Software Quality Assurance | GESQA Ltd | Wales

No filter, just opinion

  • My Testing Manifesto

    Introduction I read. I read an awful lot. I read books, I read other blogs (most of which seem better than my attempts). I read articles on the agile space. I read developer articles. I read articles on test automation. I read a lot of articles on testing. I read twitter vignettes. Each thing I…

  • Building a QA team – Part 1

    “Building a team that communicates freely and openly towards a common goal in the pursuit of a quality deliverable will always outperform a collection of disparate individuals with their own agendas.” Introduction A team is the beating heart of any software development process. People develop software. Those people have differing roles. Those people have differing…

  • Automated testing – not all scripts and unicorns

    Introduction There’s a lot written about the benefits of *automated testing. There’s a lot of money to be made by tool vendors. There’s not a lot written about the downside of *automated testing. A well articulated and well implemented test automation approach is a valuable piece of any development effort. I’m not anti-automation as a…

  • When I hear ‘I’ve tested before’

    Introduction I believe that every single person on a team can test. I articulate that here: Anyone can test and here: You don’t need QA specialists and here: Testers are responsible for the quality of the delivered product That includes any person (on / off a team) that has a responsibility for delivering high-quality software.…

  • Agile gotcha’s – The event version

    Introduction Agile, just the word alone, with 0 context, appears to polarise opinions within software development circles. The way that some commenters opine you’d think it was only second to the pandemic as the greatest evil to befall software development. The Agile manifesto is 22 years old at this point and I’ve never seen such…

  • Mentoring & Coaching – Finding your outer Miyagi

    Introduction In Part1 here I talked about mentoring. I talked about the fact that it is a function primarily based on building lasting relationships. In this post I’ll talk about quality coaching. What I think good looks like, the structure of a coaching session and round it off with a look at the differences and…

  • Mentoring & Coaching – Finding your inner Miyagi

    Introduction The line between mentor and coach has always seemed a bit blurry to me.You will mentor because you have life experience that you can pay forward.I would class this as life-coaching without the extraneous ‘right-on’ baggage.It may not actually matter to you that there’s a difference. Truth-be-told, it’s never bothered me but it’s been…

  • When Job Specs Go Bad

    Introduction As someone actively looking for a position I’m becoming increasingly discouraged by job specifications that appear to have little to no relevance in hiring skilled testers. After reviewing job specifications pertaining to quality engineers (in all their multivariate word salad constructions) it’s becoming increasingly clear that *some organisations have little to no idea what…

  • Building a QA team – Part 3

    This is part 3 of the ‘Building a QA team’ series. In this series, I’ve explained what I’ve learnt in the creation of a great team, I’ve also explained the methods I’ve used to create the initial team using a set of shared values. In this final part, I expand on the methods I use…

  • Building a QA team – Part 2

    Introduction In the first part here, I defined the problem to be solved, clarified what I mean by a team and identified the characteristics of individuals I look for in forming a QA team. I also identified the characteristics of what I consider to be a good team lead. In this part I’ll outline how…

  • 21st Century Soft Skills – QA Edition – Part 1 – Redux

    What’s the problem? Technology moves at a fair old pace these days. Organisations are overflowing with technical experts promoting the latest bit of shiny. Organisations are overflowing with teams implementing the latest bit of shiny. One thing that gets forgotten about in the race to shinytopia is that the implementation is undertaken by real people.…