Testing "Software" Times

Now I have changed how I am going to structure these posts on habits. In this post I am going to talk about  Keystone Habits. Now a keystone habit is: "A habit that has the power to start a chain reaction, changing other habits along the way." Now this may sound simple but keystone habits can be very hard to identify. They are often what people would call small wins. Let me give you a real world  example of a keystone habit. There is a company in America called Alcoa who are the 3rd highest producer of Aluminium in the world. Paul O'Neil was appointment as the new CEO back in 1997 and after his appointment there was a meet and greet between Paul and the shareholders. Paul took the stage and started to talk about safety. This shocked a few of the investors as they were probably expecting some clique filled speech about how profits would increase and how he would 'streamline' the business. Now you may think the same as the shareholders, that it was a li...

"Habits are powerful, but delicate. They can emerge outside our consciousness, or can be deliberately designed. They often occur without our permission, but can be reshaped by fiddling with their parts. They shape our lives far more than we realize— they are so strong, in fact, that they cause our brains to cling to them at the exclusion of all else, including common sense. Duhigg, Charles (2012-04-05). The Power of Habit: Why We Do What We Do, and How to Change Now I know I am a creature of habit (like we all are) but after some reading about them  was surprised by how strong they can become and how easily our actions can become habits. Scientists say that habit occur due to our brain constantly trying to save effort. If you think about this you will see that it is a good thing. Can you imagine if 'simple' things such as crossing the road were not a habit? It would require a lot of Brain power and mental effort every time we crossed the road. By the time you walked ...

I am a creature of habit. I like to have my breakfast at work and go to the Gym on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays.  In fact we are all creatures of Habit, even though you may not think you are. A university researcher in 2006 found that more than 40% of the actions people perform each day were not actual decisions but habit!! In my upcoming blog posts I will be looking at human habits and how they relate to testing - I may not discover much but I have a habit of wanting to try :). I will break the posts down into the following: 1) The habit loop 2) Problems with habits 3) Good habits 4) Changing habits I hope you enjoy the posts and please feel free to comment when they are published.

Now you may have found yourself in the same situation as me, the only tester working on a particular project with the usual aggressive project timelines. Although this may seem daunting at first there are a few things I have found that can help. NOTE: In this post I try and called what testers would traditionally call defects, problems. I have done this after reading this: http://www.developsense.com/blog/2014/04/ive-had-it-with-defects/ Keep Test cases simple Being the sole tester on a project you often do not have the luxury to spend a long time planning your testing. If this is the case keep you need to keep test planning simple but with enough detail so you know exactly what you want to test. A great tool for this is mind maps, which allow you to capture key tests in a quick and easy way without having to go into lots of detail. How you structure you mind map is up to you so long as a)     It can be read and understood by another person b)...

Now as I tester I find Excel to be a key tool in my daily work life. It is flexible and can be used for many different purposes. My main use of it however,  was for writing test cases. My test cases in excel would be quite detailed and would look something like this: NOTE: The assumption for the above is that only the customers surname needs to be present for a customer record to be added, I know very unrealistic but done for simplicity :) Now as you can imagine this becomes very tedious and laborious when you have lots of test cases to write.I have started to get involved in the testing community by going to some local test meet-ups to talk all things testing with other testers as well as reading various blogs and articles. This has led me down a more exploratory approach to my testing and one in which Mind maps are a useful tool. Mind Mapping Now for those of you who don't know, a mind map is basically what older people would call a Brain Storm. It is a method ...