The Testing Show: Recent Episodes
QualiTest Group
The Testing Show - covering everything related to software testing. Our panel of software testing experts will break down and analyze new tools, methodologies, trends and more. With a new episode every two weeks, you'll be sure to get your testing fix.
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In this episode, we dive into how artificial intelligence is being developed, tested, and trusted within the UK's National Health Service. Our guest is Adam Byfield, a principal technical assurance specialist with a unique journey from astrophysics to AI assurance. Adam leads a team adapting traditional software testing methods to ensure AI tools in healthcare are safe, effective, and fair,augmenting, not replacing, clinicians. Stay tuned as we unpack the challenges, breakthroughs, and the future of AI in the NHS.
In this episode, Matthew Heusser and Michael Larsen welcome Pat Rinaldo and Naresh Kumar Nunna to discuss the importance of synthetic test data for organizations that handle large amounts of customer data and cannot use real data due to privacy concerns. Ally Bank, working with Qualitest, has successfully leveraged synthetic data to enable faster innovation and testing for its automotive and insurance applications.
Pat and Naresh discuss ways that they have been able to generate diverse and representative test data to cover a wide range of scenarios, provide significant improvements in test coverage, regression testing speed, and reduction in defects escaping to production, to allow teams to focus on innovation rather than data management and compliance.
For the second part of our Women in Testing podcast Matthew Heusser and Michael Larsen welcome guest moderator Gwen Iarussi and guests Alexis Bell, Sangeetha Gururaj, and Lihi Segev to discuss the challenges faced by women leaders, and strategies for overcoming bias and creating opportunities for diverse talent, including stepping outside of their comfort zones and giving people a chance, microaggressions that women leaders face, and approaches for addressing them, as well as ways to make the first or next move in a dynamic and changing environment.
For this Episode, we welcome guest moderator Gwen Iarussi for an International take on women in testing roles from the front lines to senior management. Gwen hosts Alexis Bell, Sangeetha Gururaj, and Lihi Seghev to discuss their individual paths to success, the importance of sponsorship, mentorship, and advocating for oneself, strategies for overcoming bias and creating opportunities for diverse talent.
Test Coaching requires understanding team dynamics, building trust, and providing tailored coaching to help testers improve their skills and address perception issues.
Mike Talks joins Matthew Heusser and Michael Larsen to discuss ways to assess team strengths, weaknesses, and ways of working. They focus on building rapport and a feedback culture to encourage open communication, as well as avoiding a one-size-fits-all approach to providing individualized coaching to best help them succeed.
Qualitest recently participated in the SAP for Utilities conference in Florida and we have several key players who part of the proceedings. Matt Heusser and Michael Larsen welcome Qualitest and Tricentis regulars Rick Lesley, Ryan Williams, Kevin Flynn, and Jeff Fillegar to talk about utilities moving their SAP systems to the cloud, major digital transformation efforts with aggressive deadlines, and the need to ensure quality and minimize disruption to users and providers alike.
CrowdStrike showed the world that problems can be found in unexpected places and can manifest in ways never intended with devastating results. While there is much pontificating about the root cause and how it happened, the point is "it happened". The popular joke of "Maybe they should have tested more" will invariably be said but what specifically does that mean?
Testing Show hosts Matthew Heusser and Michael Larsen welcome 1-800-CONTACTS Software Test Engineer Rachel Kibler and Qualitest CTO Vikul Gupta to discuss the various findings and speculations related to the Crowdstrike issue. We then delve into ways that testers can learn from and be better prepared for situations like this going forward, as well as leveraging next-generation technology like Generative AI to assist in the process.
CI/CD is a topic that comes up a lot and many organizations profess to doing it. Are they really doing it effectively? That was the question we had in mind and to that end, Nikolay Advolodkin, staff developer advocate at Sauce Labs, joined us to talk about implementing automated software testing and improving testing practices, specifically around the CI/CD processes.
SAP testing has its own world in the testing ecosphere. It's a huge component (or set of components) and yet there may be many who know little about it and those who are familiar may only be scratching the surface with what is happening. Daniel Do Valle, Bill Hayden, and Kenneth Small join Matt and Michael to discuss all things SAP, including AI, the future of tooling, and how to get the most out of testing SAP implementations.
In this episode of The Testing Show, Matt and Michael welcome Alisha Mittal, Vice President at the Everest Group, and Vikul Gupta, CTO for Qualitest North America, about the role of generative AI in testing. We look at the current state of the market and the challenges enterprises face in adopting generative AI, and how generative AI can enhance testing efforts and improve test collateral creation.
In this episode of The Testing Show, Michael Larsen interviews Señor Performo, Leandro Melendez, about cognitive biases and how they can affect testing. They discuss various biases such as confirmation bias, the halo effect, the sunk cost fallacy, and more. We like to think that we are immune to cognitive biases and logical fallacies because we testers prize critical thinking but as Leandro points out, you would be wrong, we are as prone to them as anyone else.
Making the move to mobile-first application development is creating interesting challenges for co-located global teams. To this end, Matthew Heusser and Michael Larsen invited Mav Turner, the CTO of Tricentis, and Smita Mishra, CEO of Fandoro, to discuss the importance of user experience, security, and the need for optimized and secure code for mobile apps. They also highlight the challenges of working with distributed global teams and provide tips for effective collaboration, such as being aware of time zones and cultural differences.
In this episode of The Testing Show, Matthew Heusser and Michael Larsen welcome Dmitriy Melnik from BCU, Sri Aravamudan from Qualitest, and Mike Mokrzycki to talk about the importance of automation and cloud technology in reducing costs and improving scalability. They also highlight the differences between commercial banks and credit unions in terms of resources and investment in technology and the importance of staying relevant and providing a high-quality member experience.
In a time where remote work is much more normal, there is a give and take between what work can be done simultaneously and in tandem with others versus what needs to be accomplished with focused efforts on an individual basis. Caitlin Klink joins Matthew Heusser for this episode to discuss the benefits and advantages of gearing towards more asynchronous work and how enabling teams to leverage asynchronous work can help with productivity gains and better products for everyone.
The world of Utilities is undergoing a massive shift and has been doing so for the better part of a decade. With the advent of new renewable technologies and solar at home, individuals are not only power consumers but are often producers. To this end, Matthew Heusser and Michael Larsen welcome Wayne Tofteroo, Ronald Teteroo, and Scott Swanigan to discuss the changing landscape of utilities and how testing in and around them is full of unique and interesting challenges.
Recently, our show host Matt Heusser headed out to Detroit to participate in the Agile and Beyond Conference being held there. In the process, he gathered together several contributors and testing experts including Holly Bielawa, Damian Synadinos, and Jeff MacBane to discuss areas such as Emotions in Testing, Product Coaching and why its difficult, and how we can just be excited about doing testing well in this day and age.
We've had a chance to focus on a great deal of speculation and interest in Artificial Intelligence models over the past several shows and for this episode, we asked Dan Geater to join Matthew Heusser and Michael Larsen to help get to the bottom of what AI is actually doing, why the spike in interest, and how testers can prepare and benefit from the AI gold rush currently underway.
We can talk all day long about the importance of quality and testing but for many, this question will always come down to "How much is this going to cost?" Is this expense in quality and testing really worth it? To that end, Matthew Heusser and Michael Larsen invited Nabhanshu Bambi and Curtis Stuehrenberg to join us and discuss the true costs and the Return on Investment that testing can provide both in the short and long terms of projects and teams.
In celebration of June being Pride month, The Testing Show is doing a special program focusing on “Qualipride”, which is the Employee Resource Group (ERG) for LGBTQ+ identifying employees and their allies.
To discuss this, our guest host Fiona Dawson joins Bleighton Eppard, Jessica Hose, Miguel Urdinola, Mafalda Chambel, and Elizabeth Argall to discuss how Qualipride champions diversity and that diversity benefits Qualitest in its entirety.
In this episode, the metaverse and VR become more and more present and active. To that end it makes sense that there are companies working towards making those interactions as usable and seamless as possible. To that end, Ross Fernandes, Vikul Gupta and Prem Vishwanathan join Matthew Heusser and Michael Larsen to talk about ways that the virtual and the real are coming together and why it's an exciting place for a tester to potentially be.
For today's show, Beth Marshall and Chris Kenst return to continue the ChatGPT conversation, and today's focus is on what effect, if any, Chat GPT may have on testing jobs. Is it a job killer as some fear, or is it yet another tool that will aid the smart and effective tester in being more effective?
Software testing covers a lot of areas. Perhaps one of the most important, yet often overlooked, is the quality of the data that is both part of testing and the actual business. To that end Matthew Heusser and Michael Larsen welcome Naren Yalamanchilli, David Small, and Ken Wrem to talk about Datagaps, a company that is focused on making sure that Data Management and Data Analytics are in place so that companies can make sure that they have the best data possible to do business successfully.
Agile Testing and some would say Modern Testing is built around understanding the processes and quality practices necessary to deliver a quality product to customers. How do we know if the practices our company or organization is using actually deliver what we hope them to.
To help answer that, Selena Delesie and Janet Gregory join Matthew Heusser and Michael Larsen to talk about their new book "Assessing Agile Practices With the Quality Practices Assessment Model (QPAM)" and help determine if the practices an organization is using are effective and ultimately will help deliver quality products in the first place.
Many individuals on the team have a vested interest in what the tester provides and reports on. One such important team member is the product owner, who can wear many hats in an organization and represent many different perspectives. In this episode, Holly Bielawa joins Matthew Heusser and Michael Larsen to talk about the world of the product owner, their involvement with the organization, and their view of the world and their interaction with QA and testing.
In this second part of a two-part series, Matthew Heusser and Michael Larsen continue their conversation with Perze Ababa, Jon Bach, and Jen Crichlow to discuss the broader ideas of testing, specifically the areas of advocacy and addressing situations that are important to people who matter.
In this first of a two-part series, Matthew Heusser and Michael Larsen welcome Perze Ababa, Jon Bach, and Jen Crichlow to discuss the broader ideas of testing, and to ask, "Are there areas of software testing that deserve greater attention?
When it comes to Software Testing, there is no guarantee that what a tester is doing today will resemble what they are doing five or ten years from now, or if they will still be involved in software testing. Many people come and go, while others make it a point to be "lifers" in the software testing industry. Still, even for the so-called lifers, there is a broad array of options and opportunities for career growth and development. Where to go and how to get there are the broader questions.
Michael Larsen sits down and talks with Vernon Richards and Leandro Melendez at the Pacific Northwest Software Quality Conference (PNSQC). held in Portland, Oregon, USA in October, 2022. They discuss the challenges and opportunities available to software testers, as well as the responsibility of curating their own testing careers, both in the work they are doing now and the work they might want to do going forward.
For years, organizations have lured their time talent and resources into Continuous Integration, Delivery, and Deployment efforts, with an additional goal to apply these principals to Continuous Testing. Still, often these efforts can one wasteful and take much more time than is necessary. Vijet Honnavar and Vikul Gupta join Matthew Heusser to discuss ideas of focusing on eliminating waste and taking a more “Intelligent” approach to testing and focusing efforts on needful and necessary areas and less on areas that have not changed or been affected by updates.
Software testing and program management share many of the same skills and what helps make a software tester effective can also be applied to the world of Program Management and how to be effective in that role.
To that end, Jon Bach joins Matt Heusser to talk about his entry and involvement in the software testing world and his current involvement in the Program Management space, and how software testers can help and work effectively with Program Management.
Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning have often taken on a near-mythical status in the software development pantheon as of late. Of course, ask ten people what AI and Machine Learning mean and you're likely to get at least twenty different answers. Understanding how and what to test surrounding it thus becomes daunting.
To help demystify this topic, Jen Crichlow joins Matthew Heusser and Michael Larsen to discuss developments in the AI and ML space and how to make sense of the myriad options and, more important, considerations around how to test these technologies.
Back in 2012, Matthew Heusser, Michael Larsen, and a number of other testers and test professionals came together to write a book devoted to the topic of "How to Reduce the Cost of Software Testing". To celebrate the ten year anniversary of that experience, Matt and Michael welcome fellow author Petteri Lyytinen to share their experiences writing the book and to see if, ten years later, we have made progress on our goal or if there is more that we can do in regard to the goals we set out a decade ago.
For many years, Computer Science was the only way, educationally speaking, to learn about methodologies related to programming software and building large scale applications.
Software Engineering grew out of the need to have a more streamlined methodology, and our guest Robert Sabourin of McGill University in Montreal, Quebec, Canada has been at the forefront of helping developing those Software Engineering courses as well as teaching them to up and coming software engineers.
Applications are moving rapidly from company datacenters to the Cloud. With these changes come new challenges with building applications and testing them effectively.
Sriram Sitaraman and Lamech Carnelian join Matthew Heusser and Michael Larsen to talk about "Infrastructure Assurance" and ways to get the most out of the methodologies around putting applications into the cloud and making sure they work optimally once they are there.
This episode goes in some unusual but interesting directions. Lena Wiberg joins Matthew Heusser and Michael Larsen to talk about Lana's book and card deck, "Would Heu-Risk It?" which is all about heuristics and ways of looking at problems in a different light. Also, Lena talks about her keynote at Agile Testing Day 2022 titled "Living Fearlessly - While Living With Fear"
In our ever-changing world of applications, processes, and systems, we spend a lot of time talking specifically about improving those applications and how they are built. However, how many of us have taken a step back and asked about the actual data that we deal with? The quality of our data has everything to do with the ability of applications to be successful and work in ways that actually matter. To that end, Naresh Nunna and Sendhil Selvanathan join Matthew Heusser and Michael Larsen to discuss ways in which we can better assure overall data quality and perhaps introduce a DevOps for Data in conjunction with CI/CD pipeline modernization and analytics.
Once upon a time, and in many ways still, there was the sense that Cyber Security was the realm of elite professionals who were trained and experts in all things security related. They were special unicorns who far outstripped mere mortals. Of course, this is not true but it is a perception that persists.
Today, Uri Bar-El joins Matthew Heusser and Michael Larsen to talk about how and where Cyber Security is changing and how it is becoming less about the external nebulous threats (which still exist, of course) and more on the way that everyday testers and software developers need to hone their own cyber security skills and bring the issue of security into the development and testing process much earlier and with an eye towards total quality.
In celebration of June being Pride month, The Testing Show is doing a special program focusing on "Qualipride", which is the Employee Resource Group (ERG) for LGBTQ+ identifying employees and their allies.
To discuss this, guest host Fiona Dawson joins James Barret, Audry, Maulana, Brandon McGuire, Chandra Nair, and Lacy Norris to discuss how Qualipride champions diversity and that diversity benefits Qualitest in its entirety.
In many cases Accessibility and Accessibility Testing are done as late in the game processes and done to make sure that a level of compliance is met for those who most need that accommodation. This misses out on the fact that many more people could benefit from having Accessibility features integrated into their products and that the benefits of accessibility go well beyond those who need last-mile technology the most.
Subhash Chhetri and Karan Ahuja join Matthew Heusser and Michael Larsen to discuss their philosophy of Accessibility For Everything, and how making every element and process accessible makes products and services better for everyone that uses them.
We spend a lot of time talking about the quality engineering of systems and processes. We spend considerably less time talking about the quality engineering related to ourselves and our everyday actions and reactions.
To that end, Manoj Gupta, Qualitest MD of UK and Western Europe, joins Matthew Heusser and Michael Larsen, to talk about his book “New York to New You” and how we can apply the same rigor we do to our coding and testing efforts to build and improve the quality in ourselves.
Gwen Iarussi and Rachel Kibler continue their discussion with Catherine Carlos, Christina Codreanu, Rajini Padmanaban, and Maaret Pyhäjärvi. In this episode, the conversation is centered on how COVID has had an impact on them in general and as Women in testing in particular. Additionally, what can companies and other Women in the industry do to help enhance opportunities that are available and help out all Women in technology?
This is the first part of a two-part series that we are recording for Women’s History Month. To that end, we have changed things up. Gwen Iarussi and Rachel Kibler are taking the reins and moderating these episodes. They welcome Catherine Carlos, Christina Codreanu, Rajini Padmanaban, and Maaret Pyhäjärvi to discuss the changing nature of Women in the testing space and what they have learned and adapted to along their journeys.
The pharmaceutical space (Pharma) is an area where many people have ideas of a tightly regulated environment, where initiatives can range from in-house software tracking systems to literal life-saving devices. Testing in this sphere is often seen by many as an intense challenge but does it really (or should we say "fully") deserve that reputation?
To help answer that, Guy Anbar joins Matthew Heusser and Michael Larsen to discuss the variations and different areas that make up the Pharma space and how to test in and around it.
Have you ever noticed that there seems to be a certain level of dysfunction that can take hold in various companies? If that may feel like too strong a word, consider it traits that numerous software testing individuals often exhibit, whether they intend to or not.
Kristin Jackvony joins Matthew Heusser and Michael Larsen to discuss six personas (and perhaps some additional variations) that could spell trouble for projects and programs. The tricky part? We might very well recognize these personas in our organization and possibly in ourselves.
Agile as a development practice (and by extension Agile Testing) has been around now for two decades. By virtue of that, many changes and adaptations have been made and it brings up a simple question: is the term "Agile Testing" all that relevant any longer? To this end, Matthew Heusser and Michael Larsen have a chat with Janet Gregory and Jenny Bramble about Agile Testing as a name and as a practice and dare to consider... is an Agile Testing practice by any other name just as effective?
Automation is a key component of most software development initiatives. It's not just for testing, it also figures into the build process, Continuous Integration (CI), and Continuous Delivery (CD). To that end, having a stable automation framework makes a lot of sense but what exactly goes into making that framework? Today, Matthew Heusser and Michael Larsen have a chat with Chris Loder, the "Rogue Automator" about where to start, what to include, and four specific areas every good automation framework must have to succeed.
When we think of making a website accessible, we often think of making sure a screen reader works to help navigate a site or to make sure we have alt tags for images. There are of course many other areas to consider and ways in which looking at accessibility can go well beyond making a site usable for people with disabilities and towards making sites and services more usable and effective for everyone. Matthew Heusser and Michael Larsen welcome Aditya Bangari and Riya Sharma to discuss how we can adopt an Accessibility Mindset and how that mindset can help guide us towards a more inclusive user experience.
One of the great challenges of software testing is the fact that software is often designed to accomplish goals for a user but is developed in a way that is resistant to testing. In addition to knowing what to test and where to test, we should be asking how we want to test and if our testing goals are even possible. Matthew Heusser and Michael Larsen welcome Gil Zilberfeld to discuss how do we make our products more testable and how we can leverage those capabilities.
This week's show comes live from the QA Summit, held in South Jordan, Utah on July 28, 2021. Matthew Heusser and Michael Larsen welcome back Rachel Kibler and Gwen Iarussi, as well as Pax Noyes to discuss takeaways from the QA Summit talks and to also highlight QA at the Point, Women Who Test, and other initiatives happening around the Salt Lake valley to inspire and help develop current and future software testers.
It's been quite some time since we have been able to attend in-person conferences. For a brief window, vaccination rates and easing of travel restrictions allowed Matthew Heusser and Michael Larsen to attend the Xpanxion sponsored "QA Summit 2021", held in South Jordan, Utah, at the end of July, 2021. As part of the speaking group at the conference, Matt and Michael met up with Gwen Iarussi and Rachel Kibler to discuss their talks and the conference in general.
How many times has the death of testing been touted? How many talks have been giving declaring the death of testing? Granted, those talks have a specific context that is not often noticed, but the statement gets said a great deal. In this episode, Senthil Ayyappan, Head of Market Strategy for Qualitest, joins Matthew Heusser and Michael Larsen to talk about how Quality Engineering is much more than basic testing and how it is very much a growing industry. In short, reports of testing's death, especially Quality Engineering's death, have been greatly exaggerated.
As the idea of melding operations and software development led to the discipline of DevOps, so has the idea of melding testing and operations led to the concept of TestOps where many of the operations areas also fall under the role of the testing teams(s) and help organizations actually get a handle on how they can better test for infrastructure needs and make sure that feature enhancements and code changes aren't just deployed efficiently but work their best as well. For this episode, Alex Langshall and David Vydra join Matthew Heusser and Michael Larsen to discuss TestOps, its role in the development lifecycle, and ways that organizations can leverage the benefits for better systems and better release management.
Does the idea of wearing a device that can monitor your movement, heart rate, and blood pressure to lower your health insurance premiums (or raise them in some cases) intrigue you or scare you? Does the idea of a plug-in for your car that measures your driving habits, perhaps affecting your insurance rates have you questioning things? If so, then come join Matthew Heusser and Michael Larsen as they talk with Simon Pickersgill and Anthony White about some of the areas related to testing in the world of insurance. Whether it be auto, home, health, or life insurance, more and more organizations are moving to models where big data, Artificial Intelligence, and Machine Learning are playing a part in determining premiums and claims payouts. There's a lot of coding happening and a lot of testing opportunities, so listen in and get a bird's eye view of an interesting area.
Today's show gets away from the typical risk and testing approach, as in what techniques to use. Instead, Jenny Bramble, Director of Quality Assurance at Papa, joins Matthew Heusser and Michael Larsen to discuss the more challenging aspects around talking about risk, specifically how to talk to people who don't want to recognize that it exists or is possible.
It's our 100th Episode and Qualitest has a new Chief Executive and "Chief Testing" Officer designate in Anbu Anbu Muppidathi who joins Matthew Heusser and Michael Larsen to talk about Quality Engineering as a unique discipline and differentiator. How does Quality Engineering go beyond traditional notions of Quality Assurance? Come join us for this milestone episode and find out how COVID helped make the case for quality orchestration and where Qualitest thinks quality is going both now and into the future.
For many organizations and educational systems, there's a need for testers and testing talent but there isn't a clear path for someone to go learn about testing and become a software tester, at least not in a traditional education sense. There may be a school or two that has some testing curriculum specifically but for many educations systems, it's taught superficially if at all. How does a potential tester learn what they need to and how can they be encouraged to pursue software testing in the first place?
Dave Harrison and Simon Prior join Matthew Heusser to talk about the need for software testing to be considered a viable path for colleges and universities, the type of education that would be helpful for institutions to teach, what types of people and educational background would work well as testers, and how to help them get the best leg up if/when they decide to make that decision.
What does test management mean in today's software development world? Matthew Heusser and Michael Larsen welcome Gwen Iarussi and Lalitkumar Bhamare to talk about the differences in test management of previous decades vs. today's needs and requirements. Finding that "what is the value driver for our business?" is a critical piece among many.
Have you ever wondered what happens when something like a nor'easter, a tornado, a blizzard, or a wildfire comes through your area? How to critical systems like utilities, hospitals, and emergency services deal withy these situations? How can they help ensure their IT capabilities will remain intact, or as intact as possible? Matthew Heusser and Michael Larsen welcome Kimberly Humphrey and Scott Swanigan to talk about Storm Readiness Testing and how organizations can plan for the worst and be up and running as quickly as possible.
In todays fast paced and ever more complex software development landscape, Application Programming Interfaces (APIs) are more important than ever. Testing them has their own unique challenges. This week, Matthew Heusser and Michael Larsen talk with Beth Marshall, Ben Dowen, and Andrew Knight about the unique challenges testers face when working with and testing APIs and the variety of methods to make those challenges a little less daunting.
Once upon a time, testing was about creating the right documentation, making sure requirements were correct, be the quality police, and tell everybody else to do their job well. Lagter, we focused on specific testing, diving in to find defects and problems, and act like an insurance policy so that if there's a problem, we find it, but stop telling people how to do their jobs.
Have we gone too far from that original focus? Is it possible for us to give generalized observations about the quality of the software we are delivering? How would we do it? To answer those questions, Rachel Kibler and Chris Kenst join Matthew Heusser and Michael Larsen to discuss where testing and quality interact and make a case as to which is more important and at which point in time.
On today's show, Matt Heusser and Michael Larsen welcome Johanna Rothman, long time management author and coach to talk about the changing roles in management, the ways in which traditional management culture is not well suited for the Information Age, and ways in which thinking about managing oneself and managing others can be improved for the realities of today's workplace, specifically in the area of software testing and testing management.
For many software testers, it can be challenging to build up a portfolio of work that can demonstrate skill, knowledge, and expertise. Having GitHub account for coding skills is one approach but many testers work on proprietary systems where people outside their company cannot see what you are capable of. Open source projects are a way to get involved in an externally visible way but where does a tester start and what can they actually do?
Dr. Jessica Ingrassellino from InfluxData joins us Matthew Heusser and Michael Larsen to talk about her initiative to make open source projects more available to testers and testing and ways that testers can get involved and why they would want to in the first place.
Many of us are familiar with the idea of negative testing, where we feed bad data or inputs to a program or application to see how it behaves. That works for a program or an app but how about an entire infrastructure? A discipline that has come to be known as Chaos Engineering is where this level of "testing" comes into play. Intriguing but what is "Chaos Engineering?"
Claire Moss joins Matt Heusser and Michael Larsen to discuss the good, bad, ugly, and just plain odd aspects of a discipline that is not readily understood but bears a resemblance to Exploratory Testing. It is also available to any organization that wants to implement it, provided they are ready and willing to go down a rabbit hole or ten.
Now more than ever, the idea of working for one company and doing one job for our working life is an outdated notion. For many of us, curating and developing a career is a job unto itself, especially in today's ever-changing job and career landscape.
Raj Subrameyer comes back to discuss his new book "Skyrocketing Your Career" and we all talk about our personal journeys and how we have arrived where we are and hope to go next.
In this day and age, everything is becoming code. It used to be just the applications but with the proliferation of software to create software (think of Jenkins pipelines) or the aspects to Terraforming servers in the cloud (and Terraform being just one way to do it), there is ever more code being written to set up and deploy software. Who tests all that, and how does one get to play in these extensive sandboxes?
Perze Ababa and Gwen Iarussi join Matthew Heusser and Michael Larsen to talk about these areas of recent and new development, the skills needed to be successful, and ways to make sure that you get to be in "The Room Where it Happens", to borrow from Hamilton.
Software fills many niches and does many things for individuals and businesses. Some software is designed and developed for mass user interaction, while other applications are designed for specific purposes and markets. Some software is literally developed to work within a company for the benefit of its staff and is never seen outside of the company it serves. Still, it feels as though the testing advice that is given and received often focuses on big players and customer facing software.
Perze Ababa, early show alumni, joins Matt Heusser and Michael Larsen to discuss his role in software initiatives that reach both to customers and those projects that are specific to organizations and their workers to be productive and effective. He explains how one size definitely does not fit all.
The title this week may seem odd but it is indeed correct, as Michael Larsen participated in and in effect helped to test out the various challenges and solutions that go with putting on a virtual conference in this current period of time.
In this episode, Michael talks with two long time veterans of the Pacific Northwest Software Quality Conference, Philip Lew (Program Chair) and Bill Opsal (a long time volunteer and troubleshooter) about the ups and downs of putting on a virtual conference, things that went well, challenges faced and some lessons learned that may help anyone with putting on a virtual conference in the future.
As organizations get larger or infrastructure/software becomes more relied upon, testing itself can have its share of risks. For this episode, Matt and Michael chat with Simon Evans about how to approach larger systems (and perhaps not so large systems), make the needed decisions to focus on important areas and make QA a less risky proposition altogether.
It's safe to say that 2020 has introduced challenges into people's lives in unprecedented ways (at least in our current times). Some are thriving but many are feeling the results of burnout. Raj Subrameyer joins Matthew Heusser and Michael Larsen to talk through common issues of burnout as it relates to tech workers and some approaches and methods that can be used to deal with said burnout if not banish it entirely.
There have been record and playback tools available for the past few decades, with varying results and reputations. They often over promise and under deliver. Today, Matthew Heusser and Michael Larsen are joined by Rex Feizi of Subject7 and Leandro Melendez (Señor Performo) to talk about the latest generation of record and playback tools, how to leverage them effectively and use them in spaces where they are intended (as well as explore other areas where they can be beneficial) and get some good advice about how to make the best use of these tools both now and into the future.
It may feel that your team may be doing a lot of testing but how do you know if you are doing the right testing or the needed testing and not wasting time on areas that are not as important or add little value to your efforts?
Aviram Shotten joins us to have a conversation about optimizing QA efforts and putting those hard-earned QA dollars and cents to best use.
As software testers, we are often told that we need to check our biases at the door, to not go in with preconceived notions, to look past logical fallacies, and prevent them from entering into our daily work. As our guest Rachel Kibler helps us see, that is easy to say but much harder to do.
It's one thing to apply Agile principles to a new project or to a small initiative. It's another thing entirely to apply these principles to a large organization with many moving parts, focused teams, and existing products. How do larger companies take agile and actually "make it scale?"
In today's show, Matthew Heusser and Michael Larsen go in-depth with Yoav Ziv to discuss the advantages and pitfalls of applying Scaled agile approaches to an organization and examine how these changes are having an effect on organizations and testing teams.
As the weeks turn into months and COVID-19 infections continue in many places around the globe, plans for Career Development and conferring with others are transforming to meet the unique challenges. In this episode, Smita Mishra and Anna Royzman join Matt Heusser and Michael Larsen to talk about ways that conferences and other providers of learning opportunities are coming together to address ways in which to create meaningful learning opportunities and the fact that going to a conference in person and attending a conference online from home are not at all the same thing. We also bring back the immediate news portion of the show with a quick discussion of both the technology and ethics of contact tracing and happily announce that The Testing Show will be moving to a two-week format starting in July.
It's tempting to think that, in an area like Software Testing, "it's all been done" in some ways or another. To say that there's some "secret weapon" out there can raise some skeptical eyebrows. Yet Maya Ben Lerner and Leandro Melendez both say that there is indeed an area that can unleash great power if approached from the right angle. We don't want to spoil the surprise... well, OK, we do a little bit. That angle is infrastructure automation. Even with that, there's a lot of meat to discuss, so join Maya and Leandro as they talk with Matthew Heuser, Michael Larsen, and returning guest Mike Lyles on how to make your environments stand up and help you take control of your testing.
In this "COVID" edition of The Testing Show, Matthew Heusser and Michael Larsen welcome James Back to discuss the state of testing and the push towards DevOps. Are we missing something with this push? Are we losing the actual testing that is needed? Are there testers legitimately excited about these changes? Have a listen and find out!
With Shelter at Home orders in place in many cities and entire countries due to COVID-19, we are experiencing an experiment not yet tried in our history. Many are working from home who have not had the opportunity to before and it is creating some unique challenges.
Matthew Heusser and Michael Larsen welcome back Yadira Arevalo and Elle Gee to have a frank conversation about the stresses and realities of working remotely. We talk about both the challenges and opportunities with so many working remotely, as well as ways to do the best work possible and cope with what may be a new normal.
In what is proving to be a challenging month for most of the world, we decided to tackle the topic of SAFe, basically the Scaled Agile Framework.
Matthew Heusser and Michael Larsen have a chat with Jennifer Fawcett about SAFe. What is it? Why does it matter to your organization as a whole and to testing and testers in particular?
We've heard of Performance Testing but what is Performance Assurance? In a One on One conversation, Matt Heusser talks with Leandro Melendez about the difference between Performance Testing and Performance Assurance and how the changing landscape of systems and infrastructure makes Performance Assurance an area worth paying attention to.
As it is a new year, we decided it would be interesting to discuss the hiring of testing talent as well as being the testing talent and looking to be hired. What do recruiters actually look for? Do I have the right skill set? What do hiring managers actually look for? How important is a culture fit and why does it matter? Also, what are the areas that we can't fake on our interviews?
These questions and many more are being asked by Matthew Heusser and Michael Larsen as they talk about the details of interviewing testing talent with Yadira Arevalo and Elle Gee.
Agile Testing has now been around in some form or another for two decades, yet it seems that what people are calling Agile Testing and what Agile Testing actually is are still two different things. Why is there such a gap in both understanding and practice? Matt Heusser and Michael Larsen welcome Lisa Crispin, Elle Gee and Jamie Phillips to discuss exactly that. In the process, we get into how Agile is practiced in both small teams and in larger organizations, where it is practiced well, and some of the common pitfalls even the best of Agile organizations still face.
In many organizations the security testing is often done by an outside group or entity, often late in the project and with very little interactions by members of the main team. This month, Matthew and Michael are joined by Uri Bar-El, a cyber and security expert who has seen a few things in a twenty-year plus career. We are also joined again by Elle Gee to have a look at the unique challenges we face in the cyber realm and things we can do to meet those challenges head-on.
Coverage is a broad area and asking ten people will probably get you ten different answers. We didn't ask ten people but we did ask three and this podcast sums up that discussion. Join us as we delve into the topic of coverage with Perze Ababa, Elle Gee, Matthew Husser, and Michael Larsen to see the good, the bad, the ugly, and the just plain necessary of coverage as it relates to software testing.
Have you thought about what brought you to your testing career thus far lately? If you are looking to get into testing where do you even start? That’s the topic of today’s show, where Matthew Heusser and Michael Larsen talk with Lanette Creamer, Elle Gee, Sangeetha Gururaj, and Jessica Ingrassellino about the ins, the outs and the often times sideways about careers in testing as well as the fact that we can do better with building up and helping new developers learn.
For this episode of The Testing Show, Matt and Michael step back and invite Elle Gee, Jessica Ingrassellino, Rachel Kibler, Claire Moss, and Lihi Segev to share and discuss their own journies in the world of technology and the various and varied experiences they have had and highlight areas that have been successes in varied places like Australia, Israel and the U.S., as well as areas where we as an industry can do better.
How often do we look at an application and wonder what the people who were designing it were thinking? When jumping through hoops that seem odd or out of place, it's easy to ask "how can this have been designed this way?!" If it makes you feel better, there are people who research the areas of Usability and User Experience (UX) specifically. Michael Larsen talks with Charlotte Dijksman of Test Birds and Nick Leal of Qualitest about the good, the bad and the just plain out there of Usability and UX.
This time on The Testing Show, Matthew Heusser and Michael Larsen welcome Mahesh Chikane and Smita Mishra to talk about the unique challenges and opportunities facing the software testing community in India.
SAP (Systems Applications and Products in Data Processing) is a large suite of software products best described as being an Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) system. Many large scale companies use SAP to cover a variety of processes related to accounting, finance and commerce, as well as a variety of other functions. While a tester may not be working directly with it, it's a very good bet that if you visit sites that are large enough, you are absolutely interacting with a SAP system(s) somewhere. For this episode, Matthew Heusser and Michael Larsen welcome Simon Evans to talk about all things SAP, the ways in which it shows up in so many places, and ways that testers can level up and come to grips with this large ecosystem of inter-related systems.
We are all familiar with stress testing when we put an application under load or negative conditions but what about when we put ourselves under those same conditions? Rachel Kibler and Elle Gee join Matthew Heusser and Michael Larsen to talk about this more human element of software testing that often gets overlooked and how applying it to our everyday testing activities might help us do better testing overall.
DevOps is a common term and one that seems to be hard to pin down or to define. Additionally, it seems that for many, the idea behind DevOps seems to be an elimination of testers or testing. Our guests Lisa Crispin of mabl and Jessica Ingrassellino of Salesforce.org are here to discuss how software testers are indeed important in the process of DevOps and some ways we can get involved in ways we may not have considered. A key element is Observability (#olly) and we get into the details of considering observability as part of the DevTestOps equation.
Over the past several decades, we have witnessed many changes in the way that we do things. Catalogs are mostly things of the past, as are phone books, a crew of phone operators and a variety of other services that we may often take for granted today. Each of those transformations, however have gone through their share of growing pains to bring us where we are today and truth be told, there’s still plenty of room for improvement. For this episode, Matt Heusser and Michael Larsen welcome Shachar Schiff and Gerie Owen to talk about the benefits of digital transformations, where things have gone well, where things have gone not so well and a few surprises along the way. In addition, they discuss the continuous nature of digital transformation and the software testers unique role in that process:
Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning are the hip buzzwords at the moment and if you listen to enough people, they are the hot new technologies that are poised to make software testers obsolete. Is that accurate? Well, yes and no. More of a “kind of but not really”. Today, Matt Heusser and Michael Larsen chat with Daniel Geater and Jason Arbon to get to the bottom of this “AI and Machine Learning” thing. Is it real? It sure is. Is it going to transform testing? Potentially yes? Should testers be scared? Absolutely not. There are opportunities galore with this AI/ML world and Daniel and Jason are happy to tell you all about them.
Today as we see the ideas of server-less architecture, cloud-based implementations and more distributed services come into play, the way that we think of performance and performance testing is changing. Nevertheless, it’s still critical and can be a make or break element of a site or applications suffers or demise. To talk about the ways that performance impacts testers as well as ways to discuss the broader implications of the changing performance space, Scott Barber and Caleb Billingsley join Matt Heusser and Michael Larsen to chat about ways to have conversations with those who make the larger decisions. Also, the conversation covers ways to give those who are not as familiar with the performance space a point of reference to get in and start tuning up their performance game.
Over the years, a variety of metrics have been gathered to measure and determine how well or how poorly the processes of software quality and software delivery have progressed. Sometimes these metrics are helpful. A lot of the time they are benign or irrelevant. Sometimes they can actually be hurtful or stymie progress, which defeats their purpose altogether. Matt and Michael welcome Tom Cagley and Nausheen Sayed to discuss meaningful metric, what they are, how to find them, how to make them work for us, and we discuss some metrics train wrecks.
As the software delivery process matures and grows, a variety of teams are forming and becoming part of the everyday testing landscape. These teams may or may not resemble anything that many testers are familiar with. New roles and responsibilities are coming into play, with many software testers taking on roles such as Scrum-master, Release Manager, Product Owner and other positions that would have been seen as out of the ordinary for testers a decade or so ago. The role are blending, the responsibilities are blending, so how does a tester determine what the best course of action is and how to participate in this brave new world? Perze Ababa, Paul Grizzaffi, Matthew Heusser, Michael Larsen, Gerie Owen and Peter Varhol all gather together to consider what makes for good testing teams and good teams in general.
August is a busy time of year for software testing conferences (not to mention conferences in other industries). This month, we decided that, with everyone heading off to conferences hither and yon that we would dedicate a show to the topic, and we have done exactly that. Anna Royzman (Test Masters Academy), Claire Moss (DevOps Days) and Mike Lyles (Software Test Professionals) join us as guests in their capacity as conference organizers, speakers and attendees (not necessarily in that order) to riff on Conferences and Conferring with Matthew Heusser, Michael Larsen and Perez Ababa. Want to know where to go, what format to take part in or if you want to try your hand at speaking/presenting? We’ve got something for all those bases!
Like many software users, it’s a good bet that you received a lot of pop-up messages or emails telling you that you had to log in to various sites and read a number of new statements and provide Consent to companies to let you use their services. If that’s how it seemed, you are not alone, there was indeed a lot of that, and it was for a very specific purpose. After Many of 2018, individuals and companies doing business with or using data belonging to anyone residing in the European Union had to, by law, make it clear that users had rights concerning how their data was being used and that they had choices as to what they could do about it. These changes are called The General Data Protection Regulation, or GDPR and is now law regarding data protection and privacy for all individuals within the European Union (EU) and the European Economic Area (EEA).
On today’s show, we welcome Daniel Leigh who helps us understand GDPR a little better, what the ramifications of these new laws are, what they mean to companies doing business in or dealing with data relating to anyone residing in the EU, what they mean for software development and data protection and privacy, and how software testers can help make a difference in this new reality of consent and privacy.
Additionally, in our news segment, what would it have cost various companies like Yahoo, eBay, and Equifax, based on how they responded to their data breaches in the past, were they subject to the new GDPR rules?
It seems that "Automating Everything" is an implicit of not an explicit goal in many organizations. In the process of trying, many projects fail in accomplishing this goal. Our guest Graeme Harvey gives a popular talk about this and takes an interesting journey on approaching and discussing how to do this via comparisons to the book and movie "The Martian". Graeme joins Perze Ababa, Matt Heusser, Michael Larsen, Gerie Owen and Peter Varhol to riff on ideas from the book and movie and how to use these principles in our everyday automating experiences.
Also, in our news segment, it seems Elon Musk is realizing that "automating all the things" can actually be a detriment as it has been a major cause of impact to the delayed delivery of the Tesla Model 3.
Usability is a big deal with applications and application "stickiness". The better the Usability, the more likely an application will be successfully adopted. This week, Smita Mishra of QAZone Infosystems and Fandoro (and a lot of other things) joins Matthew Heusser, Jessica Ingrasselino, Michael Larsen and Gerie Owen to discuss what makes applications painful to use and discuss methods for making them less painful. We also discuss a variety of ways that testers can get a leg up on Usability as an advocacy platform and ways in which to encourage good UX.
Also, in our news segment, we address five possible usability issues with Electronic Health Records that go beyond frustration issues with applications. These can literally be a matter of life or death!
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Continuous Testing. Sounds cool, doesn't it? The bigger question, though, is "What does is it really mean?" In the DevOps world, it's something that more and more organizations are hoping that they can get a handle on, and Gerie Owen joins Matthew Heusser and Michael Larsen to talk about her experiences with Continuous Testing, DevOps and the literal sea change that such an endeavor taking on Continuous Testing actually is.
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In this episode of The Testing Show, we welcome Jason McIvor to talk about the upcoming changes in the Telecom Testing world. Specifically, we look at the rollout of the 5G standard and what it will mean to consumers both in speed as well as the level of ubiquity. Jason discusses new uses for Telecom beyond the consumer space and the introduction of autonomous vehicles and Augmented Reality for both consumer purposes (games, certainly) as well as more unique angles (real time blueprints of buildings and electrical gas lines for firefighters). In addition, Jason shares with Matt and Michael his view of the changing marketplace for testing in the telecom sphere and how people who are interested can get involved.
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In this episode, we are joined by Jeffrey Wheat, Director of Cyber Operations for QualiTest Group. Jeffrey spoke with Perze Alaba, Jessica Ingrassellino, Matthew Heusser and Michael Larsen about the changing nature of security, security vulnerabilities and ways that the discussion around Security topics can be handled more directly and earlier in the software development process. Also in our news segment, what happens when a security issue affects nearly every current version of a CPU, even when the machines are not turned on?
In this episode, we conclude our interview with CodeNewbie founder Saron Yitbarek. We discuss the value of shared learning through the Ruby Book Club, discuss what makes the Codeland Conference unique, and talk about the challenges and opportunities of sharing our own stories and coding journeys. We also turn the tables on Saron and ask her to play a version of her own podcast’s “Rapid Fire Fill in The Blank”.
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Welcome to 2018! It’s a new Year and with a new year many people make New Year’s Resolutions. Learning how to code is a frequent resolution choice, so Jessica Ingrassellino and Michael Larsen kick off the new year by talking with Saron Yitbarek, the founder of the CodeNewbie Podcast, CodeNewbie Community and the Codeland Conference, all initiatives based around helping and supporting people new to programming and helping hem navigate their way on their coding journey.
Saron shares her journey, the highs and lows, the excitement and the ever present frustrations, and the fact that programming is one of those areas where you are not penalized for not being 100% right all of the time right off the bat.
This is Part 1 of a two part series. Part 2 will be posted in two weeks.
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As we close out the year that was 2017, we welcome Gwen Dobson to The Testing Show to talk about Hiring Testers and Test Managers, the challenges and changes that re happening in the market, the issues and frustrations many of us face as we look for new opportunities, and all that that entails. Matt Heusser, Jessica Ingrasselino and Michael Larsen also join in with their own takes on entering the testing world through the side door, having conversations about money and skill, and not selling short the very real-life experiences and opportunities from learning in other work and experience capacities that don’t necessarily make sense as part of a bullet list of testing skills.
Also, in our news segment, in several states and metropolitan job areas, it is now illegal to ask about your salary history. How do you approach such a discussion if that’s the case?
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This week we are joined by Katrina Clokie, author of “A Practical Guide to Testing in DevOps” to talk about the growth of DevOps, which organizations are actually doing it (and how well/completely they are), and the strange three-way handshake that happens with Development, Operations and Testing. If you have been curious about the ins and outs of testing in DevOps, we have you covered this week.
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It’s a common expression to hear people say that we should “get involved in the broader testing community” but what does that actually mean? In today’s episode, Jessica Ingrassellino, Matthew Heusser and Michael Larsen get into the specifics of that topic with Melissa Tondi, president of Software Quality Association of Denver (SQuAD). As all of the above are veterans of either participating in or hosting community meetups, we talk about how to make sure that you are meeting the expectations of your members, ways to keep them engaged and to help grow those community ties.
Also, in Software Testing news, have you taken steps to protect yourself from the KRACK attacks? If not, you may want to take a look at your WPA2 devices and remedy that.
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We conclude our two part series by talking about Code Review as a Service, who might need such a thing, what it promises and how it corresponds with what organizations are actually doing. As was the case last week, we share opinions and talk about the fact that marketing often drives the perception, but the devil is always in the details and the details may not be as compelling or flashy but they are relevant and more times than not really tell a fuller story of what is going on.
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For this set of two shows, we decided to do a forum of just us regulars, and we were going to look at a couple of news stories. Those stories turned out to be the bulk of an extended conversation. We realized that the theme in all of them were the claims that companies made vs. what actually happens in workplaces and organizations.
Needless to say, this is an opinionated set of shows this go around as we discuss the promise of Machine Learning and what it actually delivers. We look at it in the light of other promises made over the past fifty years and how, often, it’s not the best idea that wins the day, but the first idea to gain traction that does.
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We are back with Peter Varhol for Part 2 of our discussion on Machine Learning and AI. In this episode, we pick up with Peter and discuss the pitfalls of machine learning algorithms, where they can help us and where they often fail us. Also, what is the role of the tester and testing in machine learning and AI? How intimately involved with the problem domain do testers need to be? How can they learn to understand the analytical parts and what they need to accomplish within that problem domain.
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QualiTest is celebrating its 20th Anniversay this month. To celebrate, founder and global CEO Ayal Zylberman joined Matt Heusser, Jessica Ingrassellino, Perze Ababa, Justin Rohrman and Michael Larsen to talk about the ups and down, and the growth and changes that QualiTest has been through. Ayal discusses how the climate has changed, the ways in which testing at QualiTest has changed, and what he sees as interesting opportunities for the future. Also, Ayal weighs in with us on the Equifax breach and what it might mean for the quality reputation of Equifax and other companies in the future.
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This is the first of a two-parter with Peter Varhol on both the promises and the hype surrounding AI and Machine Learning. Matt, Perze and Michael go down the rabbit hole on the Machine Learning topic with Peter as we try to wrap our heads around both the realities of Machine Learning, AI and the unique testing challenges such systems offer. From Facebook’s Chatbots negotiating an agreement to systems making predictive suggestions in ways that are both intriguing and creepy. There is a lot to the machine learning puzzle that we are just starting to understand and also prepare ourselves to effectively test. Hint: the algorithms themselves are only part of the puzzle.
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In an age when computing and communications is happening on anything and everything imaginable, Matt and Michael reached out to Paul Grizaffi of Magenic to discuss the proliferation of the Internet of Things as well as the convergence of so many devices that used to be discrete components requiring space, attention and connections that had to be closely monitored. With the Internet of Things and, more to the point, the spread of Ubiquitous Computing that goes even beyond the Internet of Things, we chatted and geeked-out on some developments in tech that have changed our everyday realities (we went on a tangent on how these technologies are filtering into musical instruments).
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We conclude our conversation with Adam Goucher with some discussion about the goals organizations hope to achieve and the fact that many of the problems encountered with CD are people problems as opposed to toolchain problems. We talk about using CD approaches even when your organization has decided not to push several times a day. Additionally, what can you do when the long-distance goal is represented, but it’s not clearly defined and how to get there is also not clearly defined. Adam’s been there and he has plenty to say about it.
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Continuous Integration, Continuous Deployment, Continuous Delivery, and a host of other continuous options abound out there. Do you know the difference? Would you like to? We asked Adam Goucher to come out and discuss with us the variations on the theme between these three distinct disciplines, what they mean, how they are implemented, and where testing and testers fit into the processes. This is the first part of a two-part interview. We will conclude this interview in our next episode.
Also, in the news segment, do you trust the idea of an open source autonomous automobile? Also, what happened when stock prices for many big technology companies all read the same stock price at the exact same time? If you are guessing a bug in the system, you’d be right, and we definitely have a few things to say about it.
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Brick and Mortar stores have a lot of software in their operations. From supply chain to ordering, point of sale, inventory management, customer procurement and customer satisfaction, that’s a lot of moving pieces to keep track of. It’s a challenging endeavor to keep it all together, and QualiTest’s Mike Hershkovitz joins Matt and Jess to talk about the ins and outs or testing for the retail space.
Also, in a separately recorded segment, the Amazon purchase of Whole Foods and what it might mean is discussed by Matt, Perze, Justin and Michael. Is it really an additional 400-plus Amazon distribution centers, or is there something else going on here?
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You know the feeling. Someone is breathing down your neck ,saying that we have to get the release out on this date at this time or else… well, it won’t be pretty, let’s just leave it at that! Sound at all familiar? Yeah, we feel your pain, and we talk about it quite a bit. Deadlines are a reality. Sometimes they are essential and necessary. Often they are nebulous and ill defined. Regardless, testers deal with them and the Testing Show Panel shares a few of our experiences and how we managed, or didn’t manage, those expectations.
Also, eClinicalWorks got to see first hand that untested, buggy and underperforming software can cost more than lost sales. In this case, it got them into $155 million worth of legal trouble.
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Cassandra Leung and Pete Walen join us today in a discussion about Requirements. What are they? Do we get enough of them? Do we understand the ones we do get? Can we make them better, and if so, how can we help that process? If you’ve ever struggled with trying to make sense of a story, or fear that programmers are just implementing things for the sake of implementing them, and there’s no rhyme or reason, you may not be alone. It’s possible that you really are dealing with a severe case of Requirements Deficiency. Fortunately, we are here to help, or at the very least, give it a spirited try.
Also, in the news, Unified Windows Platform and Software Verification Competition. Yes, apparently, these are both “things”, and we pontificate on both of them.
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For many testers, Selenium is a well known tool and a familiar friend. For others, it may be something you are curious about but haven’t had a chance to do much with yet. All of our panel has had some level of experience with Selenium, and Brian Van Stone visits us again to tell us what he’s been up to and how his Adventures with Selenium have informed his Test automation service processes and overall testing.
Also on the Selenium and testing tools front, what is up with the VC community making big bets on software testing tools? Is it Silicon Valley business as usual, or is there something else going on here? We investigate, or pontificate, or at least we offer an opinion or four.
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This week we are joined by Kim Knup, who is with Songkick and tells us a tale of intrigue and guile, and the behavior of concert attendees. Wait, what? OK, not quite that juicy, but she does work with Songkick, she does test and monitor performance, and it turns out that different audiences and different fans of different performers have distinctly different approaches to how the source and buy tickets through Songkick, and Kim shares some of those examples with us. Also, in our news segment, when Apple Support is down, do we care as much as when AWS is down? In other words, do we grade quality on a curve?
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Sometimes, you can find experts on topics in unusual places. This week we discuss security and privacy with Doug Traser, an Information Security Manager with Five9. He’s also the guitar player for Michael’s band, Ensign Red (or is Michael Doug’s singer? We’re never entirely sure). Regardless, if you have questions about security, OWASP, polities that drive you crazy and wondering if any of this makes any sense, Doug has some answers, and maybe raises a few more questions.
Also, in our news segment: what happens when Amazon Echo might hold the key to a murder trial. Can your personal digital home assistant testify against you in a court of law?
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Have you found yourself looking at deals and services online that seem too good to be true? Wondering “where’s the catch?” You’re not alone. There are lots of ways that software uses and manipulates us to give up details about ourselves, or to somehow get us to pay for services that we either didn’t want, or to provide information about ourselves and our habits to others that we don’t really want to be known. These practices are grouped together under the phrase ‘Dark Patterns” and Emma Keaveny has made it a point to learn about and warn about them. We discuss several varieties of Dark Patterns and debate where on the spectrum they fall, whether they be nuisances, poor design or an outright breach of ethics.
Also, where were you when Amazon’s E3 services went down on February 28, 2017? Did it affect you? It affected some of us, and at the time we recorded this episode it was a very fresh memory, so we had plenty to say about it.
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How well do we know the work that we do as testers? Do we understand what it is we do? Really understand it? Jon Bach thinks we can do better at figuring out what it is that we do in our roles as testers and in the roles that support and offer service to people in our organizations. Much of what we do is implicit, and carries responsibilities, expectations and even contracts for what we do and how we act. In today’s episode, Jon helps us break down both traditional and not so traditional roles that we may find ourselves in, and ways that we can leverage both explicit and implicit knowledge of what we do, and maybe what we can stop doing.
Also, in an unconventional news segment this go around, friend of the show Anna Royzman tells us about Test Masters Academy and a fresh take on testing conferences geared towards testing leaders (the Testing Leadership Conference is May 1-3, 2017 in New York City) and emerging topics and technologies at the New Testing Conference coming this fall to New York City). It’s a wild ride!
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Have you been to a testing conference? Wanted to go? Wondered which ones you should attend? Matt Heusser, Jessica Ingrassellino, and Michael Larsen have been to more than a few as participants and presenters. We discuss our favorites, the pros and cons of various conferences, and what makes each of them worthy destinations to consider.
Also, putting a different spin on the News Segment this time around, Michael shares his enthusiasm for and about “The Privacy Paradox”.
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The truth is, no one will care as much or be as interested in your developing testing career as you are. There are studies that say that Software Testing is one of the Happiest Jobs there is. Does that sound weird, or does that sound spot on? In this episode of “The Testing Show” we welcome back Alex Schladebeck and welcome for the first time QualiTest’s Elle Gee to discuss software testing careers and how they differ or are similar depending on the organization in question. Regulars Perze Ababa and Justin Rohrman also riff along with Matt Heusser on the unique challenges in developing and sustaining a career in software testing.
Also, in our news segment, what happens when Automation and a software glitch makes it impossible to do a task we often take for granted? 900 Shell stations in Malaysia discovered exactly that, and we certainly have opinions about that, too.
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This is Part Two of our discussion with Alex Schladebeck and Joel Montvelisky. We tackle regression testing and share a few stories from the trenches (and a ghostly Michael even makes a contribution to this topic), discuss the idea that perhaps continuous testing is a concept that’s time really has come, and look to see if we can possibly break out of the “hardening” process at the end of sprints in favor of more testing up front, so that discoveries can actually be addressed sooner rather than pushed off to later.
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It seems that 2017 is shaping up to be the year of the two-parter, as we are back with another two part episode. This is Part One, in which the Testing Show regulars chat with Alex Schladebeck and Joel Montvelisky about the way that testing is practiced globally. Joel has some insights on this in that he steers the State of Testing Questionnaire that runs in January and February each year, and gathers statistics about how testers actually work. We look at some issues that were discovered with the survey, such as how many organizations claim to do automation versus how many actually are making a solid go at it, as well as where those organizations choose to, or choose not to, apply their efforts. Also, in the news, what happens when TSA’s computers go out on one of the busiest travel days of the year (the day after New Years)? The Testing Show panel and their guest weigh in, and they have plenty to say, both on the outage and the process in general.
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We continue our conversation with Angie Jones about ways that automation can be put first in stories (yes, really) and ways that she has been able to get team buy in and cooperation to make that process effective. Also, we have a mailbag question that we answer in depth, or as much as we can… is it possible to be paid as much as a developer or an SDET if you are just a manual tester? The answer is “it depends”, but we go into a lot more about why that is the case.
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Have you wondered how your team could better utilize its automation resources? Does your definition of “Done” include new automation efforts for stories that are in flight? How about when changes to functionality (or new additions) cause your old tests to stop working? Do we play continuous catch up, or is there a better way to applying automation efforts?
Angie Jones of Lexus Nexus joins us to talk about better ways to have those automation discussions, who should be responsible for what, and how everyone on the team can contribute to automation efforts (hint, you don’t need to be a coder to help make great automation, but it certainly helps).
Also, this week we delve into Spotify taking over hard drives with continuous writes that could shave years off of their operation life, and are Uber’s autonomous vehicles even close to ready for prime time?
This is part one of a two part series. Come back in two weeks when we continue our conversation with Angie.
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It’s a new year, and it’s that classic time for people to make New Year’s Resolutions, as well as quickly run out of steam trying to actually succeed at them. We discuss ways in which we have set goals, or not set them, how we have been stymied in the past, or how we have pushed on regardless of failing, and the fact that failing is often the key element that helps us progress and ultimately succeed.
Also, in the news, we look back on the fifth anniversary of the death of Christopher Hitchens, how a typo may well have been the root cause of “The Russian Hack” regarding the U.S. Presidential election, and will all exploratory testers be replaced in five years by AI, neural networks and machine learning? We have opinions on all of those.
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As we come to the end of 2016, we consider ways that software testing can go beyond just testing products, and looking at ways that we can use our super powers for good in the world. Abby Bangser works with ThoughtWorks and ThoughtWorks makes this a core part of their mission with ThoughtWorks University, a combination of training and integration of all roles, including software testing, as they learn how to work with ThoughtWorks model. Additionally, they take on a variety of projects that focus on social and economic justice, bringing groups of people from all over the world to Pune, India to research and work on a specific problem to help those in the immediate area and beyond.
Also, are you getting a lot of Skype spam lately? You are definitely not alone. We talk about what’s causing it and how to fix it.
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For centuries, the Liberal Arts education was the gold standard that all education endeavors were based. The idea of a ‘Renaissance Person” was someone who had skills and abilities in a variety of fields, grew out of the classic Liberal Arts education. Some say that it’s a bygone piece of history, but many feel that it is a vital part of working and interacting with people, and in many ways, it’s perhaps the most vital of underpinnings for success as a software tester. We welcome back Jess Ingrassellino to talk with us about the value of a classic Liberal Arts education ,how it can be applied effectively to a software testing career, and how those who are so focused on automating as the be all and end all might be missing a few things.
Also, we take a look at the growth of online testing conferences, the UK National Health Service Email bomb and Virtual Studio for Mac… wait, what?!!
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Accessibility and Inclusive Design are two approaches to help make software available to the broadest possible group of people. Today, we welcome Alicia Jarvis, a Toronto based Accessibility advocate, to discuss her own Accessibility advocacy, her experiences in software testing around accessibility, and how we need to look beyond a checklist for compliance, and think about Accessibility as a core part of our design approach from the beginning. Also: Samsung seems to be having issues with exploding batteries, both with the Note 7 and the Galaxy J5.
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This week, we are joined by Jess Ingrassellino and Garry Heon to talk about where testing is going, and what the future of testing holds, going beyond Agile and dev-ops, or at least seeing where and how testers today will better be able to work and thrive in this brave new world. In the process of talking about that, we joked about the idea of a “full stack tester” to go with the increasing demand of “full stack developers”. Is there such a thing as a full stack tester? We weren’t sure, but if there was, we figured we could relate to the idea, and we’d be interested in seeing that idea develop, so to speak.
Also, we discuss the ramifications of what happens when your Web Cam takes part in one of the biggest DDoS attacks ever (hint, it’s easier and more likely than you might believe).
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Do you have to be a career tester to perform the testing role? If you are facilitating, coaching or leading others, are you testing? Does it really matter who does the role, as long as somebody does it? The Testing Show is back in the studio and chatting with Qualitest’s Yaron Kottler on exactly these weighty questions. Needless to say, we discussed these ideas of “what makes a tester a tester” and then some. Also, the panel shares their frustrations with the recent Apple updates of iOS10.1 and macOS Sierra.
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What happens when software development takes a cue from disciplines like law enforcement, counter intelligence and military operations? What do we do when we need to look at complex systems to find clues about issues that we didn’t even know existed, but the data shows it plainly? How can we harness the gut feelings of testers in a more scientific manner, and “make sense by sense making”? Confused? Dave Snowden wants to help with that.
Dave Snowden is the creator of Cynefin Framework, and it has been used with a broad array of applications, including government, immigration, counter-intelligence and software development. Cynefin is making inroads into the world of software testing, and Anna Royzman is possibly the person in the testing community most familiar with the Cynefin Framework. We are happy to have a conversation about Cynefin with both Dave and Anna, and its implications on software testing.
[Note: Due to challenges with Trans-Atlantic communications, the audio breaks up in various places. We have done our best to work around this, but there are places where audio will be spotty.]
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This time around, The Testing Show is coming to you “Live” from the Conference for the Association for Software Testing, held in Vancouver, B.C., Canada. Matthew Heusser, Justin Rohrman, and Perze Ababa met up with Michael Bolton to discuss “Testopsies”, a focused examination and task analysis, and applying it to the opportunities for learning and refocusing of efforts often bundled under the label of “testing”.
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Noah Sussman knows a bit about bringing Dev-Ops to fruition at a variety of organizations. To that end, we asked him to come join us and tell us a bit about what Dev-Ops is, and what it isn’t. We also discuss the ways that testers can develop their skills and become more technical (hint: it’s not as difficult as many may think, but it will require work and interaction with others to really be successful at it). Also, how does Bing Maps manage to put Melbourne, Australia in the Ocean somewhere near Japan?
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It’s another “On the Road” episode of The Testing Show, with Matt Heusser attending Agile2016 in Atlanta, Georgia. While there, he gathered an impromptu forum to discuss the way we work and what we often have to do so we can get to the work we actually want to be doing. Emma Armstrong, Dan Ashby, Claire Moss and Tim Ottinger join in to dissect the continuum that is “Real Work vs. Bureaucratic Silliness”.
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If you were going to be at liberty to drop into any software testing job you wanted, anywhere, in any software related industry of your choosing, what would be part of your “jump kit”? The Testing Show sits down with Curtis Pettit (of Huge) and asks exactly that. We geek out on favorite tools, and quickly discover that we all have some perennial favorites, but we discuss some lesser known exotics as well, really just scratching the surface of possible tools.
Also, have we reached a point where, when systems go down for Airlines and Credit Card companies, that we are helpless to go back and do business as we used to do, at least if we are in so called “technically advanced” areas? Perhaps the rugged backcountry may have a thing or two still to teach us all.
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This week, we are joined by Dan Billing, a software security penetration test specialist at New Voice Media in the U.K.. Dan describes his path from everyday software tester to security expert, and the variety of approaches and methods, as well as tools, that come into play if you want to take a crack at being a software tester with a specialty towards security testing.
Also, can thirty years of fMRI results really be invalid, and what are you doing to take on the “30 Days of Software Testing” challenge?
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Today, we are joined by Alan Page of Microsoft to discuss the Unified Engineering model, what that means, how it is working at Microsoft, and how that might effect software testing and software testers going forward. Also, what happens when the Air Force has a database crash and can’t recover their data, and is the Testing community really anti-automation?
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What does it take to differentiate yourself as a tester? How can you demonstrate the unique values and attributes you can bring to the role of tester? How can you push back against the race to the bottom where “everyone can do the job”? Is that really true? These questions and more we posed to Andy Tinkham, and shared ideas as to how we can bring much more to the table that we often think we can.
Also, can software be specified in such a way that it can actually be made error free? Justin had a chance to look at that very idea at the DeepSpec Workshop at Princeton University, and he shared his findings with us.
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Recorded live from Orcas Island, Washington, Matt, Justin and Perze attended the Reinventing Testers training run by James and Jon Bach. James sat down and talked with The Testing Show about reinventing testing skills, developing them, and the importance of words.
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We all know that what we measure is something we can improve, right? We can measure anything and everything, and way too often, organizations attempt to do exactly that. The net result is we measure stuff that is not important to try to inform us of things that absolutely are. Mike Lyles joins us for a spirited talk about measurement and metrics. We can’t escape metrics completely, but we can be a lot smarter about the metrics we do use.
Also, how would you feel if your software update destroyed the product you were working on? What if it was a multi-million dollar satellite? Yep, that happened, and The Testing Show panel gets into it!
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