In this episode, we talk about observability from a performance engineering perspective. We talk about how this new emphasis on observability is a game changer for performance engineering, typically once viewed as a solo activity, but not something that benefits the whole team.

Some good quotes:

"the whole, the whole rationale for investing in observability practices, changing your language, changing your approach is to affect the future"

"Information is no good if it's just between you and me, we fix the problem and we never talk about it again."

"So for me it's the collaboration and the sharing is the biggest part that changes for me."

Mark Tomlinson is a performance engineering and software testing consultant. His career began in 1992 with a comprehensive two-year test for a life-critical transportation system, a project which captured his interest in software testing, quality assurance, and test automation. After extended work at Microsoft and Hewlett-Packard, he has amassed broad experiences with real-world scenario testing of large and complex systems and is regarded as a leading expert in software testing automation with a specific emphasis on performance. As “The Performance Sherpa” Mark now offers coaching, training and consulting to help customers adopt modern performance testing and engineering strategies, practices and behaviours for better performing technology systems.

Connect with Mark Tomlinson
Company: perfbytes
Twitter: @perfsherpa
LinkedIn: perfsherpa

In this episode, Abby talks about Site Reliability Engineering, Service Level Objectives, Toil, the power of Storytelling, influencing Management and why Quality Coaching and Site Reliability Engineering have a lot in common.

In this episode, we talk about large projects, how to explain our job to non-technical people within an organisation and creating a shared vision of success to enrich the UAT process. We also talk about Mentoring, Enthusiasm, Empathy and Community.

In this episode we talk a lot about learning, different approaches to learning, being a catalyst within an organisation and sitting with discomfort.

Some classic Maaret quotes:
"Automation is how we document Exploratory Testing"
"FAIL -> First Attempt at Learning"
"Accepting the discomfort of not knowing is a skill"

Next episode completes the discussion.

Maaret Pyhäjärvi is a feedback fairy with a day job at Vaisala, where she works as Principal Test Engineer. She identifies as empirical technologist, tester and programmer, catalyst for improvement, author and speaker, and community facilitator and conference organizer. She was awarded as Most Influential Agile Testing Professional Person 2016, listed on 100 most influential in ICT in Finland by TiVi 2019, and has spoken at events in 25 countries delivering over 400 sessions. With 25 years of exploratory testing under her belt, she crafts her role into being a mix of leading, hands-on testing and programming. She is a serial volunteer and organizing powerhouse contributing to European Testing Conference and TechVoices, as well as Finnish non-profit scene. She blogs at http://visible-quality.blogspot.fi, and is the author of three LeanPub books: Mob Programming Guidebook, Exploratory Testing and Strong-Style Pair Programming. Her web page is http://maaretp.com.

We continue our conversation with Beth Skurrie co-founder of pactflow.io and all round awesome person. We continue talking about PACT applied, making conscious decisions around tool selection and keeping tech relevant.

Some 'more' Bethesque quotes

"end to end test are the wrong type of tests to check low level, request and response fields"
"what it does is it gives us the right tool at the right level to test the right thing"
"It's not dictator driven contracts"
it's not a tool is good or a bad tool. Different tools are appropriate in different situations and a tool that might be a good tool in one situation is a bad tool in another situation."

Follow Beth on @bethesque

In this episode we talk to Beth Skurrie co-founder of pactflow.io and all round awesome person. We talk about quality (of course!) and what quality is from a coding perspective. The difficulty in using tools to assist in quality. Levels of abstraction and the test automation pyramid and how its useful in trade offs. Plus some stuff on when to write tests.

Some Bethesque quotes

"These days, responsiveness is kind of a quality in itself"
"The tools are very good at identifying things, but you use the tool, the tool should not use you."
"I’m much better at failure these days"

Links Mentioned
Integration Tests are a scam! - JB Rainsberger https://vimeo.com/80533536

Test Automation Pyramid
https://alisterbscott.com/kb/testing-pyramids/
https://martinfowler.com/articles/practical-test-pyramid.html

Follow Beth on @bethesque

In this episode, Tim talks about how collaboration, visualisation and metrics in an open organisation can help teams to achieve exceptional business outcomes. We also discuss plumbers.

This is the final part of a three part chat (for the moment) with Lisa Crispin, Janet Gregory and Anne Marie Charrett. In it we talk about what's next for agile teams and testing and the importance of taking small steps. We also mention not being taken in by smoke and mirrors, resilience, observability and complexity.

This is the second part of a three part chat with Lisa Crispin, Janet Gregory and Anne Marie Charrett. In it we talk about remote working and coaching remotely, consulting vs coaching, finding a Purpose, Pomodoro and taking small steps when in unchartered waters. Plus, more about donkeys.

This is the first part of a three part chat with Lisa Crispin, Janet Gregory and Anne Marie Charrett. In it we talk about the similarities between quality coaching and whole-team quality and we also talk about Elephants and Donkeys!