A Tester’s Guide to Expertise
What’s new in the testing world?
TESTING AND THE COMMUNITY
TimeShiftX — The Time Travel Software
TimeShiftX lets you time travel your software to test all date and time sensitive functionality and code such as year-end, daylight savings, leap year, and billing. Employ instant time travel inside Active Directory & Kerberos without code changes and removing all pain points.
Masterclass: A Software Tester’s Guide to Expertise | Vera Gehlen-Baum
Many people often doubt that they have enough talent to do a specific job or even become an expert in their field. They think that it needs a certain pre-position to become an expert. But what is the definition of an expert and how does one really get to be one?
The Pen-Testing Ebook [Free Download]
Pen Testing is an activity intended to expose vulnerabilities in systems before real attackers find them. It’s a valuable part of a solid security strategy if it is implemented well, and the sponsoring organization responds to the findings. Get started and create a solid security strategy!
Working With Pen Testers With Brendan Seerup
The Super Testing Bros talk to Brendan about Pen testing in the September edition of our monthly MoT podcast, 2018.
Testbash Manchester 2018 sketchnotes & recap by Katja Says
The Testbash Manchester 2018 is the first ever Testbash I attended. And what can I say — my expectations were met. The Ministry of Testing community is just awesome and the Testbashes are a place where you can meet in person in a very welcoming and inclusive atmosphere. I learned a lot of things and saw lots of awesome speakers during this single track conference.
Hindsight lessons about exploration: What is testing? by Mr.Slavchev
I decided this series will be called “Hindsight lessons about exploration”. It will also be useful for all those who are interested in the exploration part of testing and tired of being asked to follow strict scripts, when no actual benefit is visible from this.
99 character talks by Daniel
You’ve heard of 99 second talks, I bring you 99 character talks! Anything you want, 99 characters. Go!
Sprinkling chaos by Testheader
This morning I asked the analyst in my team why I got to state A instead of state B as I expected. She was also very confused and embarked on a quest!
Tips for working with offshore outsource testing team by Doron Bar
I have been working with an offshore company for more than five years, and I would like to share my story and some of the insights I gained from this experience.
Coaching Objectives by Stephen Janaway
It can be hard to set objectives for coaches. Linking a coaches deliverables directly to the output of a team is neither fair nor sensible yet it’s frequently used as a path of least resistance.
Creating Users, Not Addicts by Jeremy Cherry
We’re more anxious than ever before. Just typing that makes me anxious. Technology, for all of its benefits, can create a sense of claustrophobia. All of our devices make us feel like we’re trapped in a vast room of spinning plates. Persistently pondering which one will topple makes our hearts beat even faster.
Get on our radar by submitting your blog to our Testing Feeds or emailing something interesting to community@ministryoftesting.com
BUSINESS BLOG POSTS
Addressing New-Age Security Testing challenges with focused technology platforms by Ben Viollet
The days of developers creating every line of code from scratch are over. The intense demand for newer, better software means development cycles have become correspondingly intense. Moreover, the need for Continuous Testing/Development, and Continuous Integration is growing, as Application Development keeps getting complex.
5 Reasons you are wasting your testing time by Joel Montvelisky
Not all our testing time is spent effectively. Sometimes I find myself at the end of a testing day feeling I could have tested much better. Realising that my testing was not as “good” as it could have been if I’d done things a little differently.
Testing without Requirements or Functional Requirements Document by Priya Rani
Is it possible to test a system where no requirements documentation exists? It’s pretty rare but the situation can arise where we are expected to review without being given a functional specification document.
Selenium WebDriver for Beginners by Grigor Avagyan
The web application market is huge and intensely competitive. To be able to introduce a high-quality application product to the market at a reasonable price, it is extremely important to work with effective test automation tools, preferably open source.
Performance Testing: Adding the Service Registry and Service Mesh into the Mix by Kathryn Nest
Ephemeral architectures in which microservices scale up automatically to meet capacity requirements are a game changer. Whereas deploying container-backed microservices and orchestrating the environment they’re to run in used to be a laborious manual task, today’s technologies such as Kubernetes automate much of the process of packaging and deploying applications into the cloud. But there is a problem: service management.
Top Features In IOS 12 Every IOS Developer Should Know by Shashikant Jagtap
Apple released iOS 12 just in time after announcing three new iPhones. The new iOS version has a rich set of features in terms of performance and user experience and comes with huge enhancements in performance, security and privacy. Whilst considering these new features for users, we also need to consider what this release means to every iOS developer and QA engineer.
Why AI Products Need Field Testing to Succeed in Today’s Market by Chris Rader
Artificial Intelligence (AI) is quickly becoming the most anticipated component of devices coming to market today. Between Bose’s new voice-supported smart speakers, Google launching voice-controlled shopping in the UK, and Amazon letting developers create their own Alexa-powered gadgets, it’s a safe bet that the best of AI and voice control products is yet to come.
PODCASTS
47: Automation Panda — Andy Knight by Test & Code
Interview with Andy Knight, the Automation Panda.
221: Tester in Your Pocket with Evan Wiley by Joe Colantonio
In this episode, we’ll be Test Talking with Evan Wiley a Quality Engineer for a large financial company all about his experience on how to get that automation culture into sprint teams.
071 Lessons learned when breaking a Monolithic Healthcare System with Brett Hofer by PurePerformance
Brett Hofer is giving us his inside story on how he was called for the rescue to break a monolithic healthcare system that, after 3 years of development, was on the verge of having a major business impact on the largest healthcare vendor in the US.
Episode 332 — Small Business Cybersecurty Challenges by Security in Five
Small businesses have the biggest mountains to climb when it comes to security. The lack of proper financial investment, skill shortages and the balance between progressing the business and keeping it secure. This episode goes over the special challenges small businesses face when building a cybersecurity program.
Episode 90: A Lot About Nothing by AB Testing
It’s almost an all tangent episode, but we do (eventually) get a chance to discuss how ML and AI are changing testing and quality, and we pay our respects to the great Jerry Weinberg.
Ep 15 Jim Routh: Using Technique-Based Approaches To Build Security Teams by Humans of InfoSec
Jim has held a number of impressive security leadership positions at several companies including Aetna, JP Morgan Chase, and American Express. He has been a key player in the creation of some of the industry’s most effective information sharing communities — the FS-ISAC and the NH-ISAC. He’s also known for an uncommon approach to risk management: “Take risk to manage risk.”
Episode 333 — iOS12 Security Features You Should Know About by Security in Five
Apple released iOS12 to the public and there are many security improvements you should know about. This episode goes over the security features you should enable and others that you will find useful.
Want more podcasts? Check out our automagically updated feed of podcasts related to software testing.
TECH
Dark Patterns And Other Design No-Nos For Mobile by Suzanne Scacca
The mobile web is a booming place right now, which means web designers are spending lots of time trying to figure out how to win over this particular class of users. One way not to do that? Dark patterns.
Designing with real data by Zach Johnston
Earlier in 2018, I wrote about desktop prototyping and how setting plays an important role in designing for desktop interfaces. But the desktop kit lacked one crucial component — real data. With the release of Framer X, our team set out to rebuild the Desktop Kit from the ground up with real data at its core.
I’ll say it: focus groups suck by Nikki Anderson
Focus groups are still one of the most highly debated user research methodologies. In my time within this field, I have met people who either hate them or believe them to be effective. There really isn’t an in-between or grey area with focus groups. What are focus groups?
How to Become a Better Software Developer: A Handbook on Personal Performanceby Tyler Hakes
Writing code is the output–and almost anyone can learn the basics of syntax and formatting. But what makes someone a skilled developer? It’s much more than just understanding the basics, of course. It’s mastery of the fundamental concepts and logic that make one capable. But, in order to be great, there must also be a way to measure, evaluate, and improve that performance.
UPCOMING MOT EVENTS
- Testing Ask Me Anything — Reliability Engineering — 9th October 2018 — Save your space now!
- TestBash Australia — 1 day — Friday 18th October 2018- Tickets On Sale!
- Masterclass A Software Tester’s Guide to Expertise | Vera Gehlen-Baum — 23rd October 2018 — Save your space!
- TestBash San Francisco — 2 days — Thursday 8th — Friday 9th November 2018 — Tickets On Sale!
- TestBash Essentials Brighton — 1 day — Wednesday 3rd April 2019 — Subscribe to launch list
- TestBash Brighton — 1 day — Friday 5th April 2019 — Subscribe to launch list
- TestBash Netherlands — 2 days — Thursday 23rd — Friday 24th May 2019 — Submit your talk or Subscribe to the launch list
TOOLS
Reworm
Forget about actions, connections, reducers and a lot of boilerplate to create and manage states. With reworm you can create and manage state as simple as on the image above.
Dinolytics Release and WAVE Roadmap by Jared Smith
We’re happy to announce the release of Dinolytics — an enterprise-level web accessibility evaluation system based on WAVE.
Check-links
For each URL, it first attempts an HTTP HEAD request, and if that fails it will attempt an HTTP GET request, retrying several times by default with exponential falloff. This module handles concurrency and retry logic so you can check the status of thousands of links quickly and robustly.
SECURITY
UK regulator fines Equifax Ltd 500,000 pounds for 2017 security breach by Rishika Chatterjee
A British regulator on Thursday fined credit reference company Equifax Inc’s UK arm, Equifax Ltd, 500,000 pounds for failing to protect the personal information of up to 15 million people in Britain during a 2017 cyber attack.
Millions of Twitter DMs may have been exposed by year-long bug by Lisa Vaas
Your private Twitter Direct Messages may have spilled over to a developer who was never meant to see them, thanks to a bug in one of the platform’s application programming interfaces (APIs).
United Nations WordPress Site Exposes Thousands of Resumes by Ionut Ilascu
Disclosure vulnerabilities in a web app from the United Nations leave open to public access CVs from job applicants and the organization failed to plug the leak despite receiving a private report on the issues.
Tricky DoS Attack Crashes Mozilla Firefox by Lindsey O’Donnell
A newly released proof-of-concept attack using malicious JavaScript can crash or freeze Mozilla Firefox when an unsuspecting victim visits a specially crafted webpage on the browser.
NewsNow suffers security breach — passwords should be considered compromisedby Graham Cluley
Online news aggregation service NewsNow has admitted that it has suffered a security breach.
ACCESSIBILITY
10 Things People With Disabilities Wish Online Retailers Knew by Derek Featherstone
Many shoppers would be just fine if they could never set foot in a retail store again. After all, everything is available online: books, groceries, pizza, household necessities, even big ticket items like mattresses and cars. However, 15 percent of people worldwide have a disability that affects their daily life, according to the United Nations, and many retailers are unaware that their websites are not always accessible to them.
A plan for accessible charts by Benjy Stanton
A list of user research findings, accessibility report findings, best practice, resources and good ideas that I’ve collected over the past 2 years. The next step is to create some prototype charts and start iterating. But I wanted to write-up and share the work so far, in case it’s useful to others.
Writing good text alternatives by Amy Leak
They say a picture paints a thousand words. Alt text and captions give people who aren’t able to see pictures these words.
PERFORMANCE
Lazy Loading Images — The Complete Guide by Rahul Nanwani
Images are critical for every website and application today. Whether it is marketing banners, product images or logos, it is impossible to imagine a website without images. Sadly though, images are large in size making them the single biggest contributor to the page size.
Chrome’s Experimental Image Lazy Loading Flag by Doug Sillars
Lazy Loading is a technique where content is only loaded when it is required. In the case of images, this often means only when the image is on the screen). In this post, I investigate Chrome Canary’s new image Lazy Loading flag, and measure the performance impacts of automatically Lazy Loading images.
Measure Performance with the RAIL Model by Meggin Kearney
Rail is a user-centric performance model that breaks down the user’s experience into key actions. RAIL’s goals and guidelines aim to help developers and designers ensure a good user experience for each of these actions.
Accurately measuring layout on the web by Nolan Lawson
We all want to make faster websites. The question is just what to measure, and how to use that information to determine what’s “slow” and what could be made faster.
AUTOMATION
Your First Framework Part 4 by Learn Automation
So for part four, we’re going to be looking at writing some useful code to make the way we interact with elements on a page far easier and more user friendly.
Rethinking JavaScript Test Coverage by Benjamin Coe
You can now expose coverage output through Node.js by setting the environment variable NODE_V8_COVERAGE to the directory you would like coverage data output in. The tool c8 can be used to output pretty reports based on this coverage information.
JOBS
Test Automation Engineer (Stockholms, Sweden)
Does your passion for technology, and development inspire your peers and encourage them to excel at their job? Do you want to be part of an elite engineering team in a fast-growing global software company?
Software Test Engineer (San Francisco, CA. United States )
As a technical Software Test Engineer at Ultimate Software, you play a very important role in ensuring the quality and excellence of our products. You’ll be embedded on an agile development team where you will write code to test the code written by the developers, using both your specialized testing knowledge of multiple tools, techniques and best practices as well as your development experience.
MEETUPS
Meetups happening soon!
- Aprendiendo a aprender con Dr Vera Gehlen-Baum, Valencia, Spain
- #NottsTest Climbing The Pair Tree with Tim Munn, Nottingham, UK
- End-to-End Web Testing with TestCafe, Rio De Janerio — Online
- SWTC Manchester — Testing in Agile, Manchester, UK
- Testing Adolescence: Anthony McDonald’ Coming of (Testing) Age Story, Phoenix, US
