Welcome to episode 10. We’ve made it to double figures! Thank you to everyone who has downloaded one or more of our earlier episodes and given us the encouragement to keep this going.

In this episode, the Peers talk about our thoughts on what testing may be like in 10 years time. What will the tech world look like? How will testers have evolved? Will we still be debating whether manual testing is needed? 

We also cover what we as leaders will need to do to enable our teams to progress and stay relevant as technology advances. 

Chris tells us about the ketchup competition he entered and this triggers the peers discussing their successes (or lack of) with competitions. Including Simon winning a “Pontins Prince” competition which he has added a pic to our Twitter.

No puppy update this week but Simon has now got his puppies and Russell’s is arriving in a week or so. Check out #PeersPaws on twitter for more pics. David will also be adding some pics of his beloved Digby.

 We thank you once again for taking the time to listen to our podcast and would love more of your feedback. Please reach out on Twitter @testingpeers or via email: [email protected] 

If you like what we are doing and want to support us as we strive to create more content, please consider becoming a Testing Peers patron at https://www.patreon.com/testingpeers

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Welcome to episode 9 of the Testing Peers podcast.

In this episode, we talk about passion.

This is a topic that was inspired by a post by Philip Wong in the Podcasters Club in Ministry of Testing’s The Club: https://club.ministryoftesting.com/t/introduce-your-podcast/40932/5?u=christovskia

We are conscious that the word passion can mean quite different things depending on the context.

In this episode, we talk about how we might define passion, how we have experienced it and also how we perceive it. We talk about how people display their passion in person and also in written form, and we joke about our own use of the word in our CVs, social media etc.

We discuss some of the pitfalls of passion, as well as the benefits.

The Peers also touch on childhood passions, before it obviously became all about quality!

We thank you once again for taking the time to listen to our podcast and would love more of your feedback. Please reach out on Twitter @testingpeers or via email: [email protected] 

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Welcome to episode eight of the Testing Peers podcast.

This week, the Peers are following on from our CV episode (Podcast Episode 6 – CVs) with a discussion around interviews. Tips, techniques, pet peeves and of course, David's potato harvest.

We discuss how to prepare for an interview as both an interviewer and an interviewee, how we use CVs and research the company.

Bias and objectivity are covered, and the struggles around that.

Peeves covered include salary conversations and communication of next steps.

We hope you enjoy the episode, and we look forward to hearing any of your feedback.

Thank you!

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Welcome to episode 7 of the Testing Peers Podcast. Yes, we made it to 7 episodes!

This week the peers are going to reflect a little on who initially inspired our testing journeys and also give you an insight into some of the books that have helped us on our way.

As a group of peers, we can all say it was a talk or an event that inspired us to be more engaged in testing.  Hearing someone passionate about a subject talk and share their knowledge ignited a desire in us to learn more. Right now more and more events are online and many are free. Check out @TestConferences on twitter, meetup.com or Mot Meetups, MoT events, testingconferences.org to name a few places to get ideas.

Events aren't the only way to find inspiration, everyone finds inspiration in different ways. If you're reading this you'll already be looking at blogs or podcasts they're also a great way to find inspiration. You can also read articles, newsletters and twitter is home to many testers.  In this episode, we also mention a few of the books that we found useful but we'd love to know your suggestions so feel free to comment on our blog, twitter @testingpeers, or email us [email protected].

Finally thank you for supporting us, we've had over 1200 downloads in our first 90 days which is amazing!  If you've liked what you've heard and want to support us improve its quality (we really could do with some microphones) we'd really appreciate you becoming a patron or reach out to us if you'd like to sponsor an episode.

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Welcome to episode six of the Testing Peers Podcast. This week the peers are talking CVs.

In a time where lots of people are finding themselves looking for new roles, we thought it might be a great time to discuss CVs.

We summarised our tops tips on our blog - testingpeers.com

Let us know your thoughts on CVs, what works or doesn't work when your sifting CV's. Send us your feedback via email to [email protected] or @TestingPeers on Twitter. 

NOTE: After Chris so boldly claimed that he had never found a job through a recruiter, he only went and found a job via a recruiter. Thank you to all the recruiters out there!

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Welcome to episode five of the Testing Peers Podcast, we're practically old hat at this podcasting malarky now. Hope you are still enjoying our random wittering with each other.

In this episode, we dive into the topic of reporting your testing, the various forms that may exist in, corporate or regulatory demands on how you should report your results, and what benefits these reports provide to you as a test leader and also to the wider business. In many respects, articulating your testing results is an art and it really depends on the audience you need to report your results to.

The discussion does morph (as all our conversations do) into also talking about the end to end process and especially around Change Control getting changes live in production

Let us know your thoughts on this episode, maybe you have unique ways in which you reported your results which worked for you. Send your feedback to us either via email ([email protected]) or @TestingPeers on Twitter.

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Welcome to episode four of the Testing Peers Podcast.

This week we the peers are talking Cognitive Bias.

We find cognitive bias everywhere, the awareness of our own biases and challenging ourselves on those biases are really important.

We discuss cognitive biases that we have encountered in the testing world, biases that we have and the power of influential language projecting biases.

This is a topic close to our hearts, and one that is so important to continue to discuss and challenge each other about.

We touch upon areas of bias, such as anchoring, decision making, mirroring, confirmation and many more.

Further areas of reading: Lisa Crispin - https://lisacrispin.com/2018/01/24/telling-stories-together-practicing-critical-thinking-vts/

We hope you enjoy this episode and encourage you to get in touch with any feedback that you have, either @testingpeers on Twitter or [email protected]

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For episode three, the Peers talk about their experiences around empowering teams, what has worked and what didn't.

We'd love you to get in touch, so email us at [email protected] or reach out to us on Twitter @testingpeers

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This time around the Peers talk about out positive and negative experiences on 1 to 1s and what has shaped the way we do them as leaders. As you’ll hear from the discussion, we all have different experiences.

We also discuss Simon's shirt choice. Is it Pink or Brown? Check the image out on our twitter!

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Thursday July 18th 2019 is a significant date in the short history of the Testing Peers.

Simon had finally convinced Russell, David and Chris to explore the possibility of podcasting together, and this was when the #testinpeerspodcast channel started in our Slack group.

We were more than half a year into our joined-up adventure and our output had so far provided us with a supportive and accountable peer group, but no output that would be visible to many.

There was a hunger to do more, my initial pitch to the others that I had invited to join me included the possibility of a blog or a conference paper, but I hadn’t considered a podcast.

We started the blog site, but not all of us are bloggers.

I grabbed ahold of the @testingpeers Twitter handle.

What could we do to continue our project?

Simon is a relentless force for spreading his word, and he has been blogging for a decade, he has spoken at conferences and appeared on various webinars and podcasts. He saw a niche in the market for the four of us to go and make our own.

Eventually, we relented and started to talk about the idea of what a podcast could look like.

We transitioned our initial Trello board with ideas for blogs, to those that could become podcast themes.

So welcome to our inaugural episode is an introduction to the four of us. We have some other material already recorded and we hope that we will get better at doing this, it is new, but I already am finding our regular Thursday night beers with the Testing Peers a real highlight to my week! 

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