What's a testing manager?
My career has been defined by a lack of test managers. Only 25% of my jobs have had them. That's led to a few interesting challenges.
Management
A collection of 14 issues
Hire someone with a Testing Education
Whenever possible, you should hire testers with testing certifications
There are 2 big challenges when hiring for a role:
1. Getting enough applicants
2. Finding a match within those applicants
Should a hiring manager focus on hiring testers with certifications over those without?
No, they should not.
First, it creates
Evidence in Performance Reviews
Reviews are grounded in evidence of your accomplishments, as measured against set goals.
Reflections and fun stats from 2021
I started my previous post by saying “2021 was an improvement over the previous year”. This was due, in large part, to the growth and new challenges at work. Here are some more reflections and a few fun stats from 2021 on those new challenges:
Growth
Growth at Promenade came
The Future of Software Test Engineers and Codeless Tools
A few months ago I was chatting with Evgeny Kim about some of the reservations I had while exploring a new codeless test automation tool. He was also exploring some codeless tool options and so he invited me onto his podcast to talk about it. We chatted about a wide
Learning to balance a Maker's and Manager's Schedule
One of the hardest things thus far about becoming a manager (managing others and their work) has been learning to balance my maker’s schedule with my manager’s schedule.
Maker Schedule, Manager Schedule
The concept comes from a Paul Graham essay which says:
There are two types of schedule,
Hiring a Software Tester, an Analysis
In May of 2020, back when Promenade Group was still called BloomNation, I opened a job posting for a Software Test Engineer. This was to be the first of many test positions we eventually hire for. After going through the whole process of hiring a software tester, I thought it
Highlights from CAST 2018
Last week I attended CAST in Cocoa Beach, Florida, which was my second time attending and the first since CAST in Grand Rapids back in 2015. It was a fun experience for a number of reasons including giving my first workshop at CAST and being elected to the AST Board
Coding Without a Net
Yahoo! has been in the news quite a bit over the last few years as it’s primary business of placing display ads slowly dies and it searches for new ways to grow and/or remain relevant. It’s hired new executives, lost new executives and made acquisitions. Plenty of
Throw someone else in to help QA it faster!
Throw someone else in to help QA it faster!
A former boss (or two) of mine
I’ve heard this statement many times in my career but it happened again just recently and it got me thinking. Aside from the poor choice of words, about “QAing” something (is that really
Performance Reviews (bad)
It’s that time of year at my company when we meet with our respective bosses to discuss how well we did. Review time is probably the least fun time of the year, not because I am fearful of how I might do but, because it’s time to give
Rapid Testing Intensive Confirmed!
(Stolen from the Rapid Testing Intensive site)
It’s official I’m booked for the onsite Rapid Testing Intensive with James and Jon Bach at the end of July on Orcas Island in Washington. According to the website this testing intensive will be based on “… Session-Based Test Management and Rapid
Learning about customers
Working for a startup company you go through a lot of problems, potential solutions and more problems. I was reminded of my company in the article by Startup Lessons Learned entitled Validated learning about customers. Eric Ries, who writes the Startup Lessons Learned blog, describes two scenarios with two fictional
5 Ways to Revolutionize your QA
I can’t remember where I originally found this post and the corresponding eBook but the eBook is definitely worth taking a look at. Here is the former uTest blog post, now Applause blog post.
The 5 ways or insights are:
1. There are two types of code and they