Quality First
Whether you are a developer, a tester, or in a combined Software Engineering role, understanding the fundamental thinking behind testing your own code is of significant importance to producing solid, quality services for our customers. Due to this, I'd like to spend some time directing you to some of my previous blog posts pertaining specifically to testing and quality. Interestingly, as I read through these posts, I found them to be timeless and give an interesting perspective that everyone should consider. This isn't training on how to be a tester, but instead some different ways to think about testing through examples and analogies. Enjoy!
Everyone Wants to Test - I was asked what should new testers think about when starting to test software. That question has many different answers, but this post specifically focuses on other activities that you may do and not even understand the tester mindset you apply when doing these tasks. My hope is that this post shows you how everyone has a little bit of tester inside of them. If you have more than you thought, leverage it!
Automation Maturity - What Should an Engineering Manager Focus On? - This post isn't just for engineering managers but for anyone involved in writing automation. It explains what minimal automation looks like and also what too much automation is like and what problems that may cause. Interesting insight for engineers involved in automation creation.
Should BVTs pass 100%? - It's a more difficult question than you think. Granted, I explain some extreme cases where it would be ok to not pass 100%, but for most projects this post is great at explaining why 100% pass rate is expected.
What's Your New Currency? - Moving from Waterfall to an Agile methodology along with thinking about dev and test as a similar role means a need to rethink the value we place on finding bugs. It's actually ok to experiment and have bugs in your production systems if you have the correct infrastructure in place to monitor, fix-forward, and still limit bug exposure to your customers. Read this post to understand more about why bugs are being redefined.
Don't Fall Asleep with Geckos - This is one of my favorite posts that makes a point based on an analogy from one of my vacations. It's about having critical thinking skills always and not getting to comfortable with adapting to a team or a feature set because you can add more value by questioning the oddities. It's another way of testing without being a tester, just change your lens when looking at a solution and you'll uncover things beyond what is apparent..