Tag Archives: software testing - Page 3

The antipodes are calling

Posted by on January 13, 2011 No comments

I’m heading to Sydney, Australia on 22nd January 2011.  I will be looking for test consulting work  preferably through my Australian consulting company Testing Times.

What do I offer?

I shed light on testing problems often obscured or caused by a testing process. I bring a new perspective often hard to gain when inside an organisation.

I do this by thinking outside the square, looking for solutions outside traditional process orientated ideas.

So, if you have a problem that you haven’t yet being able to solve using traditional testing approaches, or you want a testing approach based on excellence and speed* why not contact me?

I also deliver one day training workshops on testing. These workshops focus on increasing tester skill.

I offer a context driven approach to testing.

These  principles are:

1.    The value of any practice depends on its context.

2.    There are good practices in context, but there are no best practices.

3.    People, working together, are the most important part of any project’s context.

4.    Projects unfold over time in ways that are often not predictable.

5.    The product is a solution. If the problem isn’t solved, the product doesn’t work.

6.    Good software testing is a challenging intellectual process.

7.    Only through judgment and skill, exercised cooperatively throughout the entire project, are we able to do the right things at the right times to effectively test our products.

What this means to you is that the advice I offer is to ensure you the customer get the best value out of your testing.

If you like that idea then contact me at amcharrett @ testingtimes.com.au

Interesting fact on the word antipodes. “The antipodes of any place on Earth is the point on the Earth’s surface which is diametrically opposite to it.” – Wikipedia. So, technically that would mean somewhere in the Pacific Ocean. Though I suspect that not a lot of testing is done there!

* I use a rapid software testing developed & taught  by James Bach & Michael Bolton.

Exclusive cartoon – see it here first !

Posted by on December 3, 2010 3 comments
If i were a test case

Here is an exclusive, never seen before cartoon, created especially for the upcoming ebook “If I were a testcase, I would…”

As you may know, this e-book contains over 300 memorable and funny responses to the Twitter challenge started by the Daily Testing Tip prompting testers to complete the phrase

“If I were a test case I would…”

The book will be available for download for free. We are still looking for more sponsors, so please if you or your company wishes to advertise in this book, please check out the advertising details at Daily Testing Tip The closing date for advertising is December 10th 2010. So be quick.

All proceeds from advertising will go the Chandru Fund to help raise funds for Chandrashekar B.N (Chandru) , a software tester in our community that has been recently  diagnosed with Acute Lymphoblastic Leukaemia.

Cartoon Tester (Andy Glover) has created some of his memorable cartoons into this great little ebook.

Here’s a glimpse of what’s to come…..

So if you haven’t joined in the fun why not do so now?  If you were a test case, what would you do???

Next Tuesday we will be holding a special #dttip challenge on twitter, so look out for that.  So please give generously with your ideas and contribute to the challenge.

From Little Things Big Things Grow

Posted by on September 3, 2010 7 comments

One thing that I get occasionally complemented on is my writing. People write and let me know how they appreciate my writing style.

Tree Seedling

Initially this suprised me, because I do not consider myself a naturally gifted writer. In fact, quite the opposite.

Reading and Writing was always a bit of a nightmare for me. I had an elder sister who was extremely talented when it came to English. She naturally ‘ate’ her way through literature and flew through reading the Famous Five whilst I plodded through the Secret Seven. Its not that I couldn’t do it, but I could never do it as well as my older sister and that pained me.

Come secondary school, though proficient in English, I still had this niggling sense of inferiority, exacerbated by the teachers at school who consistently expected more from me, “because my sister is so good….”.

Then, the thought of writing a school essay on any topic terrified me. I did not feel I was incompetent, I knew I was incompetent.

Funnily enough, my essays reflected this skewed view of my own ability.

So I did what I normally do when faced with that type of scenario.

I gave up.

Its a strange old world, and the clock turns around and for one reason or another I started blogging about testing.

Me? Writing? My totally creative family were to say, slightly suprised.

But, I’ve been blogging for about 3 years now and it looks like I’m not that bad at writing after all.

And I am proud of this turnaround, in both my writing skill, and my awareness of my ability. Its demonstrates to me, what I can do if I just give something a go.

In fact, I have been asked and I’m in the process of contributing  to a book on testing, as well as collaborating with James Bach on a book on IM Coaching.

Its a little victory, but I think an important one.

From Little Things Big Things Grow is based on the story of The Gurindji Strike and Vincent Lingiari. It describes how the Gurindji people‘s claim sparked the Indigenous land rights movement. The protest led to the Commonwealth Aboriginal Land Rights (Northern Territory) Act 1976.

The Act gave Indigenous people freehold title to traditional lands in the Northern Territory and the power of veto over mining and development on those lands. In 1975, 3,236 km² of land was handed back to the Gurindji people.