Podcast Episodes

We are inundated by scads of mixed messages about software development, testing, quality, and delivery today. There are the Agile Manifesto and principles, SCRUM, Kanban, Scaled Agile Framework, the book - How Google Tests Software, the tech talk - Test is Dead, murmurs about achieving 100% automation, goals of delivering faster and more frequently to customers, the idea that we can solve every problem with DevOps, and so on. Some of these messages leave organizations confused about the value of testing, and testers wondering if they have a career path at all. We indeed are at a critical juncture in the quality and testing space, and if we aren't careful, we could be joining the dodo and the dinosaurs. 

How will we survive all this? Dawn believes the heart of the issue is in becoming truly agile in our beliefs, approaches, and attitudes about testing. Without the flexibility to serve the needs of our teams and organizations TODAY (and tomorrow!), we should be concerned. So, what is the true meaning of agility for testers? Does it mean doing "Agile" things? Following SCRUM? Doing DevOps? Etc.? Dawn doesn't think so. Please join Dawn to take a deep dive into what true agility could look like for testers and teams moving forward!

In this month’s “Two Points of View at Two” session, Rex welcomes Gio Lodi to discuss how to adopt a Test-Driven Development mindset followed by a Q&A opportunity. We changed the start time of this month’s webinar to 5:00 PM Central in order to allow for this multi-continent session. After all, it’s 2 o’clock somewhere!

Test-Driven Development (TDD), is a software development technique that flips the testing process on its head: rather than testing after the product is done, developers build tests first and use the failure as a guide to write the necessary code. TDD's immediate benefit is that it gives better test coverage, but there are more beneficial second order effects that come when applying it consistently. Moving in this step-by-step, feedback driven process improves the team productivity and results in a malleable software design. In this presentation, we'll look at how to bring this mindset that focuses on iteration and feedback in all the areas of software and product development.

Gio Lodi is the author of Test-Driven Development in Swift. He's been exploring testing and automation since 2011, when he encountered TDD while working on a startup with his University housemates. Gio publishes his findings in his blog and with presentations such as this one. He lives in an Australian beach town with his wife and two little children, and works remotely as mobile infrastructure engineer at Automattic, where he helps teams working on apps such as WordPress ship quality code on a schedule.

“What Gets Measured Gets Managed.” Jamie Mitchell explains, “I have heard this since the first day I got into software. Management wants metrics. The managers would tell us that it allowed them to maximize our effort and the organizational profits.  The more cynical of us always said that it was to make sure we were not sitting around drinking coffee instead of working.” 

Not everything that matters can be measured. Not everything that we can measure matters. And this applies to software test automation more than in most software endeavors.

As an automator of almost 30 years, Jamie has struggled with the demand for metrics from management for most of his career. Most of the metrics that he has been forced to collect were—in his humble opinion—not only worthless, but also misleading and subject to manipulation by those who wanted to prove their point (no matter what that point was.)

Join the discussion, between Rex and Jamie, as they cover various kinds of metrics that have been suggested for automation.

Shift left. Continuous integration and continuous delivery (CI/CD). Continuous deployment. DevOps. What is all this stuff and what does it mean for you as the tester? In this keynote, Rex Black will explain these concepts and their test implications.  He’ll then describe the emerging role of the SDET (Software Development Engineering in Test, also called SET) and what SDETs do.  Yes, being an SDET is about test automation, but it’s about a lot more than that, and Rex will give you some examples of things you can expect to do as an SDET in a shift left world over the coming decade.  Don’t worry. Life as a tester in the SDET reality is gonna be fun and exciting, and Rex will give you some ideas how.

TMMi has become the leading model for test process improvement, but how are organizations adopting TMMi and what issues are they addressing? Join us as we welcome guest presenter, Martin Adcock, Managing Director of Experimentus who have been helping organizations to deliver TMMi based solutions for over 14 years, as he explores how organizations have adopted TMMi and are using it to improve their test process and give them a competitive edge.

Join Rex Black and Rob Sabourin for a lively back-and-forth on the topic followed by a Q&A opportunity. Rob observes that, today, many software testers are challenged to quickly identify product quality concerns amidst turbulent project contexts. Business, technology, and organizational factors change frequently. Testers are forced to continuously adapt, to think on their feet, and to provide stakeholders, team members and even system users with meaningful feedback about quality concerns, and operational readiness.
There are many different test automation technologies which can facilitate the control and observation of software.  Rob notes that, among his customers, test automation technologies are mainly limited to implementing automated verification checks, as part of regression suites, in continuous integration and deployment processes.
This webinar will address the problem of how test automation tools, methods, and techniques can be effectively used to facilitate, and improve the efficiency of, exploratory testing.
Robert Sabourin has more than thirty-eight years of management experience, leading teams of software development professionals. A well-respected member of the software engineering community, Robert has managed, trained, mentored, and coached thousands of top professionals in the field. He frequently speaks at conferences and writes on software engineering, SQA, testing, management, and internationalization. The author of I am a Bug! the popular software testing children’s book, Robert is an adjunct professor of Software Engineering at McGill University.  Robert is the principal consultant (&president/janitor) of AmiBug.Com, Inc.

Test case metrics. Defect metrics. Requirements coverage metrics. Code coverage metrics. Metrics, metrics, metrics: yep, we got metrics in software testing, but do we use them properly? 

Following up on his popular keynote and webinar, “Stupid Metrics Tricks and How to Avoid Them,” testing metrics advocate Rex Black decided to have a discussion about how we use and, all too often, misuse metrics in software with fellow testing professional Dawn Haynes, a testing metrics skeptic. There are sure to be some interesting disagreements as well as some unexpected agreements. 

Join Dawn and Rex for a lively back-and-forth on the topic of metrics, followed by a Q&A opportunity.

You may have heard the saying “The only constant on any project is change.” Yet the prospect of change is rarely welcomed—either personally or professionally. How is it that we still believe that these changes apply to others but not to us? Julie Gardiner says that now is the time to re-evaluate and transform how we test in order to deliver more value to organizations—from a people, processes, and tools perspective. She examines, how we’ve gotten to this stage in terms of our role and what skills are vital for us to be prepared for the next stage.

You know that testing and quality is important, right? Okay, prove it. Exactly how much money do you think testing saves? Yes, that’s right saves. Testing is often thought of as a regrettable cost center, something that must be funded to avoid some dimly-understood “bad stuff that could happen.” In fact, software testing and other quality assurance activities save money. Typically, every dollar spent on testing saves eight dollars in the long run. In this One Key Idea session, Rex will demonstrate the use of cost of quality, a technique known for over 50 years, using a real world case study and a spreadsheet you can download and use that same day. Testers, know your value!

In this month’s webinar, we are happy to welcome guest speaker, Adam Leon Smith. Adam is CTO of Dragonfly and is focused on testing, quality and AI. With two decades experience in environments, development, testing, quality and project delivery in addition to commercial experience, he is the chair of the British Computer Society's Special Interest Group in software testing, and works with international standardization committees developing AI and quality-related standards.

AI is a complex topic and is the biggest technical renaissance to impact testing for at least two decades.  Adam will talk about intrinsic quality issues with AI, challenges in testing AI-based systems, and new techniques and methods.  In addition, he will cover emerging AI-enhanced testing tools that are yet to get much coverage.