Author Archives

2010 was a pretty big year for me as a tester. Actually, I’m not going to be shy about this – it was a pretty big year for me in all respects. I’ll tell you a story.
Chapter 1: The mentor
When I first started work at Campaign Monitor in 2009, I w…

Happy new year all!
The latest issue of The Testing Planet features an article written by myself and Campaign Monitor colleague James Martin, entitled Dash Dash Evolution. It’s a story of our experiences using low-tech dashboards as a method of repor…

Sometimes testing is like pouring a bucket of confetti on a snow leopard. Have you ever tried pouring a bucket of confetti on a snow leopard? Probably not, but now that the thought occurs to you, don’t you really want to know what happens? That’s l…

I’m quite a fan of Gherkin’s Given-When-Then syntax for test cases, so I was pleased to discover Specflow. Specflow is a .NET implementation of Gherkin, with complete integration with Visual Studio.
Steve Sanderson’s blog post describes it most e…

We all had a good time at the last meetup, so let’s do it again! Come have a drink and talk testing with some fellow test geeks.
When: 2 November 2010, 6.30pm
Where: Red Oak Beer Cafe, Sydney map
If you register below, then I’ll know you’re atten…

This is a story about my experience in using a wiki to manage test cases.
Over the past few years, I have been evaluating different test case management approaches and tools. At first I was looking for a one-fits-all solution, but it quickly became app…

What is wrong with combining roles? Business Analyst / Tester? Tester / Developer? Designer / Front-end developer? Project manager / Product manager?
The rant
I dislike siloing. Siloing is when two or more combinable roles are split apart across severa…

Marlena, James and I have been meeting up about once a week to drink beer and talk testing. It’s way fun, and sometimes educational! So if you’re a tester and you are in Sydney on Tuesday 21st September, then for Pete’s sake, come along and join …

Someone asked me a question the other day that stumped me. They asked “What do you enjoy most about testing?” It struck me that this should have been an easy question for me to answer. After all, it’s a pretty standard interview question. I can t…

It’s difficult
I think people have a tendency to greatly underestimate the difficulty of writing a good GUI-automation suite. It’s not as simple as record and playback, and it’s not like building regular software.
I’ve seen experienced develop…