Testing Peers

Welcome to another episode of the Testing Peers. Chris, Russell and David are joined by a special guest and artist of the amazing Testing Peers logo, Bruce (the Legend). 

Before diving into the main topic, Bruce leads the peers into a discussion about their skincare routines, do the Peers wash their faces? Do they use moisturiser? How do they improve the resilience of their skin? This was certainly a curveball with the banter which we all learned something new about our heroes!

Russell and Bruce start the discussion talking about moving teams, Bruce had recently been given a choice to move team or stay on an existing team and enquired how the peers may have not made the same decisions as they did. This leads the discussion onto how information is stored and keeping documentation up to date for new people coming in later on. 

Chris takes this onto leaving jobs/companies, especially where he had time to handover before he left and the challenges to ensure continuity for anyone new picking up from you when you're gone.

The peers talk about the scenario of working on a product where there is limited documentation or it's out of date and how to ensure the team can move forward successfully.

Bruce then brings the discussion onto team dynamics when a QA team is brought together with development, compared to the siloed scenario of the teams being kept separate. This leads to talking about the overall aim of making our teams more resilient.

What are your experiences with building resilient teams?

A huge thank you to Bruce for joining us for the discussion, more from Bruce can be found at https://undevelopedbruce.com/ or @BruceOnlyBruce on Twitter.

We hope you found the discussion useful and would love to hear your feedback.

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We’re also now on GoodPods, check it out via the mobile app stores

If you like what we do and are able to, please visit our Patreon to explore how you could support us going forwards: https://www.patreon.com/testingpeers

Saffron QA is a provider of recruitment and consultancy services, exclusively for the software testing industry.

You can find out more at https://saffronqa.co.uk/  or on LinkedIn at https://www.linkedin.com/company/saffron-qa/

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Hello and welcome to episode 73 of the Testing Peers podcast, where this week we are talking about glue work.

This week, regulars Chris, David and Russell are joined by the brilliant Vernon Richards.

Before diving in, Vernon asks the Peers about their favourite non-work books.

Chris then introduces the main topic of glue work, shouting out to Cassandra Leung for bringing the brilliant talk 'Being Glue' by Tanya Reilly into their world.

You can find the talk here: https://noidea.dog/glue

The group draw comparisons to sports teams and housework, as well as the terrible precedent in the workplace of glue work often being handed to non-males. Often glue work is not recognised, used as a measure of success, but when the person who carries it out isn't present, then it all falls apart!

We discuss a tester's natural inclination to infiltrate the entire SDLC, identify problems in a process, documentation, ways of working, etc. to mitigate issues earlier in the lifecycle.

Vernon also brings up the concept of quiet quitting. Is how we're being measured at work a fair reflection of what we are doing and the value we bring?

We discuss the challenges with this in leadership, to recognise it and present a more balanced view.

A huge thank you to Vernon, for more of his thoughts, follow his social blog here: https://typeshare.co/vernonrichards

We hope you found the discussion useful and would love to hear your feedback.

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We’re also now on GoodPods, check it out via the mobile app stores

If you like what we do and are able to, please visit our Patreon to explore how you could support us going forwards: https://www.patreon.com/testingpeers

Saffron QA is a provider of recruitment and consultancy services, exclusively for the software testing industry.

You can find out more at https://saffronqa.co.uk/  or on LinkedIn at https://www.linkedin.com/company/saffron-qa/

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elcome to another episode of the Testing Peers podcast, this time we have a slightly different show for you.

Regular host, Chris is joined by the wonderful Heather Reid, as we look back over the brilliant article Heather wrote back in 2017 - 30 Things Every New Software Tester Should Learn on the Ministry of Testing site.

Before we look back at Heather's article, we talk about anything from our past online that we might find a little cringey.

Then we review the article, written almost exactly six years ago, talking through all 30 tasks, and Heather provides some insight into each task, as well as where she would make changes, remove or replace any task.

We cover a lot of interesting topics, and below are links to some of the things we discuss.

• QA In Your Job Titles? - Ministry of Testing (The Club)
• Learning How to Learn: Powerful mental tools to help you master tough subjects - Coursera
• Making Work Visible: Exposing Time Theft to Optimize Workflow by Dominica Degrandis (Book via Amazon)
• Ministry of Testing - Go Pro!
• Team Guide to Software Testability: Better software through greater testability by Ash Winter and Rob Meaney (Book via Amazon)
• Fifty Quick Ideas to Improve Your User Stories by Gojko Adzic and David Evans (Book via Amazon)
• Starting Your Software Testing Career by Nicola Lindgren (Book via Leanpub)
• How Can I Test This? by Nicola Lindgren, Mike Harris, Suman Bala, Philip Wong, and Shawn Shaligram (Book via Leanpub)
• Testing Web APIs by Mark Winteringham (Book via Amazon)
• Contemporary Exploratory Testing by Maaret Pyhäjärvi (Book via Leanpub)
• Would Heu-Risk it? Tools, traps and weapons for Software Testing by Lena Wiberg (Book via Leanpub)
• Understanding where quality starts as a tester - Vernon Richards (via LinkedIn)
• Software Testing Heuristics: Mind The Gap! by Richard Bradshaw and Sarah Deery (via Ministry of Testing)
• Workroom Productions - Get Better at Software Testing
• Accessibility Testing 101 - Crystal Preston-Watson (Talk from TestBash San Francisco 2019, via Ministry of Testing PRO)
• Introduction To Accessibility Testing - Deborah Reid (Course via Ministry of Testing)
• The Big Test Theory - Ady Stokes
• Testing in the pub - Dan Ashby and Steve Janaway (Podcast via Googl

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Happy new year! We hope all our listeners have a great 2023. Thank you for being with us on the journey, we hope you all continue to enjoy the podcasts we provide.

In relation to that, in this episode, we review what the Software Testing Market Trends are for 2023. Joining Simon, Chris and David for this episode is long time friend, fan of the podcast and all round testing superstar, Beth Marshall. 

Before diving into the main topic, Mr Bantz himself, takes us on a trip down memory lane about brands which we grew up with which we never thought would disappear, from Blockbusters, Cadbury's Fuse, Woolworths, CDs, LoveFilm, Pop Tarts, Telephone Boxes and even Testing Twitter.

Beth then leads the discussion on the Testing Job market trends, discussing the factors that are impacting peoples decisions to move jobs and what they are looking for. Wellbeing, Hybrid working/WFH options, salary are all factors discussed on what causes people to move. We also touch on the global market now in place with the vast increase in amount of people who apply for roles.

We then talk about the Academies and consultancy options available and how they can change how companies hire and individuals looking for specifics in the roles.

What are your experiences with the market? 

We hope you found the discussion useful and would love to hear your feedback.

[email protected]

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We’re also now on GoodPods, check it out via the mobile app stores

If you like what we do and are able to, please visit our Patreon to explore how you could support us going forwards: https://www.patreon.com/testingpeers

Saffron QA is a provider of recruitment and consultancy services, exclusively for the software testing industry.

You can find out more at https://saffronqa.co.uk/  or on LinkedIn at https://www.linkedin.com/company/saffron-qa/

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Hello and welcome to episode 70 of the Testing Peers podcast.

As we're drawing toward Christmas this week we thought we'd do a special. Taking a leaf from 'A Christmas Carol' by Charles Dickens we do a little retrospective and take a look at Christmas past, present and future. 

We're joined by the usual crew David, Simon, Chris and Russell and we have some festive messages from some of our testing friends Dan Ashby, Steven Warburton, Beth Marshall, Emna Ayadi and Neil Studd.

We share some terrible jokes, our memories of Christmas, some of what we're proud of this year and ideas for the future. 

Whilst we have your attention, we all just want to say thank you for listening in 2022 and we hope you have a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year! 

We hope you found the discussion useful and would love to hear your feedback.

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We’re also now on GoodPods, check it out via the mobile app stores

If you like what we do and are able to, please visit our Patreon to explore how you could support us going forwards: https://www.patreon.com/testingpeers

Saffron QA is a provider of recruitment and consultancy services, exclusively for the software testing industry.

You can find out more at https://saffronqa.co.uk/  or on LinkedIn at https://www.linkedin.com/company/saffron-qa/

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Welcome to another episode of the Testing Peers. The original crew (Chris, David, Russell and Simon) are discussing how we can stay connected in the testing world, especially in the times of the social media landscape changing.

Before diving into the main topic, Russell takes us on a journey back to times in our lives where we had enjoyed successes as part of a team. We had stories of football team successes (well, almost), D of E expeditions, Military marching events and basketball successes.

Simon faces into the big issue of the staple of the testing community (twitter) changing with people leaving and splintering onto different platforms, this leaves questions of how does the community stay connected? Are we going back to LinkedIn, are we moving to Mastodon or something else?

How do we all keep in touch? We talk about what kind of connections we are looking for, what value are we getting? What value can we provide? The peers chew the fat on these questions and look at how we can get those needs met through other mediums. 

How are you finding the shift? What are you doing to keep connections? Please get in touch to let us know your thoughts.

We hope you found the discussion useful and would love to hear your feedback.

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We’re also now on GoodPods, check it out via the mobile app stores

If you like what we do and are able to, please visit our Patreon to explore how you could support us going forwards: https://www.patreon.com/testingpeers

Saffron QA is a provider of recruitment and consultancy services, exclusively for the software testing industry.

You can find out more at https://saffronqa.co.uk/  or on LinkedIn at https://www.linkedin.com/company/saffron-qa/

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Thank you for joining us for another episode of the Testing Peers podcast.

Join David, Simon, Russell and Chris as we talk about planning and estimation.

But, before we dive into the topic we take a brief look into the approaches the Peers take towards researching personal purchases and we discover Simon likes a good review!

This week's topic was inspired by Jo Richards and her tweet about story points.

 https://twitter.com/iamjorichards/status/1583146372873990144?s=20&t=YFF4jtmXM8bRgskwTS6icA 

In true Peers tradition, when talking about story points, their value and implementation, we mention that it depends on context. Hooray!

The discussion leads to estimation, value, audience, inclusion of testing effort and more.

Some useful articles referencing topics covered in the episode:

• Why do we use Story Points for Estimating? by Derek Davidson
• Practical Fibonacci: A Beginner's Guide to Relative Sizing by Julee Everett
• T-shirt sizes aren’t what you think: How to use t-shirt sizing for project estimation by Julie Martins
• Solving Software Industry Problems by Applying ‘Systems Thinking’ to Ourselves by Andrew Brown

We hope you found the discussion useful and would love to hear your feedback.

[email protected]

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We’re also now on GoodPods, check it out via the mobile app stores

If you like what we do and are able to, please visit our Patreon to explore how you could support us going forwards: https://www.patreon.com/testingpeers

Saffron QA is a provider of recruitment and consultancy services, exclusively for the software testing industry.

You can find out more at https://saffronqa.co.uk/  or on LinkedIn at https://www.linkedin.com/company/saffron-qa/

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Hello and welcome to episode 67 of the Testing Peers podcast.

This week we have special guests Beth Marshall and Steven Warburton who joins regulars, David and Russell, as we discuss Testing Conferences and what they mean to us and our teams.

Before we delve into the main subject Beth takes us down memory lane on funny stories at conferences.

We start discussing conference season and our bucket lists of conferences. We talk about DevOps conferences, RoboCon, not just testing and wanting to go to EuroStar, Agile Test Days and Russell confuses Agile on the Beach with yet-to-be-created Testing on the Beach conference (but it does sound fun!).

We talk about how to pick yourself or how to help your team pick where to go and use cases to help persuade people of the value of conferences and the value to a team. We share our thoughts on maximising the experience, the difference between online and offline events, and sharing what is learnt. and how you can get involved in conferences beyond just speaking.

We hope you found the discussion useful and would love to hear your feedback.

[email protected]

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We’re also now on GoodPods, check it out via the mobile app stores

If you like what we do and are able to, please visit our Patreon to explore how you could support us going forwards: https://www.patreon.com/testingpeers

Saffron QA is a provider of recruitment and consultancy services, exclusively for the software testing industry.

You can find out more at https://saffronqa.co.uk/  or on LinkedIn at https://www.linkedin.com/company/saffron-qa/

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Hello and welcome to episode 66 of the Testing Peers podcast.

This week we have a special guest Ugne Litvinaite who joins, David, Russell and Chris as we discuss Testing debt.

Before we delve into the main subject we first explore our favourite Dinosaurs. 

Chris explains what we mean by debt and references back to a blog he wrote in 2020 "It's all just a little bit of history repeating..." and the different types of debt: culture, document, shortcut, later, and process debt. He also quotes from Abraham Lincon "Discipline is choosing between what you want now and what you want most"

The Peers move on to discuss intentional vs unintentional debt, discipline, good habits, biases and predisposition to new shiny things before we move to talk about Ugne's gut. 

We go on to talk about the debt we've seen and dealt with sharing some of our past experiences. 

We hope you found the discussion useful and would love to hear your feedback.

[email protected]

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We’re also now on GoodPods, check it out via the mobile app stores

If you like what we do and are able to, please visit our Patreon to explore how you could support us going forwards: https://www.patreon.com/testingpeers

Saffron QA is a provider of recruitment and consultancy services, exclusively for the software testing industry.

Support the show

Hello and welcome to episode 65 of the Testing Peers podcast.

This week, join Simon, David, Russell and Chris as we discuss Switching Off.

Prior to the main topic, Simon introduces the topic of switching off in meeting horror stories.

We discover how triggered the Peers get over shared screens and talk about a few awkward situations.

Moving on, Russell introduces the main topic. Starting off by defining what we mean by switching off from work and if we have any mechanisms that we use.

David still gets his Windsor knot out with his shirt each day, almost as a work uniform, even when working from home.

Russell leaves his work at the office (or at least he tries to).

The Peers move on to discuss bad habits, guilt, boundaries, distractions and lament the hold our phones have on us.

Even when we know there are solutions, like notifications being switched off, alternate accounts on social media, and scheduling messages.....they all just seem to be more work.

Chris speaks to his struggles with screen time recently and seeking ways around that.

There are, of course, lots of different contexts to consider, especially with internationally distributed teams, but there are expectations and precedents that we can set, and hopefully a well established communication culture within our orgs.

It's called a work-life balance for a reason - balance - not one thing taking over the other.

We discuss motivations and identities, the dangers of burnout, guilt and pressure.

Some coping mechanisms include to-do lists, saying no and speaking about struggles.

We hope you found the discussion useful and would love to hear your feedback.

[email protected]

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We’re also now on GoodPods, check it out via the mobile app stores

If you like what we do and are able to, please visit our Patreon to explore how you could support us going forwards: https://www.patreon.com/testingpeers

Saffron QA is a provider of recruitment and consultancy services, exclusively for the software testing industry.

Support the show