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How far should you go in your investigation of a defect?
TLDR; Go as far as you can, while you are still adding value to the person who is following.
Is there such a thing as an Evil Tester? Poking holes is good.
TLDR; Evil is subjective, it is probably not the best word to describe something. Evil is a trigger word. Use it to trigger inspiration to do things that no-one else would do, to say the things that no-one else would say. To think the things that no-one else would think.
Why Speak at conferences? write blogs? - To get your message out.
TLDR; We all have different experiences. Share them so that other people can learn. Share them so that people see that their experience is not covered and they are triggered into sharing as well.
Lesson Learned - I'm not ready for that vs I could do but choose not to
TLDR; Sometimes we know what to do, but aren’t prepared to do it. That does not mean we are not capable. Identifying our successes, even in-spite of the environment, can give you the confidence to repeat in a different environment. In a different environment we might thrive.
Lessons Learned - Experts Make Stuff Up, They Don't Know Everything
TLDR; Experts do not know the answer to everything. They draw on all their experience and learning. They allow themselves to make something up that seems plausible and maps on to their understanding of how the system works. We all do that in our daily lives. Apply the same process to work.
Automating API Tip - Use minimum, fail assert less, pass assert more
TLDR; Find the minimum request and header set that works. Use that as your base request. Create some expanded versions with more headers, randomise header inclusion and order, these help detect change.
Use Leaderboards and Counts as Triggers and Trends, not for Motivation
TLDR; Focus on the reason behind the measurement. Use trends in measurement to help adjust strategy.
A beginner's guide to software testing - Claims, and Expectations.
TLDR; Claims, and Expectations can be used as a high level description of Software Testing. Given a set of claims, check if claims are met. Create a model based on expectaions, then use and evaluate expectations. Further explore to identify scenarios where claims fall apart and expectations are unsatisfied.
Software Testing Techniques are Model Based, not White/Grey/Black Box
TLDR; Given a model, we can apply a technique. Given a model we can apply many techniques. Techniques are a way of extracting a coverage model from an input model
Tester Role vs Testing Process. Anyone can Test. Are we testing well?
TLDR; Are you getting the results you want from testing? If not, change how you test as part of the development process. Don’t change the role definition of “Tester”.


