Software development teams face all kinds of challenges. They need to learn new technologies while keeping legacy products running. They need to balance addressing tech debt with adding new features quickly. With all of these challenges, why should anyone care what groups, teams, products, or tests are named? Here are five reasons why: Reason One: […]
I didn’t understand the importance of Product Owners until I created my own web app. It was such a simple app (you can see it at https://thinking-tester-contact-list.herokuapp.com), but I had to figure out how to get from one page to another, and how to make sure a user never gets stuck at a dead end. […]
As software testers, we have a lot of different things to think about. We need to test new features and existing features. We need to make sure different features work correctly together. We need to run manual tests and make sure that our test automation is running correctly. And we need to test on different […]
People often ask me, “What’s the ideal tester-developer ratio?” My answer is always, “It depends.” There are a number of factors that determine what a good tester-developer ratio should be. Things to consider are: whether you are working on cutting-edge technology or a legacy product, the talent and experience of your team members, and what […]
For this month’s post, I’m doing something a little different! Usually my posts are aimed at software testers who want to improve their skills and improve their thinking about what to test. But this month, I want address the people who hire the software testers! Making the right hiring decisions is crucial. Being saddled with […]
When I was first introduced to JavaScript automated testing, I was working with a test framework that one of the developers I worked with had set up. I started the tests the way he told me to, with this command: npm run protractor. Later, when I was working with a different project, the command to […]
It’s a new year, which is a great time to take a look at your career and plan what you’d like to accomplish. One of the things I love about software testing is that it’s a continually evolving craft. The software that we test changes over time, as do the methods and tools we use. […]
Anyone who has focused on improving their health has learned that health begins with good habits: taking care of one’s teeth, exercising regularly, eating a healthy diet, and so on. Quick fixes like diet pills and one jog around the block might provide temporary improvement, but for permanent results, healthy habits are the way to […]
Web Accessibility means making a website easier to use and understand for people with visual, auditory, physical, or cognitive difficulties. Did you know that there are specific guidelines for how to make a website accessible? The guidelines are called the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines, or WCAG for short. The guidelines were created by the Web […]
Recently I was meeting with some coworkers who were looking to improve our Continuous Delivery practices. They were thinking of ways to measure our progress with automated testing, and one of the first suggestions was to measure code coverage. “Nope,” I said. “Measuring code coverage isn’t helpful because it doesn’t indicate whether we have good […]