Ministry of Testing

Welcome to episode 5 of TestSphere Roulette. Joining Simon at the roulette table are 2 more testing superstars:

Neil Studd (@neilstudd) - Senior SDET @ Postman

Dan Billing (@TheTestDoctor) - Senior Software Engineer @ Microsoft

The wheel threw out some really interesting topics for conversation:

Excited - Feelings

Social Engineering - Techniques

Observability - Quality Aspects

Dan mentioned some useful resources particularly around the Social Engineering card:

Darknet Diaries Podcast - https://darknetdiaries.com/

Goodreads list of Social Engineering books: https://www.goodreads.com/review/list/11234463-dan-billing?order=d&shelf=social-engineering&sort=date_added

Neil is a very active podcast host and his shows can be found here:

Testers Island Discs - @testersIsland - https://www.ministryoftesting.com/dojo/series/testers-island-discs-podcast

Tech Team Weekly - https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCU8SKyi6UjMdMwjvyYePiPw

Screen Testing (with Dan) - https://screentesting.libsyn.com/

To contact Neil:

@neilstudd on twitter

Blog: https://www.neilstudd.com/

LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/neilstudd/

To contact Dan:

@TheTestDoctor on twitter 

Blog: https://thetestdoctor.co.uk/

LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/danielbilling/ 

Thank you to Neil and Dan for their great discussions and to the Ministry of Testing for supporting the podcast

Provar is the leading expert in accelerating innovation within the Salesforce ecosystem. Founded by experts in the Salesforce community, Provar provides a robust test automation solution to help you deliver scalable and repeatable tests. Automated and polymorphic testing is the key to maximizing your Salesforce investment. To learn more visit provartesting.com.

If you wish to find out more about TestSphere, check out RiskstormingOnline.com or find the card decks on the MoT Store

Follow the pod at @TestSpherePod on twitter

If you wish to be a guest on a future episode, fill the following form out:

https://ministryoftesting.typeform.com/to/UtrLTbdc

Sounds and Music courtesy of Zapsplat.com

Thank you for listening and we look forward to seeing you at the roulette table again soon

Kristof Van Kriekingen talks to Bertold Kolics, the Software Quality Manager at Mabl, an engineer at heart who enjoys solving both technical non-technical problems. He has over 20 years of experience in the testing field and he wants to share some insights with us. They talk about Mabl’s ‘Intelligent Test Automation’ system and what exactly Auto-Healing is and how it works, how low-code frameworks like Mabl will change the quality assurance industry and so much more.

Mark Winteringham guest hosts this months meet the contributor and talking with Viv Richard's about his new course "Tester's guide to DevTools". Viv shares a bit about himself, his course and his motivations for creating it and what he hopes learners will achieve. The two also discuss activity-driven learning and creating tools to facilitate learning such as Viv's Tester's Playground and Mark's RestfulBooker.

Show links:

TestRail helps you manage and track your software testing efforts. Its intuitive web-based user interface makes it easy to create test cases, manage test runs and coordinate your entire testing process. Easily track and follow the status of individual tests, milestones, and projects with dashboards and activity reports. Get real-time insights into your testing progress and boost productivity with personalized to-do lists, filters, and email notifications.

Try TestRail for Free Today

Our new host, Kristof Van Kriekingen talks to Wim Selles, a solutions architect from Sauce Labs. A man who helps customers successfully implement and get the most value out of their investment in Sauce Labs. He loves to solve puzzles and answer hard questions for customers. Problems don't exist, only challenges he said. They talk about puzzles, features and the future of Sauce Labs.

In our longest episode to date, Neil gets deep into pretty much everything with fellow podcast aficionado Chris Armstrong. We chat in-depth about Chris’s early career within the games testing industry, looking at some of the fun and not-so-fun aspects of combining work and play. There’s also the perfect chance for Neil and Chris to nerd out about their love of the Football Manager game series.

It’s not just a chat about games though! We get into some thought-provoking and introspective discussions about career progression, examining how we can make opportunities open up for ourselves, and we nerd out uncontrollably about the awesome support that the testing community is always willing to offer up.

On the music front, expect a variety of nu-metal, pop-punk, another Eurovision entry, and one of the unlikeliest 90s pop selections that we’ve had for a long time.

This episode is sponsored by Xray, the leading QA and Native Test Management app for Jira. With Xray you're able to streamline development and testing into a single collaborative workflow where all the requirements are naturally linked to testing. Never overlook another test now that quality is built right into everything you develop. Say goodbye to silos with Dev and QA, united as they should be. Discover the future of native quality management and start your free trial today at getxray.app

Podcast Links:

Testing Peers podcast

IMDb: Kinect Disneyland Adventures

Last.fm Kinect announcement

Wikipedia: California Department of Fair Employment and Housing v Activision Blizzard

Polygon: Cyberpunk 2077 [CD Projekt Red] has involved months of crunch, despite past promises

Football Manager

Championship Manager 01/02: Tapani patch and its successors

Neil’s favourite Championship Manager 2 cheat

Wivenhoe Town FC

Cabinteely FC

Visit St. Neots

Wikipedia: John Bellingham

Chris’s “Self-Retrospective” blog post

The Club: Google hangout for testers

The Club: 24 Hours of TestBash Home Charity Marathon

TestBash Home 99-Second Talks (beginning with Chris’s song!)

Chris’s blog post featuring lyrics from his final song choice

Geordie Test Atelier

Tech Team Weekly

Chris on Twitter: @christovskia

Regular Links:

Listen to and subscribe to this podcast on iTunes and SoundCloud

Sign up to be a guest on the show

Testers' Island Discs playlist on Spotify

Testers' Island Discs reading list on Goodreads

Follow us on Twitter

Welcome to episode 4 of TestSphere Roulette.

Joining Simon at the roulette table are 2 more testing superstars:

Maaike Brinkhof (@Maaikees)- Test Consultant and iOS Developer @ Sensibly

Peet Michielsen (@peetronicsi) - Senior Verification Engineer @ Optos

The wheel threw out some really interesting topics for conversation:

Confident - Feelings

Status Quo Bias - Patterns

Distributed Systems - Dealing With Change

Maaike did a great presentation at this years TestBash Home which you can view for free here: https://ministryoftesting.com/dojo/series/testbash-home-2021/lessons/bullshit-alert-on-the-bullshitisation-of-software-testing…

She can be contacted on the following places:

Blog - maaikebrinkhof.nl

LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/maaike-brinkhof-1942b725/ 

Peet is presenting a 99 Minute Workshop in season 2 for the Ministry of Testing. More info found here - ministryoftesting.com/news/new-99-minute-workshops-coming-in-september…

He can be contacted here:

Blog - peetronics.com

LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/peetmichielsen/ 

Thank you to Maaike and Peet for their great discussions and to the Ministry of Testing for supporting the podcast.

Want to appear as a guest on TestSphere Roulette? Join us by completing our quick form.

If you wish to find out more about TestSphere, check out RiskstormingOnline.com or find the card decks on the MoT Store

Sounds and Music courtesy of Zapsplat.com

Thank you for listening and we look forward to seeing you at the roulette table again soon

This podcast is sponsored by Provar

Provar makes testing low code applications like Salesforce crazy easy. Finally! Create tests the way your users use the applications - no code required (unless you want). Be productive from day one and focus less on regression and more on the fun stuff. Head to get.provartesting.com/alm-brand to see how Alm. Brand 120+ saved hours of regression testing per cycle in only 4 months. Cool, right?

To commemorate a half-century of episodes, we’re joined on the increasingly densely populated desert island by Sam Connelly, who hails from the 26th largest island in the world, to talk about her journey into testing and some top tips about building your personal brand, especially in the audio-visual and streaming space. 

We discuss the places to gain inspiration for our brand names, the challenges of pairing online from remote timezones, setting up your personal working environment, finding motivation during lockdowns, and recommend some ways to get up-and-running with streaming quickly and cheaply.

Looking at the person behind the brand, we also touch upon defining our personal values, discussing when it’s important to be transparent, which touches upon some of Sam’s hobbies which aren’t strictly NSFW but which might prompt awkward questions from young listeners; and Neil confesses to the time that he tried to tie his personal branding in with the Backstreet Boys.

Among Sam’s rich music choices are some Mongolian folk metal, another artist with a RuPaul connection, the first appearance of a violumpet on the podcast, and a song which features her name within the lyrics. Plus, finally, a book to help our fifty island inhabitants to survive!

This episode is sponsored by TestRail: TestRail helps you manage and track your software testing efforts. Its intuitive web-based user interface makes it easy to create test cases, manage test runs and coordinate your entire testing process. Easily track and follow the status of individual tests, milestones, and projects with dashboards and activity reports. Get real-time insights into your testing progress and boost productivity with personalized to-do lists, filters, and email notifications. Try TestRail for Free Today

Podcast Links:

Sam’s personal website (BugHunterSam.com)

Twitch: BugHunterSam

Twitch: noopkat

Twitch: NeilStudd

YouTube: Sam Connelly

YouTube: Neil Studd (Let’s Explore)

Sam’s blog: Time zone testing considerations

YouTube: Video demonstrating Sam’s range of audiovisual equipment

YouTube: Matt Parker - Why are Talk-Show Hosts So Bad at YouTube?

Calendly

Sam’s “About” page, which lists her personal values

BogLogger: Tracking Your Poo

Kirsten Schultz: Spoon Theory

Wikipedia: Confirmation bias

YouTube video for Sam’s fifth selection (featuring the violumpet!)

Postman Space Camp: Continuous Quality with Postman

Tech Team Weekly podcast

Sam on Twitter: @BugHunterSam

Regular Links:

Listen to and subscribe to this podcast on iTunes and SoundCloud

Sign up to be a guest on the show

Testers' Island Discs playlist on Spotify

Testers' Island Discs reading list on Goodreads

Follow us on Twitter

Welcome to episode 3 of TestSphere Roulette. Joining Simon at the roulette table are 2 more testing superstars:

The wheel threw out some really interesting topics for conversation:

David plugged the Testing Peers podcast which he is a co-host of (along with Simon), which can be found here - https://testingpeers.com

David mentioned that Cambridge Consultants are hiring for different levels of tester, if you wish to find out more contact David or check out the company website:

Emna is very active within the testing world and frequently blogs about her journey, she has also compiled a book with Ard Kramer which the link can be found for below:

Thank you to David and Emna for their great discussions and to the Ministry of Testing for supporting the podcast

If you wish to find out more about TestSphere, check out RiskstormingOnline.com or find the card decks on the MoT Store

Sounds and Music courtesy of Zapsplat.com

Thank you for listening and we look forward to seeing you at the roulette table again soon.

Mike chats with Tamoya Beckford about her article on the Ministry of Testing: A QA Engineer’s Exit Strategy: How To Quit Like A Professional

Tamoya Beckford is a senior QA analyst with more than five years of experience in software quality assurance. She resides in Kingston, Jamaica and enjoys crafting, travelling and exploring new places and cultures.

This podcast is sponsored by mabl

mabl is an intelligent test automation platform for Agile teams. It’s the only SaaS solution that tightly integrates automated end-to-end testing into the entire development lifecycle.  With mabl it's easy to create, execute, and maintain reliable tests, allowing software teams to increase test coverage, speed up development and improve application quality. Try it free at mabl.com/trial!