Testing "Software" Times

How aware are you? Do you live in the here and now or is your mind always somewhere else? This blog post is about Mindfulness. Mindfulness is a simple meditation and is defined as (According to Wikipedia): "The intentional, accepting and non-judgemental focus of one's attention on the emotions, thoughts and sensations occurring in the present moment" Now Mindfulness has become more popular in the west in recent years as it has shown to have benefits for people who are suffering from Depression and Anxiety. It has been around for a while and is often thought to of originated from Buddhism and some people believe it started thousands of years ago. Now modern life is hectic and I’m sure we all have lots of things going on in our lives that keep our Brains busy and trying to focus on one thing at a time can be a challenge. I can't remember the number of times I've been doing something and my mind is somewhere else entirely. Mindfuln...

Sat in front of my TV one boring week night a while back I noticed an Advert for Barclay's bank and something they called Barclay's Code Playground. So, intrigued I went on their website and found this: "You rarely see it, but computer code runs our world. Everything from the website you’re reading to the traffic lights on our roads relies on the mysterious world of code. It’s even part of the national curriculum now, and learning what makes tech tick could give your kids a head start in the world of work." So what Barclay's have is a way for kids to learn how to program by letting them write simple code to change animations and other cool things. You can do this in selected branches or on the Internet. Now I think it is great that a bank like Barclay's is helping to teach kids the concepts of coding. It is also great that England has become the first country in the world to mandate computer programming in primary and secondary schools. However I ...

Having recently undertook the running of some training, I thought it would be beneficial to post some of the things I learnt from it. The training I was performing  had around 8 trainees and latest 4 days and was for a system that is used in the Financial services industry.  Be Active By 'Be Active' I mean 'work' the training room. Go round the room and see how people  are getting on. Do they have a confused look on their faces? If so ask them if there is anything they do not understand or is there something they would like clarifying. Don't be a trainer that sits at his machine and just waits for the questions - be proactive !!! Make sure the exercises are completed If you training incorporates exercises that the trainees need to complete then encourage them to complete them. You're not doing your job as a trainer If they don't do the exercises and you then get bombarded with questions once they start using the system for real. Yes not all exerci...

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)...