Software Testing and Development Blog Posts

TLDR; older computing books and papers have a lot of really useful information - read them. Programming has an ’easy to automate’ level called ‘coding’, with a similar relationship to ’testing’ that ‘checking’ has. Assert as well as Check. Developing includes Testing and Programing and other stuff.

TLDR; You can learn to detect ambiguity and then weaponize it for your testing. Do you think I meant that? What else could I mean?

UKStar 2017

I spoke at the UKStar 2017 London, 27th - 28th February 2017.

This was a ‘conversation’ session. A new type of session that UKStar are trying out. Basically - take two speakers who submitted complimentary sessions. Let them talk for 15 minutes each and have a conversation amongst each other and the audience to discuss the topic.

The topic I submitted was “What does technical enough mean?” and the conversation is titled “Automation and people”

TLDR; Ruthlessly look at your process and incrementally improve your efficiency. Take the same attitude when testing and developing and harness MVP as often as you can.

TLDR; Where to test? Can you isolate the functionality? If so, test the isolation most heavily. Then look to see what integrates, and how it integrates. Then test the integration as heavily as the ‘how’ requires.

TLDR; RestMud has JUnit Unit @Test coverage, functional integration testing, REST API testing with Jsoup and Gson, Bots for multi-user and model based testing, Postman and GUI based exploratory testing.

TestBash Netherlands 2017

I will speak at the TestBash Netherlands on January 2017 and present How to misuse ‘Automation’ for testing, fun and productivity.

We often hear about how ‘test automation’ can go wrong, which is all fine and dandy for the pessimists in the audience, and balancing feel good positive case studies exist for the optimists. But what about the anarchists? What about the rule breakers? What about the pragmatists? In this talk Alan will explain how to ‘misuse’ the ‘automation’ tools you’ve heard so much about, because you need to get things done. You’ve no doubt heard that ‘Cucumber is not a test tool’, and you’ve no doubt noticed that people use Cucumber during their testing. It’s misuse cases like this that we will celebrate, and as a bonus, you’ll learn what Cucumber ‘really’ is. We’ll look at other tools; to find out their true nature and how you can turn it to your personal advantage. To further groom you for success, we’ll explain the mental models which give you guilt free flexibility in your approach. If you’ve ever wanted an ‘expert’ to quote to give you permission to use the tools how you want, this is the talk for you.

TLDR; Map resolutions every day. Evaluate if you are living the purpose you set. Go deep with your current knowledge and it will allow you to adopt the trends when they become strong influences on your work.

TLDR; push back, ask questions, and if all else fails - plan it as a manageable set of tasks

At SyncHerts January Meetup I presented a 5 minute Lightning Talk.

The Lighting Talk

SyncHerts January 2017 Meetup

This is the first time I’ve been able to attend a SyncHerts Meetup, which is one of the ‘just outside’ London, but ‘close enough’ to home, that I should be able to attend more regularly.

I’ll be presenting a 5 minute (with max 7 slides) talk on “Automating Tactically vs Stragically”.

Looking forward to talking, drinking ‘soft drinks’ because I’ll be driving, and networking.