Heya – Finally found time to spill some tea with one of my favorite people in the testing industry, Elizabeth Zagroba. We cover off all the essentials from moving into a technical testing role, idealism, and our favorite musical theater. Check it out HERE… Enjoy!
Doubt Builds Trust blog post (this is all you really need, frankly)
The Mental Load of One Meeting
“What’s past is prologue…” – The Tempest (This article is reposted from my LinkedIn)
I was interviewing someone today, and they kept referring to their “non-traditional” path into technology as something that needed to be overcome, and it reminded me of a lot of people in #softwaretesting I’ve known, so I wanted to share some thoughts on this.
1) You don’t owe anyone an explanation for how you got to where you are in life. Period.
2) The tech industry is OVERRUN with likeminded, timid, sheep that will let incentives trump ethics every time. If you took a chance on yourself and busted your ass to break into a new field, IMO those are the EXACT qualities we need in leaders.
3) IME people with engineering or pure CS backgrounds LOVE to over complicate things. Practical experience helps you cut through noise because you have to live with the consequences of your solution.
Finally, as someone who has come into technology through a “non-traditional” path and suffered my share of impostor syndrome – you have everything you need to do this work and as my pal Angie Jones likes to say, “your differences are your superpower”!
“What is the answer? she asked, and when no answer came she laughed and said: Then, what is the question?” – Gertrude Stein
How can software testing support business and digital transformation? Unfortunately, that’s not a question that gets asked frequently, as testing has traditionally been viewed as a technology insurance policy – and no one likes thinking about (let alone talking) about insurance! Transformation in the context of a business is a fundamental shift in how it operates, redefining its value proposition, or changing how they compete in the market and in my opinion, testing sits at the center of the information required to support and accelerate business change. Through the course of the next couple posts, I’m going to talk about how testing can help transform your business, but first I want to explain what I mean by “transformative testing”.
Continue reading
Alignment in your test approach and business priorities is vital and will either accelerate or constrain enterprise transformation. Using his 20 years experience in building software quality management and testing teams for global financial services and consulting firms, Keith will explore opportunities for testing to not only support enterprise transformation programmes, but drive innovation and change beyond their traditional roles. You can register HERE – Hope to see you there!
“I was surprised, as always, by how easy the act of leaving was, and how good it felt. The world was suddenly rich with possibility.” – Jack Kerouac
A quick update that after 20+ years in a business that’s taken me to over 20 countries and 6 international moves, I’ve decided it’s time for one more run down the road. I am very happy to announce that I’ve relocated once again to the UK and taken a role with KPMG as a Director in their Testing Services business.
I’m excited to join the team and look after the the banking sector while expanding our partnerships and growing what is already an award winning practice. Thanks to everyone that helped make this possible and I wish only the best for my friends at Orion and Fiserv.
More to come once I get settled in, and I hope to see you around soon! Cheers!
I got a few questions about org dysfunction and how it specially relates to software testing, so I figured it would be easier to address them here as sort of a “reply all” to the different channels where I’ve made those comments.
Merriam-Webster defines “dysfunction” as: 1: impaired or abnormal functioning or 2: abnormal or unhealthy interpersonal behavior or interaction within a group. In my experience, organizational dysfunction occurs when leadership have misperceptions about how the organization is designed and actually operates, but more fundamentally, not understanding that the organization is performing EXACTLY as designed.
Continue readingI tweeted this out the other day in response to watching a project manager get abused by a “senior IT director” over defects being found by clients that they clearly felt should have been “caught by QA”. Apparently this resonated with the testing community as the reactions have been overwhelmingly in support of the sentiment and anti-bullying position.
Continue readingVery happy to dusting off the QR Podcast with my pals Fiona Charles, Dan Billing, Ash Coleman, and our returning champion Michael Bolton to discuss ethics in technology, the responsibilities of software testers, and all that “big brother” noise lately about contact tracing apps in the age of COVID-19. Check it out HERE… Enjoy!
Citations
“Pandemic Data Could Be Deadly for the Old.” Bloomberg.Com, April 21, 2020.
“The Covid-19 Tracking App Won’t Work.” Bloomberg.Com, April 15, 2020.
Recently I saw a Twitter thread asking the software testing community for volunteers to work on the SafePaths “contact tracing” app being developed by MIT. This project is made of up ex-Facebook execs, companies with questionable ethical pasts, and vague statements like “a number of leaders and personnel” and “experts from government agencies”. I’m sorry but that isn’t even remotely good enough for a project of this depth and scale.
Very excited to be back at Tricentis Accelerate San Francisco 2020 – watch this space!