This post is part of a series of posts that responds to questions raised by people on LinkedIn. The original LinkedIn post can be found here. Feel free to add to the LinkedIn thread if you have a question or idea you would like me to consider. As I launch into the second post of … More Because you asked – Part 2

In May 2022, not sure if I would keep writing and posting blogs, I looked to LinkedIn for ideas. I asked if anybody who read my writing had ideas on what I should write about. I was very surprised by the number of responses I got. It turns out that, of itself, the feedback wasn’t … More Because you asked – Part 1

Monday March 27. It was my wedding anniversary (34 happy years) and the day I interviewed with Grok. Today, Wednesday March 29 is they day I received a call telling me that I had a job offer from Grok and, by extension was no longer unemployed. I’ve been unemployed since February 3rd as my previous … More The Other Side of the Fence

I find it interesting how themes can pop up and attract attention on social media. Sometimes when I see a theme that is misguided, I’ll sometimes chip in, other times I’ll just shrug. A theme I see pop up reasonably often is the one focused on “testing myths”. So, what is a myth? If you describe a … More The Myths of Testing

In what is my first blog post for quite a while I’m going to look at the notion that “testers prevent defects”. I see this claim made by non-testers talking about testing (yes “agile” I’m looking at you as well as your coaches), professional testers and test consultancies. It must be incredibly enticing to issue … More Testing and Prevention – The Illusion

I gave myself 60 minutes to write a blog about my day and the excitement that testing brings me. For better or worse, here it is. I’ve written in previous posts and articles that I find testing enormously satisfying and challenging. Every challenge is unique in some ways but often similar in other ways. Testing … More The thrill of testing

During my time on this planet I’ve engaged in both team and individual sports. On the team side there was, predominantly, cricket and basketball and on the solo side, squash. In competition squash (not at elite levels) you play in a group of four, so there is some aspect of team, but during the actual … More umpires are testers too

This post considers some of the problems we face when creating software and then explores if reframing those issues, by using language from another domain, might lead us to new perspectives or new approaches to solving problems. It might seem strange for a tester to be writing about economics. Moreover, this post isn’t even specifically … More some Economics of software

I was recently asked if I could talk to some of my work colleagues about bugs. More specifically I was asked if i could explain what a good bug report looks like and what information it might contain. The people in focus here are the Halaxy Service team. I admire people who work in customer … More Bug Reporting can be simple

When did we start to believe that automation in testing is intelligent? When did we start to believe that we can automate away human thinking within software testing? When did testers, many of whom rally to a cry of ” we are misunderstood and not appreciated” decide it would be a good idea to promote … More Automation – what bugs me