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What's been happening in the testing, QA and quality engineering community? Let's go! 🚌
Community
- Aj Wilson joins Ministry of Testing as a Lead Insights and Trends Analyst. Aj is an incredible community person: knowledgeable, welcoming, inclusive, kind, insightful, encouraging, fun, conversational, supportive, thoughtful, creative plus much more! I feel she'll be an amazing addition (multiplier!) to the team here at Ministry of Testing. 🎉
- A few more meetups to join. Munich on 11th July and 24th July – a two-in-a-month whammy! Plus Berlin on 17th July.
- "Collective success is the thing that is valuable and the thing we reward." Drew Pontikis shared this during last week's The Testing Planet. Isn't it great?
- Glad you're happy to be featured on the membership page, Rahul Parwal and Marie Cruz (via Slack). We're glad to celebrate you!
- Nicola Martin amplifies (Extra)ordinary Tech Stories. Do check out what they're up to.
- We've started a new introductions thread for folks to introduce or reintroduce themselves to the community. Come say hi. 👋
- A couple of events worth considering. This Week in Testing most Fridays: Debrief the week in testing via a LinkedIn radio show. And Office Hours every Wednesday: Stuck on a software testing challenge or just looking to get more out of your Ministry of Testing membership? Connect with the Ministry of Testing team and other members, get advice, and learn how to maximize the benefits of your membership.
- What is "Ambassadoring"? Find out from Ben Dowen.
Automation
- Bug congrats to Colin Piper, Adam McAnirn, Erika Andrijauskaite and James Perry for earning certificates in test automation. Plus an extra shout out to Adam for continuing to answer certificate-related questions on The Club. 🏆
- Just do it! encourages Ben.
- "The applications are data heavy with a lot of complex calculations being written to SQL Server." This influences how Conn McKay shares automation reports. How about you, what do you share in your automation reports?
- Veerle Verhagen suggests that "test automation does not reduce the amount of work you'll be doing on testing! You will not need less testing capacity by automating tests!"
Bug Reporting
- How long does it take from reporting a bug to a fix being available for retest? Plus more discussion on The Club.
Career Growth
- Bug congrats all around for these career movers. Tamer Jouni joins EastMed as a Quality Assurance Tester. Thomas Ponnet found a new (contract) role. Jo Richards starts a new role and Eve Bulloch started a new role at BBC. Plus The Testing Planet contributor, Kulas Angeles, has been promoted to Director, Software Quality Engineering.
- If you're job hunting we want to help you find a new role. Simply make a LinkedIn post and tag Ministry of Testing in it for visibility. We will then reshare it. Our network is your network. Chris Haynes is open to work and Robert Fey recommends a colleague.
- BBC are hiring as are The New York Times.
- MoT Athens organiser, Petros Plakogiannis, shares his career growth story: A Tester’s Journey - Learning Automation.
- "You're telling me that you didn't expect the MoT community would want to work with you!?" Emily O'Connor on Melissa Fisher who is hiring.
Essentials
- Kristof Van Kriekingen asks, "What is a good QA Engineer?"
- What's changed since this post from 2019? What does a testing mindset mean to you?
- "Quality does not only matter to “end users” but to all stakeholders." — Sebastian Stautz. How do you talk about quality?
- Callum Akehurst-Ryan shares Testers as Dungeons and Dragons.
- What skills make you a good tester? Question-asking skills, critical thinking, emotional intelligence, suspicion, and honesty. What else?
- Shoutout to Nicola Lindgren for her excellent YouTube channel. If not on your radar, there's plenty of helpful career advice to dig into.
- What is quality? A mini book from Lisa Crispin and Janet Gregory.
- Katja Obring urges us to discuss what makes good testing instead of worrying about manual vs automated.
Accessibility
- What's wrong with this form? asks Ady Stokes.
Tools
- All you need to know about software testing tools. From discovering tools through to choosing the right tool; the testing community have you covered in this collection. 🧰
Exploratory Testing
- "This demonstrates to me what testing is all about. Learning, reporting observations and exploring whether there’s anything the team wants to change." – Melissa Fisher's flurry of bugs.
Heuristics
- "Heuristics can cause problems and biases and shouldn’t always be relied on, but usually, they are a good measure of what action to take if you know the source. Trust your gut.". Aj Wilson shares the WITCH heuristic. 🧙
AI in Testing
- AI software testing tools leave most of your project's needs unmet! 😮
- SENSE: Solving the SQL Murder Mystery with a Large Language Model Business Intelligence Tool by Yeo Yong Kiat.
Coding
- Maaike Brinkhof encourages you to stop trying to make refactoring happen, it’s not going to happen.
- Binary Search Explained — Popular SWE/SDET Interview Question. Unlocking the Power of Binary Search: A Key Algorithm in Computer Science by Lana Begunova.
Test Strategy
- Charlotte Lockwood would like to hear about test strategies for testing SaaS applications.
- When it comes to reviewing the testing for a feature, who is involved? asks Paul French.
- Beren Van Daele offers an email course to learn how to do RiskStorming.
- During This Week in Testing, we were reminded of Heather Reid's talk: Using Data to Drive Testing Decisions.
Developer Relations
- The Death of the Junior Developer by Steve Yegge.
API Testing
- Irfan Mujagic describes Handling Unreliable API Endpoints with Custom Retry Logic and Mocking.
Merch
- You might not break Tobias Geyers' record for the fastest time between "seeing a post" and "getting an order confirmation" yet there's still time to order a Pride 2024 'Testing' t-shirt. Profits will be donated to an LGBTQIA+ cause. 🏳️🌈
I hope you have a great week.
— Simon Tomes, Community Lead at Ministry of Testing
Gather with the testing community. Join an event, Slack and The Club.
🗓️ Events
New events are always added, so keep checking the events page for up-to-date info.
- Office Hours Wed 03 Jul
- This Week in Testing Fri 05 Jul
- Office Hours Wed 10 Jul
- Munich Meetup Thu 11 Jul
- Managing Distributed QA Teams: Strategies for Success Wed 17 Jul
- Berlin Meetup Wed 17 Jul
- Brighton Meetup Wed 17 Jul
- Sheffield Meetup Thu 18 Jul
- Bengaluru Meetup Sat 20 Jul
- Munich Meetup Wed 24 Jul
- Test Exchange Thu 25 Jul
- TestBash Brighton 2024 Thu 12 Sep - Fri 13 Sep 🏖️
- Leuven Meetup Thu 26 Sep
- Episode Five: The Apprentice Thu 24 Oct
🗞️ Industry News
- Small acts of inclusion in app design that make a big difference — Jenna Charlton & Rease Rios
- What to look for when selecting a Test Management tool? — Francisco Viana
- Key Metrics for Automation Testing in Agile — Deepika Kale
- Cleaning up unit test smells — Natalia Poliakova & Mikhail Lankin
✏️ Calls for Contributions
"We believe people have so much to give, but when it comes to submissions it is our role at MoT to find the best place for them to fit. We do not want them to gather dust."
Read more from MoT's founder and CEO, Rosie Sherry, in her post: A look inside our Continuous Call for Contributions process.
