In Summer 2016, i kicked off the #MakeATester project on social media, asking for the community and beyond to tell me what skills are needed for new testers to get started in a testing career. I published the results in early 2017 and since then, have been working hard to try and push the awareness … Continue reading It’s Been A While – A #MakeATester Update
Author: siprior
I am a highly motivated Software Testing professional with a keen interest in finding ways to improve the testing process and ensuring products are released with the highest possible quality. I also love coaching/mentoring my team to be the best they can, enabling them to use all possible tools and skills to get their job done to the best of their ability.
I am a big advocate for spreading the awareness of the Testing profession in Schools and Universities and also pushing the cause of #Neurodiversity in the workplace
Last August I kicked off a little social media project on the back of my shock at the lack of content on University syllabus' for Software Testing or QA. With this, I asked the increasingly awesome Testing community to list the skills/attributes that are required to make a good tester. Life then kind of took … Continue reading What Skills #MakeATester – The Results
So as my last post showed, Universities aren't really considering Software Testing as a core topic of Computer Science degree courses. Therefore, by the time graduates are looking for jobs, testing isn't really on their radar. The same can be said for potential testers who haven't got degrees. As shown in a recent "Let's Talk … Continue reading What Skills #MakeATester? – A collaborative approach to help future Testers get a chance.
When I left university 10 years ago, I had no clue I would end up in QA/Testing. I didn't even realise it was an option! Looking back on my degree course (and I really enjoyed my degree), it was very Programming heavy (C#, C++, Java and Prolog all taught) and testing was only taught as … Continue reading Software Testing at University – Is it an Option?
I'm sure most of us will have worked on projects where without having to do any particularly extensive test scenarios or having hardly dived into exploring the product, you find things that break that would be immediately obvious to the customer. This kind of project depresses me (even though it is fun to find defects), … Continue reading Making Your Testing Effective
For me, Testing is a mindset, not just a role that needs to be performed. Testing isn't just part of the development cycle, it should be ingrained in every stage. Every aspect can be 'tested', whether that be requirements, architectural diagrams, code, unit tests, test scripts, user docs etc. When Does Testing Start? If I'm … Continue reading The Testing Mindset
There has been a lot of buzz around this topic at recent testing events and in forum discussions between testing professionals, there are a fair few different certifications around but are they of value? A quick google and I found the following certifications: ISTQB - Foundation, Advanced (Test Manager, Test Analyst and Technical Test Analyst) … Continue reading Testing Certifications – Are they worth the paper they are written on?
For me, testing is a mindset rather than just a role and sometimes that can and does affect other aspects of life. The amount of times I have gone to try and break something intentionally, just to check that it can handle error cases. That would be fine, but doing it to the TV while … Continue reading Spreading the Word – Being the Sociable Tester
Last June, I had the opportunity of a new challenge within my current company, which I grasped with both hands. I moved from a team which had a very well-oiled engineering process, a very stable test framework which gave the team confidence in their product and a team which I had worked in since I … Continue reading Not Familiar with Testers? – Proving Your Worth With a Development Team
I have to admit, I was really excited about attending TestBash in Brighton, it was my first conference for 18 months and there was a real buzz about this one on social media. The schedule looked really interesting and there was a 5 of us attending from work so it was kind of like a … Continue reading TestBash 2015 – More than Just a Conference
Simon Prior 