Let's Talk About Tests, Baby

Ep 21: Best laid plans

1OctoberletstalktestsShow Notespodcast, QA, shownotes

Or lack thereof. So, we had an email from a client today, asking why our AC doesn’t contain the edge cases. We’ve send a reply talking about what AC is for, why we don’t put edge cases in AC and how we test around AC. I’ve never come across this before, and we generally don’t

Ep 20: Landmark/Interlude

24SeptemberletstalktestsShow Notespodcast, shownotes

Why is episode 20 a landmark? Episode 20 of a podcast seems to be where one of two things happen: You run out of topics, or you continue and run a successful podcast (this fact is from the journal of ‘I read it somewhere and now I can’t find it again’ studies, so you’ll have

Ep 19: Oracles

17SeptemberletstalktestsShow Notespodcast, QA, shownotes

Let’s talk about Oracles. Oracles determine whether a program or piece of software has passed or failed a test. In mythology they are also just that, mythological. And whilst, unlike seers who divined via interpretation of signs, they were spoken to directly by Gods, they didn’t share their knowledge often, were over subscribed, and seemed

Ep 18: What a Tool

10SeptemberletstalktestsShow Notespodcast, QA, shownotes, tools

What is a tester without their tools? As a manual tester I generally don’t use the coding tools, but that doesn’t mean my toolbelt isn’t nifty. But first, apparently, the 9th September was National Software Testers day, because on the 9th September, 1947: While she [Admiral Grace Hopper] was working on a Mark II Computer

Ep 17: Risky

3SeptemberletstalktestsShow Notesbug reports, podcast, shownotes, software testing

Leading on from last week’s show, I want to talk about prioritising and risk assessment. I’ve spoken a little bit before about how I use AC as a base for my testing – that’s the highest priority, then I spread out from there. I think there’s some merit to timeboxing things off and focusing your

Ep 16: Creativity in Time and Space

27AugustletstalktestsShow Notespodcast, shownotes, software testing

Today I’ve got a sort of mix of an episode, covering two different but related topics, that I tried to expand into two episodes, but couldn’t make them work, then I read Simon Prior’s blog post on the Testing Mindset: https://priorsworld.wordpress.com/2015/08/19/the-testing-mindset/ and realised that the two topics were inter-related and maybe only needed one episode.

Ep 15: So Cunning You Could Pin A Tail On It And Call It A Fox

20AugustletstalktestsShow Notesplans, podcast, shownotes, software testing

Test plans, cases, charters, etc. I honestly kind of thought all these were kind of different things in some way? It was surprising to find out that they are all basically the same thing. I generally do a mix of planning tests out when writing AC and using how I’d test the feature to make

Ep 14: Eternal Sunshine of the Testless Mind

13AugustletstalktestsShow Notesmental health, Mindfulness, podcast, shownotes

You’ve probably heard about Mindfulness, its got a lot of press, good and bad1. recently, but I want to talk about it in the context of work. First, an intro, for those who need it. Mindfulness is based on Buddhist meditation that as the name suggests is based around being aware of yourself and your

Ep 13: I Love Docs, I’ve Always Loved Docs

6AugustletstalktestsShow Notescommunication, documentation, podcast, shownotes

The title is a reference to Jupiter Ascending, the wonderfully fun and ridiculous Wachowski film. I highly recommend it! Lets talk about something else I really enjoy at work: documentation. This was a episode I had in the back of my head but after an interesting twitter conversation I decided to move this up the

Ep 12: Give Us A Clue

30JulyletstalktestsShow Notespodcast, QA, shownotes, software testing, Testing

Or the importance of context and domain knowledge. This episode was inspired by an blog post on uTest that came into my inbox this week, and I wanted to chat and expand on the points made there1. As a tester, not having any context bugs me (hah!). I need some insight into the product, or