My vacation is coming up soon, hurrah! This means a lot of planning and booking and surfing and searching to find cool and unusual places to stay and things to do. It also usually means I find some bugs along the way which give me ideas for testing at work. Read more on More Ways to Test – Travel-Inspired Bugs…
Author: Phil Kirkham
3 Ways I’m Honing my Presentation Skills by Building Good Habits
I’ve given a fair number of talks over the last few years, and I always try to keep improving. Before my recent talk at Beer City Code, I tried a few new things that (based on the feedback I got) worked very well.
Read more on 3 Ways I’m Honing my Presentation Skills by Building Good Habits…
More Ways to Test – Testing Error Conditions
Humans are going to use your app, and they are not going to get everything right every time. If and when they make a mistake, how does your app cope? This can be a fertile ground for testers looking for issues, as often the Happy Path case is written first and assumes everything is good, and then the conditions to catch and deal with exceptions are added onto this. Read more on More Ways to Test – Testing Error Conditions…
More Ways to Test – Using Tea/Coffee Breaks in your Mobile Testing
Testing is often thought of as dull and monotonous, yet something that has to be done. However, I’ve found some fun ways to add variety and incorporate extra testing into everyday routines. Read more on More Ways to Test – Using Tea/Coffee Breaks in your Mobile Testing…
More Ways to Test – Alternating Phone Models Per Test Cycle
Phone simulators are great for helping development move quickly, but they are only simulators. Testing on a real physical device should be part of your workflow. Read more on More Ways to Test – Alternating Phone Models Per Test Cycle…
Four Web Accessibility Testing Tools/Practices to Start Using Today
I recently ran some quick tests to see how accessible a website was. To do this, I used four different techniques which can test for different types of issues. Read more on Four Web Accessibility Testing Tools/Practices to Start Using Today…
Using Game Titles to Estimate Testing Scope
At Atomic, we have multiple projects happening at once, with team sizes ranging from a solo maker to teams of six and up. The teams are also working on different technologies (web, mobile, IOT devices) with different project risks—it might be a quick and dirty MVP, an app for a high-profile event used by tens of thousands, or a complete rewrite of a legacy system.
When projects differ so much in size and scope, how can I estimate the way I help out with my testing expertise and experience? I sat down with one of the managing partners at Atomic to analyze past projects. Our goal was to detect any patterns and figure out how we could use the data to help teams estimate how much time to schedule for me.
Read more on Using Game Titles to Estimate Testing Scope…
Finding Inspiration for Conference Talks and Blog Posts
This September, I will be giving a talk at the KWSQA Targeting Quality conference, and then in November, I’ll be doing a presentation at AtomicCon (the internal conference and getaway that our company arranges every other year). I also write a blog post here every 40 days, helping our marketing goals by “sharing the pain” through a constant stream of blog posts.
Where do I find the inspiration for what to talk about at these events? What to blog about? I use two main sources. Read more on Finding Inspiration for Conference Talks and Blog Posts…
More Ways to Test – Peripherals? I’d Forgotten about Those…
I have a variety of machines for running tests: my trusty MacBook Air, a Win10 laptop, a Chromebook, several models of iPhones, and various flavors of Android. And I have VMWare if I need to spin up some VMs for an exotic combination of IE and Windows. So I should be covered.
Read more on More Ways to Test – Peripherals? I’d Forgotten about Those……
Two Resources for Introducing Young Developers to Testing and Quality
At Atomic, we’re doing a great job of taking on and training up new grads to be excellent developers through our Accelerator program. I recently gave a talk to introduce them to some testing concepts and quality attributes that they should be thinking about in their work. Read more on Two Resources for Introducing Young Developers to Testing and Quality…