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The Testing Show

The Testing Show from Qualitest, explores, pokes and prods anything and everything related to testing, with new episodes released every other Wednesday. Our hosts, Matt Heusser and Michael Larsen, will analyze tried and true methodologies and practices against on trend and emerging topics. We have a range of guest contributors from Qualitest as well as industry experts from around the world to share insights, knowledge and personal experience. So take minute to find out what others are saying in the testing world. Learn more about Qualitest at https://qualitestgroup.com/
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Now displaying: 2016
Dec 22, 2016

As we come to the end of 2016, we consider ways that software testing can go beyond just testing products, and looking at ways that we can use our super powers for good in the world. Abby Bangser works with ThoughtWorks and ThoughtWorks makes this a core part of their mission with ThoughtWorks University, a combination of training and integration of all roles, including software testing, as they learn how to work with ThoughtWorks model. Additionally, they take on a variety of projects that focus on social and economic justice, bringing groups of people from all over the world to Pune, India to research and work on a specific problem to help those in the immediate area and beyond.

Also, are you getting a lot of Skype spam lately? You are definitely not alone. We talk about what’s causing it and how to fix it.

 

Resource by QualiTest Group

Dec 8, 2016

For centuries, the Liberal Arts education was the gold standard that all education endeavors were based. The idea of a ‘Renaissance Person” was someone who had skills and abilities in a variety of fields, grew out of the classic Liberal Arts education. Some say that it’s a bygone piece of history, but many feel that it is a vital part of working and interacting with people, and in many ways, it’s perhaps the most vital of underpinnings for success as a software tester. We welcome back Jess Ingrassellino to talk with us about the value of a classic Liberal Arts education ,how it can be applied effectively to a software testing career, and how those who are so focused on automating as the be all and end all might be missing a few things.

Also, we take a look at the growth of online testing conferences, the UK National Health Service Email bomb and Virtual Studio for Mac… wait, what?!!

 

Resource by QualiTest Group

Nov 24, 2016

Accessibility and Inclusive Design are two approaches to help make software available to the broadest possible group of people. Today, we welcome Alicia Jarvis, a Toronto based Accessibility advocate, to discuss her own Accessibility advocacy, her experiences in software testing around accessibility, and how we need to look beyond a checklist for compliance, and think about Accessibility as a core part of our design approach from the beginning. Also: Samsung seems to be having issues with exploding batteries, both with the Note 7 and the Galaxy J5.

 

Resource by QualiTest Group

Nov 10, 2016

This week, we are joined by Jess Ingrassellino and Garry Heon to talk about where testing is going, and what the future of testing holds, going beyond Agile and dev-ops, or at least seeing where and how testers today will better be able to work and thrive in this brave new world. In the process of talking about that, we joked about the idea of a “full stack tester” to go with the increasing demand of “full stack developers”. Is there such a thing as a full stack tester? We weren’t sure, but if there was, we figured we could relate to the idea, and we’d be interested in seeing that idea develop, so to speak.

Also, we discuss the ramifications of what happens when your Web Cam takes part in one of the biggest DDoS attacks ever (hint, it’s easier and more likely than you might believe).

Resource by QualiTest Group

 
Oct 27, 2016

Do you have to be a career tester to perform the testing role? If you are facilitating, coaching or leading others, are you testing? Does it really matter who does the role, as long as somebody does it? The Testing Show is back in the studio and chatting with Qualitest’s Yaron Kottler on exactly these weighty questions. Needless to say, we discussed these ideas of “what makes a tester a tester” and then some. Also, the panel shares their frustrations with the recent Apple updates of iOS10.1 and macOS Sierra.

Resource by QualiTest Group

 
Oct 13, 2016

What happens when software development takes a cue from disciplines like law enforcement, counter intelligence and military operations? What do we do when we need to look at complex systems to find clues about issues that we didn’t even know existed, but the data shows it plainly? How can we harness the gut feelings of testers in a more scientific manner, and “make sense by sense making”? Confused? Dave Snowden wants to help with that.

Dave Snowden is the creator of Cynefin Framework, and it has been used with a broad array of applications, including government, immigration, counter-intelligence and software development. Cynefin is making inroads into the world of software testing, and Anna Royzman is possibly the person in the testing community most familiar with the Cynefin Framework. We are happy to have a conversation about Cynefin with both Dave and Anna, and its implications on software testing.


[Note: Due to challenges with Trans-Atlantic communications, the audio breaks up in various places. We have done our best to work around this, but there are places where audio will be spotty.]

 

Resource by QualiTest Group

 
Sep 29, 2016

This time around, The Testing Show is coming to you “Live” from the Conference for the Association for Software Testing, held in Vancouver, B.C., Canada. Matthew Heusser, Justin Rohrman, and Perze Ababa met up with Michael Bolton to discuss “Testopsies”, a focused examination and task analysis, and applying it to the opportunities for learning and refocusing of efforts often bundled under the label of “testing”.

 

Resource by QualiTest Group

 
Sep 15, 2016

Noah Sussman knows a bit about bringing Dev-Ops to fruition at a variety of organizations. To that end, we asked him to come join us and tell us a bit about what Dev-Ops is, and what it isn’t. We also discuss the ways that testers can develop their skills and become more technical (hint: it’s not as difficult as many may think, but it will require work and interaction with others to really be successful at it). Also, how does Bing Maps manage to put Melbourne, Australia in the Ocean somewhere near Japan?

Resource by QualiTest Group

 
Aug 31, 2016

It’s another “On the Road” episode of The Testing Show, with Matt Heusser attending Agile2016 in Atlanta, Georgia. While there, he gathered an impromptu forum to discuss the way we work and what we often have to do so we can get to the work we actually want to be doing. Emma Armstrong, Dan Ashby, Claire Moss and Tim Ottinger join in to dissect the continuum that is “Real Work vs. Bureaucratic Silliness”.

 

Resource by QualiTest Group

Aug 18, 2016

If you were going to be at liberty to drop into any software testing job you wanted, anywhere, in any software related industry of your choosing, what would be part of your “jump kit”? The Testing Show sits down with Curtis Pettit (of Huge) and asks exactly that. We geek out on favorite tools, and quickly discover that we all have some perennial favorites, but we discuss some lesser known exotics as well, really just scratching the surface of possible tools.

Also, have we reached a point where, when systems go down for Airlines and Credit Card companies, that we are helpless to go back and do business as we used to do, at least if we are in so called “technically advanced” areas? Perhaps the rugged backcountry may have a thing or two still to teach us all.

Resource by QualiTest Group

 

 

Aug 4, 2016

This week, we are joined by Dan Billing, a software security penetration test specialist at New Voice Media in the U.K.. Dan describes his path from everyday software tester to security expert, and the variety of approaches and methods, as well as tools, that come into play if you want to take a crack at being a software tester with a specialty towards security testing.

Also, can thirty years of fMRI results really be invalid, and what are you doing to take on the “30 Days of Software Testing” challenge?

 

Resource by QualiTest Group

Jul 21, 2016

Today, we are joined by Alan Page of Microsoft to discuss the Unified Engineering model, what that means, how it is working at Microsoft, and how that might effect software testing and software testers going forward. Also, what happens when the Air Force has a database crash and can’t recover their data, and is the Testing community really anti-automation?

Resource by QualiTest Group

Jul 7, 2016

What does it take to differentiate yourself as a tester? How can you demonstrate the unique values and attributes you can bring to the role of tester? How can you push back against the race to the bottom where “everyone can do the job”? Is that really true? These questions and more we posed to Andy Tinkham, and shared ideas as to how we can bring much more to the table that we often think we can.

Also, can software be specified in such a way that it can actually be made error free? Justin had a chance to look at that very idea at the DeepSpec Workshop at Princeton University, and he shared his findings with us.

Resource by QualiTest Group

Jun 23, 2016

Recorded live from Orcas Island, Washington, Matt, Justin and Perze attended the Reinventing Testers training run by James and Jon Bach. James sat down and talked with The Testing Show about reinventing testing skills, developing them, and the importance of words.

Resource by QualiTest Group

Jun 9, 2016

We all know that what we measure is something we can improve, right? We can measure anything and everything, and way too often, organizations attempt to do exactly that. The net result is we measure stuff that is not important to try to inform us of things that absolutely are. Mike Lyles joins us for a spirited talk about measurement and metrics. We can’t escape metrics completely, but we can be a lot smarter about the metrics we do use.

Also, how would you feel if your software update destroyed the product you were working on? What if it was a multi-million dollar satellite? Yep, that happened, and The Testing Show panel gets into it!

 

Resource by QualiTest Group

May 25, 2016

From the idea of automated trucking to the notion that testing will all be automated “at some point in time”, we thought it would make sense to bring in someone who has been part of this challenge for many years. Paul Grizzaffi joins us to give us his take on the promise of automation, the realities of tooling that go into those processes, and what the future might hold for the testing role as well as the possibility of “automated everything”.

 

Resource by QualiTest Group

May 10, 2016

As part of a follow on to the Making Testing Strategic discussion that happened at QA or the Highway, Jared Small joins us to talk about ways that software testing can add value to the software development process, and ways that we can extend the strategy conversation and help make sure that we can be both helpful and make an impact to the organization.

Additionally, we talk about the idea that Scrum can get us 250% better
quality (by some definition) and the persuasion of Trump, though we promise, this not a political show.

 

Resource by QualiTest Group

Apr 28, 2016

This week, Matt takes The Testing Show on the road, or more specifically, the Highway. At QA or the Highway held in Columbus, OH, in March 2016, Matt was a panelist for a discussion on Making QA Strategic. This is a live recording from that event.

From testing and its place within an organization, How does testing fit into an overall IT strategy?

Josh Assad, Kevin Malley, Jared Small, Diana Woodruff, Erik Davis and Matthew Heusser tackle that primary question of Should software testing have a seat at the strategic table?

 

Resource by QualiTest Group

Apr 13, 2016

In this episode, The Testing Show talks about auto makers stepping back from the robots and giving human beings a reconsideration. Do humans suffer a skill loss when automation is too heavily relied upon?

Maybe adaptability is important after all. We are also joined by Kate Falanga of Huge, Inc. to discuss Test Management, the changing role of test mentorship in the testing team, and if there is a value to having a dedicated person to be a guide, mentor and potential BS diverter, and what happens when that person goes away?

 

Resource by QualiTest Group

Mar 30, 2016

In this episode, recorded February 10, 2016, The Testing Show talks Super Bowl aftermath, analytics in sports and how accurate they are (or not), expectations and wild guesses, and the benefits of having a beginner’s mind to a situation and how that may give a person a better chance at seeing how things will turn out (it also shows pretty clearly who on the panel actually pays attention to football).

We talk a bit about legacy systems and what happens when critical systems go down (the IRS being a prime example), and the fact that organizations with legacy apps are reorganizing around Scrum and Agile, not so much for new software development, but to help maintain and continue development on legacy systems. Can we do better? We think “yes”!

 

Resource by QualiTest Group

Mar 18, 2016

In this episode, The Testing Show crew takes a trip to New York City to participate in James Bach’s presentation to the NYC Testers Meetup. We discuss a bit about the GitHub site outage, and the ramifications of inevitable downtime. This leads into the main topic, which is “what do we do when we don’t have enough testers?”

Is testing really a bottleneck, or is it set up in a way that delays are inevitable? What can we as organizations, and as testers, do to mitigate these issues, and what means do we have to change the process?

 

Resource by QualiTest Group

Mar 18, 2016

In this episode, The Testing Show crew is joined by Yaron Kottler, Qualitest’s Americas CEO. We discuss the changes at Yahoo and the elimination of most dedicated software testers, how this change is happening in a variety of companies, and what these changes actually mean for the dedicated testing role, and what may happen in the future.

We discuss the idea of software testing as a trusted advisor to an organization, and the benefits of wham that role works, as well as the frustrations and costs when that role does not work.

Resource by QualiTest Group

Mar 18, 2016

In this episode, The Testing Show tackles the NEST Thermostat, early release of inmates in Washington state due to a computer error, and what can we do when our password site gets hacked?


We discuss test design, bug advocacy, long term auditions,
and think about how robots can help you see the way software testers pivot
(or not).

Resource by QualiTest Group

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