Some Thoughts on the “Anyone can test” Fallacy and Education about Testing

I would like to know what the testing community thinks about this: At DEWT3 last weekend I was thinking a lot about what happens when human interactions with systems are ignored. If we think of software development as a system we must think about how people are involved and the characteristics of those people if…

Dutch Exploratory Workshop in Testing (DEWT) 3

This is an expansion on my post published on the Allies Computing Ltd blog: http://www.alliescomputing.com/blog/general-systems-thinking-dutch-exploratory-workshop-testing/   The third Dutch Exploratory Workshop in Testing took place over the weekend 20 – 21 April 2013 after an informal gathering the previous evening for drinks and testing chat. The theme for the weekend was Systems Thinking and I was…

Rapid Software Testing with James Bach – Final Day

My employer, Allies Computing Ltd, has hosted a condensed version of this post: http://www.alliescomputing.com/blog/testing-psychology-rapid-software-testing-training-james-bach/   Well, that’s Rapid Software Testing concluded and I feel enthused about the future. In my previous post I explained some of the things I learned on the first two days of the course. Today we looked at so-called Exploratory Testing. In…

Rapid Software Testing with James Bach – First Two Days

My employer, Allies Computing Ltd, has hosted a condensed version of this post: http://www.alliescomputing.com/blog/testing-psychology-rapid-software-testing-training-james-bach/   Rapid Software Testing is a course I have wanted to do for a few years now having heard really good things about how it has improved various people’s testing and the way they think. We are two days in now and…

SIGiST Conference 13/03/2013

Good session at the Special Interest Group in Software Testing (SIGiST) conference yesterday run, as usual, by the BCS (British Computer Society) with a good representation of testers from across the different project lifecycles. Matt Robson from Mastek gave an opening keynote under the title “Be Agile or Do Agile” and gave some salutary warnings…

Of Marathons and Testers

A friend of mine, Simon Alexander, has recently started training to run in the London Marathon in just over a month’s time. He has started a fund-raising page at VirginMoney and any donations would be much appreciated by – not just by Simon and I – but the staff and children at the hospices too. It…

Observations from EuroSTAR 2011: Looking to the Future

I intend to write a few blog posts over the coming weeks following on from my experiences at EuroSTAR 2011 in Manchester. I want to start with a post addressing the general theme from the keynotes and my own thoughts on the matters raised. The Speakers’ Views on The Future of Software Testing (with a…

Test Management Forum – 27 July 2011

The thirtieth Test Management Forum took place today (27 July 2011) at Balls Brothers in London, EC3 and as usual there was a varied programme.  The first talk I attended was by Andy Redwood who was telling us about the psychology of testing and what makes a ‘tester’ tick.  Amongst the things Andy was telling…

SIGiST 21 June 2011

SIGiST took place on 21 June 2011 in, as usual, the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists in London. The theme of the day was “What is testing?” and started with an opening keynote from Chris Ambler from Testing Stuff. In his talk he discussed whether we were guardians of quality, innovators, reporters, interpreters or…

2010: A Pedant’s Review

I have been reminiscing this evening about the passing of another year.  It has been a year during which I have learned a great deal about myself and my chosen craft.  Many of my experiences have strengthened my understanding of why certain things work well for me in my situation and why other things don’t…