Chris Armstrong. We chat in-depth about Chris’s early career within the games testing industry, looking at some of the fun and not-so-fun aspects of combining work and play. There’s also the perfect chance for Neil and Chris to nerd out about their love of the Football Manager game series. It’s not just a chat about games though! We get into some thought-provoking and introspective discussions about career progression, examining how we can make opportunities open up for ourselves, and we nerd out uncontrollably about the awesome support that the testing community is always willing to offer up. On the music front, expect a variety of nu-metal, pop-punk, another Eurovision entry, and one of the unlikeliest 90s pop selections that we’ve had for a long time. This episode is sponsored by Xray, the leading QA and Native Test Management app for Jira. With Xray you're able to streamline development and testing into a single collaborative workflow where all the requirements are naturally linked to testing. Never overlook another test now that quality is built right into everything you develop. Say goodbye to silos with Dev and QA, united as they should be. Discover the future of native quality management and start your free trial today at getxray.app Podcast Links: Testing Peers podcast IMDb: Kinect Disneyland Adventures Last.fm Kinect announcement Wikipedia: California Department of Fair Employment and Housing v Activision Blizzard Polygon: Cyberpunk 2077 [CD Projekt Red] has involved months of crunch, despite past promises Football Manager Championship Manager 01/02: Tapani patch and its successors Neil’s favourite Championship Manager 2 cheat Wivenhoe Town FC Cabinteely FC Visit St. Neots Wikipedia: John Bellingham Chris’s “Self-Retrospective” blog post The Club: Google hangout for testers The Club: 24 Hours of TestBash Home Charity Marathon TestBash Home 99-Second Talks (beginning with Chris’s song!) Chris’s blog post featuring lyrics from his final song choice Geordie Test Atelier Tech Team Weekly Chris on Twitter: @christovskia Regular Links: Listen to and subscribe to this podcast on iTunes and SoundCloud Sign up to be a guest on the show Testers' Island Discs playlist on Spotify Testers' Island Discs reading list on Goodreads Follow us on Twitter

Welcome to episode 4 of TestSphere Roulette.   Joining Simon at the roulette table are 2 more testing superstars: Maaike Brinkhof (@Maaikees)- Test Consultant and iOS Developer @ Sensibly Peet Michielsen (@peetronicsi) - Senior Verification Engineer @ Optos The wheel threw out some really interesting topics for conversation: Confident - Feelings Status Quo Bias - Patterns Distributed Systems - Dealing With Change   Maaike did a great presentation at this years TestBash Home which you can view for free here: https://ministryoftesting.com/dojo/series/testbash-home-2021/lessons/bullshit-alert-on-the-bullshitisation-of-software-testing… She can be contacted on the following places: Blog - maaikebrinkhof.nl LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/maaike-brinkhof-1942b725/    Peet is presenting a 99 Minute Workshop in season 2 for the Ministry of Testing. More info found here - ministryoftesting.com/news/new-99-minute-workshops-coming-in-september… He can be contacted here: Blog - peetronics.com LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/peetmichielsen/  Thank you to Maaike and Peet for their great discussions and to the Ministry of Testing for supporting the podcast.   Want to appear as a guest on TestSphere Roulette? Join us by completing our quick form.   If you wish to find out more about TestSphere, check out RiskstormingOnline.com or find the card decks on the MoT Store Sounds and Music courtesy of Zapsplat.com Thank you for listening and we look forward to seeing you at the roulette table again soon

On this Podcast, Mike talks to Nicola Lindgren about her article on the Ministry of Testing web site, Leading Test Teams When You’re Not A Manager https://www.ministryoftesting.com/dojo/lessons/leading-test-teams-when-you-re-not-a-manager They discuss the topic of Test Leadership and how you come to approach it without being in a position of authority, covering: What is Test Leadership? Traditional vs modern definitions Test Leadership in action - good and bad examples Are we not de-facto leaders as we are responsible for the piece of work that we deliver, to a larger team (the test team) Informal Test Leadership Test Leadership - support, skills and training needed Positives and negatives of test leadership Final thoughts and words from A Seasoned Informal Test Leader This podcast is sponsored by Provar Provar makes testing low code applications like Salesforce crazy easy. Finally! Create tests the way your users use the applications - no code required (unless you want). Be productive from day one and focus less on regression and more on the fun stuff. Head to get.provartesting.com/alm-brand to see how Alm. Brand 120+ saved hours of regression testing per cycle in only 4 months. Cool, right?

To commemorate a half-century of episodes, we’re joined on the increasingly densely populated desert island by Sam Connelly, who hails from the 26th largest island in the world, to talk about her journey into testing and some top tips about building your personal brand, especially in the audio-visual and streaming space.  We discuss the places to gain inspiration for our brand names, the challenges of pairing online from remote timezones, setting up your personal working environment, finding motivation during lockdowns, and recommend some ways to get up-and-running with streaming quickly and cheaply. Looking at the person behind the brand, we also touch upon defining our personal values, discussing when it’s important to be transparent, which touches upon some of Sam’s hobbies which aren’t strictly NSFW but which might prompt awkward questions from young listeners; and Neil confesses to the time that he tried to tie his personal branding in with the Backstreet Boys. Among Sam’s rich music choices are some Mongolian folk metal, another artist with a RuPaul connection, the first appearance of a violumpet on the podcast, and a song which features her name within the lyrics. Plus, finally, a book to help our fifty island inhabitants to survive! This episode is sponsored by TestRail: TestRail helps you manage and track your software testing efforts. Its intuitive web-based user interface makes it easy to create test cases, manage test runs and coordinate your entire testing process. Easily track and follow the status of individual tests, milestones, and projects with dashboards and activity reports. Get real-time insights into your testing progress and boost productivity with personalized to-do lists, filters, and email notifications. Try TestRail for Free Today Podcast Links: Sam’s personal website (BugHunterSam.com) Twitch: BugHunterSam Twitch: noopkat Twitch: NeilStudd YouTube: Sam Connelly YouTube: Neil Studd (Let’s Explore) Sam’s blog: Time zone testing considerations YouTube: Video demonstrating Sam’s range of audiovisual equipment YouTube: Matt Parker - Why are Talk-Show Hosts So Bad at YouTube? Calendly Sam’s “About” page, which lists her personal values BogLogger: Tracking Your Poo Kirsten Schultz: Spoon Theory Wikipedia: Confirmation bias YouTube video for Sam’s fifth selection (featuring the violumpet!) Postman Space Camp: Continuous Quality with Postman Tech Team Weekly podcast Sam on Twitter: @BugHunterSam Regular Links: Listen to and subscribe to this podcast on iTunes and SoundCloud Sign up to be a guest on the show Testers' Island Discs playlist on Spotify Testers' Island Discs reading list on Goodreads Follow us on Twitter

Welcome to episode 3 of TestSphere Roulette. Joining Simon at the roulette table are 2 more testing superstars: David Maynard (@cambridgetestuk)- Test Group Lead @ Cambridge Consultants Emna Ayadi (@emna__ayadi) - Starting a new exciting role soon! The wheel threw out some really interesting topics for conversation: Gamblers Fallacy - Patterns Continuous Delivery - Dealing with Change Claims - Heuristics David plugged the Testing Peers podcast which he is a co-host of (along with Simon), which can be found here - https://testingpeers.com David mentioned that Cambridge Consultants are hiring for different levels of tester, if you wish to find out more contact David or check out the company website: https://uk.linkedin.com/in/david-maynard-1640a126 https://www.cambridgeconsultants.com/careers   Emna is very active within the testing world and frequently blogs about her journey, she has also compiled a book with Ard Kramer which the link can be found for below: blog: https://emnaayadi.com Linkedin https://www.linkedin.com/in/emnaayadi 21st Century Skills For Testers: https://leanpub.com/_21stskills4testers Thank you to David and Emna 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 Sounds and Music courtesy of Zapsplat.com Thank you for listening and we look forward to seeing you at the roulette table again soon.

Mike chats with Tamoya Beckford about her article on the Ministry of Testing: A QA Engineer’s Exit Strategy: How To Quit Like A Professional They cover: What prompted this article? When would you start to think about Career Transitions? Would it not be easier to stay where you are? What key steps would people have in place before starting on this path? Why planning is important How to approach this in a professional way Tamoya Beckford is a senior QA analyst with more than five years of experience in software quality assurance. She resides in Kingston, Jamaica and enjoys crafting, travelling and exploring new places and cultures. She can be contacted via LinkedIn : https://www.linkedin.com/in/tbeckford/   This podcast is sponsored by mabl mabl is an intelligent test automation platform for Agile teams. It’s the only SaaS solution that tightly integrates automated end-to-end testing into the entire development lifecycle.  With mabl it's easy to create, execute, and maintain reliable tests, allowing software teams to increase test coverage, speed up development and improve application quality. Try it free at mabl.com/trial!

With summer in full swing, we welcome Thomas Rinke to the island, to talk about his career in testing, talking through some of the challenges and achievements associated with guiding teams along their agile journey, from both a tester and manager’s perspective. We also talk further about the concept of “whole team quality”, the joy of exploratory testing, the importance of promoting team diversity, and how we can each help to elevate new voices. In an episode recorded in early July, Neil makes some eerily accurate predictions for the outcome of the rescheduled Euro 2020 tournament, and there are some rock/pop-infused musical selections that include the first appearance of a James Bond theme song. This episode is sponsored by Provar: Provar is the leading expert in Salesforce testing focused on accelerating innovation within the Salesforce ecosystem. They provide a robust test automation solution and deep Salesforce expertise to help you deliver scalable and repeatable tests to enhance release agility and maximize your Salesforce investment. To learn more visit provartesting.com. Podcast Links: SWR3 Ministry of Testing: The Club Richard’s posts about the Future of TestBash Wikipedia: Scaled agile framework (SAFe) YouTube: AgileTD: Janet Gregory - Testing is a Team Problem Wikipedia: Behaviour-driven development (BDD) James Bach: Exploratory Testing 3.0 (“All testing is exploratory”) Alex Schladebeck on Twitter: @alex_schl Exploratory Testing: What are microheuristics and how can you find and use them? with Alexandra Schladebeck https://www.ministryoftesting.com/dojo/series/software-testing-webinars/lessons/masterclass-exploratory-testing-what-are-microheuristics-and-how-can-you-find-and-use-them-with-alexandra-schladebeck Exploratory Testing Week 2021: Video of Thomas’s experience report Exploratory Testing Week 2021: Thomas’s Club thread with mind maps 99-Minute Workshops: Lena Wiberg: Speed-testing Using Mind-maps Berlin Marathon Netflix: Coded Bias Better Allies on Twitter: @betterallies Cucumber Podcast: Sexual Harrassment in Tech Ben Dowen on Twitter: @FullSnackTester Tester of the Day on Twitter: @TesterOfTheDay Tester of the Day nomination form Agile Testing Days Racket: Richard Bradshaw - Rewarding the MoT team with August off Thomas on Twitter: @thomrinke   Regular Links: Listen to and subscribe to this podcast on iTunes and SoundCloud Sign up to be a guest on the show Testers' Island Discs playlist on Spotify Testers' Island Discs reading list on Goodreads Follow us on Twitter

Welcome to episode 2 of TestSphere Roulette. Joining Simon at the roulette table are 2 more testing superstars: Russell Craxford (@r_crax) - Head of Quality Management at Saggezza Hanna Schlander (@hannaschlander) - Quality Catalyst at Jayaway   The wheel threw out some really interesting topics for conversation: Curse of Knowledge - Patterns Boundary Testing - Techniques Curious - Feelings   Russell plugged the Testing Peers podcast which he is a co-host of (along with Simon), which can be found here - https://testingpeers.com   Both Hanna and Russell mentioned that they are looking for testers for their companies, if you wish to find out more, get in touch with either of them via their linkedIn pages: Hanna - https://www.linkedin.com/in/hanna-schlander-42a72554/ Russell - https://www.linkedin.com/in/russell-craxford/   Thank you to Russell and Hanna 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   Sounds and Music courtesy of Zapsplat.com Thank you for listening and we look forward to seeing you at the roulette table again soon.  You can follow TestSphere Roulette on Twitter.

Welcome to episode 2 of TestSphere Roulette. Joining Simon at the roulette table are 2 more testing superstars: Russell Craxford (@r_crax) - Head of Quality Management at Saggezza Hanna Schlander (@hannaschlander) - Quality Catalyst at Jayaway   The wheel threw out some really interesting topics for conversation: Curse of Knowledge - Patterns Boundary Testing - Techniques Curious - Feelings   Russell plugged the Testing Peers podcast which he is a co-host of (along with Simon), which can be found here - https://testingpeers.com   Both Hanna and Russell mentioned that they are looking for testers for their companies, if you wish to find out more, get in touch with either of them via their linkedIn pages: Hanna - https://www.linkedin.com/in/hanna-schlander-42a72554/ Russell - https://www.linkedin.com/in/russell-craxford/   Thank you to Russell and Hanna 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   Sounds and Music courtesy of Zapsplat.com Thank you for listening and we look forward to seeing you at the roulette table again soon.  You can follow TestSphere Roulette on Twitter.

On this episode of the Ministry of Testing Podcast, Mike chats with Eduardo Fischer about his article on Ministry of Testing: Moving From Software Development To QA: A Road Less Travelled  They cover  Why they move to development first and not QA? Are Developers just testers at heart really? With hindsight, do you think that companies see you have QA potential and hired you for your skills with a view to moving into QA? What do you do when there is no QA department or person whom you could speak with to raise the bug with The tools and self-learning encountered on the journey from Dev to QA QA vs Dev - working styles Eduardo Fischer is a quality assurance engineer who focuses on API and UI test automation and is currently working for an international stockbroker. He discovered his passion for testing during his time as a back-end developer and eventually made testing his full-time job. His hobbies are developing Alexa skills and making models for his 3D printer. You can find Eduardo on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/mwlite/in/eduardo-fischer-dos-santos   This podcast is sponsored by Sauce Labs White Paper - Software Testing in a Post Pandemic World The global COVID-19 pandemic has changed the landscape of work. With more employees working from home, companies had to quickly transform their digital infrastructure to accommodate the trend and support remote work. Even after the pandemic is over, the changes will be long-lasting. Moving forward, software companies need to have the digital infrastructure as well as the policies and procedures in place to enable their workforce to work efficiently and safely no matter where in the world their employees are. Read the full Sauce Labs white paper here!

This month’s special guest is Beth Marshall, who joins us on the island to talk about how we can advance our careers as testers, ranging from learning how to build (and measure) your reputation within your team, how to create a test automation portfolio, finding ways in which your experience can help you to give back to the community, and talking about the processes involved with creating workshop content. We talk a bit about TestBash Home (even though it hadn’t happened when we recorded), the importance of celebrating everyday stories more than elevating people to heroes, our thoughts about the new audio-based social media platform Racket, and Beth finally teases an announcement from Neil about his new job (and how it ties in to a previous Testers’ Island episode). Beth’s musical selections (both the ones that made the cut, and the ones that only just missed out) contain some choice gems, ranging from pop delights to motown classics, and she becomes the first person to select a Eurovision entry. Podcast Links: Racket: Beth’s profile Racket: Neil’s profile The Club: Racket recommendations thread Racket: Beth reads the MoT Code of Conduct in eight accents Twitter Spaces The story of Beth’s first internet search TestBash Home 2021 FailQonf TestBash Manchester 2020: Beth Marshall - The Average Tester Beth’s Reputation Audit blog post (with template) The Coders Guild Twitter: Ady Stokes Ministry of Testing Essentials Simon Prior - #MakeATester Testing Peers podcast Ministry of Testing: 99-Minute Workshops YouTube: How Sky Sports hijacked Beth’s third song choice Angie Jones: 10 portfolio projects for aspiring automation engineers Test Automation University Postman TAU: Amber Race - Exploring Service APIs through Test Automation Postman Galaxy conference The Guilty Tester podcast Twitter: Julia Pottinger The Testing Panda - Andy Knight Wikipedia: Illusory superiority (reference to “driving ability” opinions) Beth on Twitter: @Beth_AskHer Regular Links: Listen to and subscribe to this podcast on iTunes and SoundCloud Sign up to be a guest on the show Testers' Island Discs playlist on Spotify Testers' Island Discs reading list on Goodreads Follow us on Twitter

Welcome to Episode 1 of TestSphere Roulette. Joining Simon at the roulette table for this episode, we have 3 awesome Testers: Chris Armstrong - QA Strategy Consultant @ Provar Testing (@christovskia) Rachel Sherratt - Head of QA @ AccessPay (https://www.linkedin.com/in/rachelsherratt91/) Shey Crompton - Senior Quality Engineer @ Prima Assicurazioni (@sheymouse) The Roulette Wheel chose the following 3 random cards for discussion: User Friendliness - Quality Aspect Rejection - Feelings Pair Testing - Techniques Future events mentioned on the pod were: Testbash Home (https://www.ministryoftesting.com/events/testbash-home-2021) Testing Voices (https://huddle.eurostarsoftwaretesting.com/testing-voices/) Thank you to Shey, Rachel and Chris 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.   Want to join us on the podcast. Fill out the TestSphere Roulette guest form. Sounds and Music courtesy of Zapsplat.com

In this episode of the Ministry of Testing Podcast, Mike chats to Beth Marshall and Louise Harney about Community, covering    Why join a Community? The Key Points to consider when looking for a community Passive or Active participation Personal experiences - good and bad about communities Good practices for Community involvement - how to make it work for you and your approach Beth has been testing for about 13 years and is currently a senior test lead at Smoothwall. She loves being in the testing community, only really properly joined during lockdown but am now a massive advocate for. She has followed Louise's journey closely so its super excited to get a chance to speak with Louise! Beth can be found on twitter @Beth_AskHer and via beththetester.com   Louise is brand new to testing. She started to consider a career change last year and started pursuing testing with a vengeance in January. She recently started her first job as a Junior QA Engineer at Studee. She has relied heavily on the community for their support and has enthusiastically shared her journey to hopefully help others. Louise can be found on twitter via @HarneyTester and blogs at harneytester.wordpress.com Listen further to find out about  how it's important to "Find Your Tribe", "Add value to the Community" and "interact and provide feedback" Mabl is an intelligent test automation platform for Agile teams. It’s the only SaaS solution that tightly integrates automated end-to-end testing into the entire development lifecycle. With mabl it's easy to create, execute, and maintain reliable tests, allowing software teams to increase test coverage, speed up development and improve application quality. Try it free at mabl.com/trial!

This month, we’re joined by Simon Tomes, who in a complete coincidence has just begun a role as CommunityBoss at Ministry of Testing! Simon talks to us about the many different hats that he’s worn in his career, including being the co-founder of TestBuddy, a tool to support the capturing and sharing of exploratory testing notes. In a show which is a useful companion to the previous episode, we get deep into the nitty-gritty of exploratory testing: How do you estimate timeboxes if you’re testing something completely new? What categories of information do you capture during exploratory testing charters? And how do you engage others with the output of your sessions? Along the way, Simon takes a (very) deep dive into five songs which all feature elements of exploration, teaching us elements of music theory and trying not to mention the time that Prince choreographed a Batman-themed dance routine. This episode is sponsored by Provar: Struggling with the complexities of building and maintaining tests given the impact of localization (running tests that work for various languages, time zones, etc.)? Learn more about simplifying test automation for global companies in this complimentary white paper: https://bit.ly/32xyIri Podcast Links: Simon Tomes joins Ministry of Testing TestBuddy YouTube: Simon’s Exploratory Testing Conversations series YouTube: Simon’s conversation with Lee Hawkins Simon’s blog: Encourage new voices Tim’s Twitter Listening Party Explore Galore: 30 Tips to Supercharge your Exploratory Testing Efforts Wikipedia: Pomodoro Technique YouTube: Prince - Batdance Categorising notes with PQIP (Problems, Questions, Ideas, Praise) Twitter: Rajit Singh YouTube: Let’s Explore, Episode 4: Neil explores with TestBuddy Simon’s “bold boast”: Welcome to Adventures in Community Building YouTube: Bernard Purdie explains the Purdie Shuffle Simon on Twitter (@simon_tomes) Regular Links: Listen to and subscribe to this podcast on iTunes and SoundCloud Sign up to be a guest on the show Testers' Island Discs playlist on Spotify Testers' Island Discs reading list on Goodreads Follow us on Twitter