New tester challenges: MoT Weekly – Issue 489

What are common challenges for someone new to testing and a new tester on a team? Read a roundup of news and ideas from the testing, QA and quality engineering community in this week's MoT Weekly.

  • by Simon Tomes
  • Oct 14, 2024
  • 9 min read
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This newsletter is kindly supported by Kiuwan

Discover if AI Is in Your Codebase
Kiuwan’s SAST and SCA solutions help detect AI-generated code, developing a “fingerprint” or baseline for your applications. Identify changes that signal AI code introduction and maintain source code quality. Experience the power of Kiuwan with a free demo and 14-day trial.

 

 

What's been happening in the testing, QA and quality engineering community? Let's go! 🚁

I hope you have a great week. 

— Simon Tomes, Community Lead at Ministry of Testing

 

Community

Watch these two videos: How to get the best out of a testing conference and gain confidence in public speaking. Thanks to Gwen Diagram, Conor O'Neill, Betty Okwedadi, Heather Carter, Rahul Parwal and Karen Todd, they are full of advice. 🗣️

Discover a helpful TestBash Brighton 2024 talk and more on the updated MoT homepage. Look for TestBash Sessions.

New York's new meetup is happening on the 17th of October. Nice one Christian Bromann for doing a talk. 🇺🇸

Spotted! Yaroslav Yerokhin and his MoT Vancouver meetup crew going for another QA trail talks. 🇨🇦

"The recent articles published and ones upcoming via MoT have been great, the quality of writing is really levelling up. Many thanks to all our writers! We're always looking for more submissions! Come and teach people what you know. Submit here." – Rosie Sherry.

What's Ministry of Testing Professional Membership all about? A look inside at how we're supporting the software testing and quality engineering industry. 

James Wadley shares the love for the community: “Being part of the Ministry of Testing community has been and continues to be an incredible experience." Read the entire message. ❤️

"I'm a big believer of communities." Christine Pinto celebrates her Community Star badge and the MoT Community.

 

Career Growth 

New roles

Now hiring

 

Essentials

Taking your first steps in software testing by Rahul Parwal. Overcome the common challenges of starting a testing career with practical insights that will set you up for success. Read more in this helpful collection: Software Testing Essentials: Resources for Beginners. 🪜

What skills make you a good tester? is a hot topic. Add your take on things.

"If you want to elevate your added value as a software tester, you better learn how to communicate about testing like a pro." – Maaike Brinkhof. Read: A good tester is a good communicator. I will die on this hill. 

What is a common challenge faced by new testers? ⛰️

 

Quality

This talk introduces the work of the 'grandfather of quality' W. Edwards Deming and shows how his work helps us as testers. How does Deming's work on quality help us? with Mike Harris.

 

Exploratory Testing

Have you participated in a testathon? 🏃

 

Just for fun

How products are really made and what's this about tech debt? 😅

 

Reporting

Willem Dauwen would like to know, how do you define a release blocker?

What actions do you and your team take when you find a critical bug in production?

Do your bug reports annoy you and your fellow testers? asks Ravisuriya Eswara.

"Testers can use XMR charts, including control charts, to enable their team to get insights into their product and processes." – Mike Harris. Source.

 

 

This newsletter is kindly supported by Xray

Xray: Native Quality Management
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Strategy

In this episode, Janet Gregory and Lisa Crispin talk about the definition of done.

Organizational Buy-In: The Cornerstone of Effective Quality Assurance by Cotopaxi Lyon.

 

Data Testing

Data glitch brings hurricane warnings to BBC Weather website. 💨

New collection. The Community's Guide to Data Testing.

 

Oracles

What are the different ways to connect with your customers?

What is Kafka? Rafael dos Santos Miguel Filho shares a comprehensive overview. Anatomia do Kafka.

 

AI in Testing

Are organisations interested in the adoption of AI in testing? Find out the obstacles, questions and concerns of the community and wider tech industry. 🤖

Google's AI-powered compliance platform, Checks by Google, is now generally available. It checks what an app does against what it should do. AI-Powered Compliance for Apps and Code by Loraine Lawson.

 

Cookie Testing

When was the last time your team tested cookies? It's time to revisit your testing strategies, thanks to Mirza Sisic. 🍪

 

API Testing

How do I start to test an API? asks Ilmi Sejfula – this thread has lots of helpful advice. And there's also a collection of community resources to kickstart an API testing journey. A Beginner's Path to API Testing.

Playwright Java API Testing | How to test DELETE requests? by Mohammad Faisal Khatri.

 

Automation

"What I am observing in the space of platform products that all the hundreds of low code tools are seeking to partner with the platform product vendor." Join the conversation with Maaret Pyhäjärvi.

Identify Testing Gaps with Cypress UI Coverage thanks to Ioan Solderea.

Kris Lopatko earned a MoT Intermediate Certificate in Test Automation. Bug congrats! 🏆

 

Were you part of TestBash Brighton? Share a memory

A large crowd of people sat in a grand auditorium. They are looking at a stage that is not in the photo. There are four monster characters standing on a second level. There is a duck attempting to hide.

 

🗓️ Events

New events are always added, so keep checking the events page for up-to-date info.

 

🗞️ Industry News

 

✏️ Continuous Call for Contributions

Contributing to the testing community is a positive way to support everyone’s career growth. Unsure how to do it? Turns out there are many ways for you to contribute and be rewarded.

We are now accepting abstracts for talks and workshops for TestBash Brighton 2025. Submit an idea.

 

Poll of the Week

The image shows a poll question about whether employers ask software testers to do a test as part of the interview process. The results are: Yes: 57% No: 38% Something else, please comment: 5% The total number of votes is 118.
Simon Tomes's profile

Simon Tomes

Community Lead

Simon is the Community Lead at Ministry of Testing and his pronouns are he/him. He has a passion for all things testing with a career in various testing and tech roles since 2003. He particularly enjoys promoting and sharing the value of exploratory testing, leadership, collaboration, creativity and community.