Software Testing and Development Blog Posts

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Dear Evil Tester, Who is Stafford Beer and Why should I care?

8 minute read - Dear Evil Tester

Stafford Beer was a famous Systems Theorist and Cybernetician and his books have influenced how I think.

Technical Testing Ms Edge User Will Never

Technical Testing with MS Edge and "the user will never do that"

2 minute read - Technical Testing

I have yet to update my Windows Machine to Windows 10, and therefore haven’t experienced the joys of MS Edge. Until now. And crikey! I was surprised.

Test Automation in Cybernetics And Management

5 minute read - Test Automation Influences

I recently re-read Stafford Beer’s 1967 “Cybernetics and Management”. An overview of Cybernetics and its derivation from Operational Research; because its examples use organisations and teams, it provides immediate relevance to my work.

Agile and Automation Days 2015 Talk

4 minute read - Conference

Agile and Automation Days, Poland, Krakow - November 2015

I attended the Agile and Automation Days Conference in Krakow, Poland on the 16th November 2015 to present a Keynote and a Tutorial on Technical Testing in Agile.

The Keynote title was “How to Improve your Technical Test Ability”. I described approaches, tools and mindsets that I use to improve my ability to test with increasing technical competency.

The tutorial covered “Technical Testing in Agile”, how to use and justify technical testing skills in an Agile context. This hands on tutorial requires much interactive investigation and execution.

Eurostar Mobile Deep Dive 2015

6 minute read - Conference

I attended the Eurostar Mobile Deep Dive in November 2015 to present a session on Technical Mobile Testing - Risk, Issues and Experiences.

Mobile testing offers numerous challenges and the potential for massive scope creep with so many device combinations and tool choices available. We can’t afford to test everything so we make decisions on scope. We have learn to use risk as part of the the decision making process: business risk, and technical risk. In this talk, Alan will describe his experiences of hands-on testing of mobile native applications and mobile web applications, and the application of technical and risk-based thought processes in deciding what, and how, to test.

TestWorks 2015 Keynote

7 minute read - Conference

I attended the TestWorks Conference in Amsterdam on the 2nd of October 2015 to present a Keynote on “Real World Automation Challenges”. Based on my experience writing code to automate applications, and from working with clients world wide, I described challenges faced and the thinking behind the solutions chosen.

So if you want more options for how you approach automating executing then this might be the talk for you.

Lessons learned from a cloud grid bug

5 minute read - Case Study

Some lessons learned when working with a cloud grid vendor on a live production bug they had in their grid system.

Generic Selenium WebDriver Grid Handling

Generic Selenium WebDriver Grid Configuration Handling to use BrowserStack, Saucelabs and TestingBot

4 minute read - Selenium WebDriver FAQs Test Automation

Driver Abstractions are essential to help move between environments.

Using Travis Ci Org Checking Code Github

Using travis-ci.org for checking code on github

6 minute read - Dev Ops

I run all the tests for Java For Testers prior to releasing the book. Since all code shown in the book is pulled out of the source, it should mean that all the source code you see in the book should run.