This year I started doing my first 1:1s with colleagues, aside from those with my manager/leader. It was a really interesting experience and I wanted to reflect on it a little. Getting going It was actually something that was on my agenda for a while but struggled to get permission / buy in to do […]
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Challenging our thinking with CBT
Quite a few years ago I was going through a tough time and was referred to “Cognitive Behaviour Therapy” (CBT). Whilst it wasn’t what I needed at the time, it was useful for helping me correct some of my negative behaviours or reactions. Recently when working my way through MoT Software Testing Essentials Certificate (STEC), […]
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Researching Education
One of my favourite things from being a quality coach was having 1:1s with people, tapping into their views on quality, what motivates them and their experiences plus of course exploring how to support them. However there was an interesting trend – quality was new to many people. Just like it was new to me […]
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Role of Automation
As Philippa Jennings articulated in her talk at MoTaCon, quality is the goal. Automation is a means. Unfortunately some people do get that muddled. Even worse is mistaking using a tool with quality. Eek! I love automation for three reasons. First is unit testing. That super fast feedback when I’m writing code is handy and […]
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Delivering a vision
Vision is hard. Often it can feel fluffy and woolly. The vision for our group was “Fulfilling customer needs, through innovative trusted solutions, that we take pride in” but it wasn’t tangible. I established some quality pillars/strands for it. One around discovering behaviours, a sort of BDD-vibe to it and a second about quality attributes […]
Thinking about user journeys in testing isn’t a particularly new topic (although probably truly conducted a lot less than we would like to admit). I suspect even rather than that is the user journey in design and planning. At least once engineering teams are involved. This is something that I’ve had little chance to explore […]
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User Journeys & Testing
I wanted to share a really cool activity that I did with a couple of developer teams a couple of months ago. Two teams had (roughly) a sprint of testing with a push to be user focused. I was brought in to lead this effort (with no notice!). The end result was a number of […]
I recently reflected upon my failings as a Quality Coach but that wasn’t to say that I failed. Far from it. I am very proud of my work as a Quality Coach and it is a role that I hope to pick up again. Initiatives Analytics As a group we had never really looked at […]
I enjoyed my time as a Quality Coach, working with between one and three teams at a time. I think it was a relatively successful stint. However I want to acknowledge some of the areas where I struggled. Role Definition As a role, quality coaching is definitely very different to anything that I’ve done before […]
I’ve always disliked writing test strategies and plans. Reviewing them was even worse. Just tedious long documents that tell me very little. Usually almost a copy paste as projects tend to be pretty similar. I did play with the one pager but still, it felt like a pointless exercise. We had a ways of working […]