Top 10 StickyMinds Articles of 2018

10. Shifting Testing Left Is a Team Effort

There is a lot of talk in the testing world about shifting left. Basically, “shift left” refers to moving the test process to an earlier point in the development process, independent of the development approach. This article explores a case in which shift-left has been applied, and the lesson is that shifting left cannot be achieved by testers alone—it must result from a team effort. By Mark Franssen and Jan Jaap Cannegieter
[Read the article]

9. The Who, What, When, and How of Pair Testing

Pair testing can help you speed up your test assignment and provide more quality to your test results. But who can do pair testing, and when should they do it? And what kind of pair testing is best for your situation? This article gives you more information about how you should conduct pair testing in order to maximize its benefits. By Simon Schrijver
[Read the article]

8. Requirements Mapping Using Business Function Test Suites

On this team, testers were overcommitted, avoidable defects were surfacing, and documentation was hard to find. Worse, trust and morale were low. Upgrading tools was out of the question, so the testers decided to take matters into their own hands and create incremental change themselves. Here's how a team added a new type of traceability to its requirement test case world. By Balazs Schaffhauser
[Read the article]

7. Ethics in Software Testing

When we speak of “test ethics,” the given examples usually are trivial dilemmas. Do we avoid reporting a bug? Do we report that testing is progressing as planned, even though it’s definitely late? These questions are kids stuff: easy because the situation is so black-and-white. But life will present you with complicated cases where the answer is not that obvious. By Michael Stahl
[Read the article]

6. Participating in Code Reviews as a Tester

Code reviews are a popular method of catching bugs early in development through peer-reviewing someone’s code. But perhaps more important than catching bugs, these reviews also serve as a chance to see how something is built and have a conversation about it. Because testers question software differently from developers, it’s important that we participate in this knowledge-sharing practice. By Chris Kenst 
[Read the article]

5. Test Faster: How We Cut Our Test Cycle Time in Half

In just a year, one test team reduced its test cycle by more than 50 percent. It took analysis, planning, and effort—first they looked into how they spent their time, and then they questioned whether they could reduce time in any of those areas. Once they knew where they could be more efficient, they could start tackling their blockers. Here's how you can, too. By John Ruberto
[Read the article]

4. To Be a Good Tester, Just Do What No One Else Can

If you want to have a successful career in testing—and maybe even get beyond the day-to-day at the individual level, and improve the team or division—all you need to do is things no one else can. That means staying ahead as the industry moves on, which takes an intense and continuous investment in learning and practicing new things. Here are some suggestions for what that could look like. By Matthew Heusser
[Read the article]

3. 5 Ways to Optimize Tests for Continuous Integration

Many teams have existing automated test suites that are not included in a continuous integration program. Maybe the tests take too long to execute, or they are not reliable enough to give accurate results. Here’s how to assess your test suites in terms of value added and time to execute, along with five proven strategies to optimize those suites for CI. By John Ruberto

[Read the article]

2. A Tester Walks into a Bar: Reviewing Test Techniques

A tester walks into a bar and orders a beer. Then he orders ten beers, negative one beer, zero beers ... There are many variations of this joke. So let's try to think of every variation! Continuing the scenario of ordering beers at a bar, let's build test cases for how we would test the beer-ordering process as though it were software. By László Szegedi
[Read the article]

1. 5 Things That Will Impact the Future of Software Testing

From the way we look at software, evaluate risks, think about complexity, design our test approach and strategy, and help to release a stable product to the customer, technology has had an influence on how we test software. And that influence will only continue as technology advances. On a high level, here are five key things we’re already seeing that are going to shape the future of software testing. By Raj Subramanian
[Read the article]

Top StickyMinds Interviews of 2018

It’s Time for Testers to Own the Shift-Left Narrative: An Interview with Angie Jones
The Tester’s Mindset versus the Developer’s Mindset: An Interview with Hans Buwalda
How Manual Testers Are Evolving into Automation Engineers: An Interview with Jennifer Scandariato
How AI-Assisted Test Automation Can Transform the UI: An Interview with Gil Sever
The Inaccurate Nomenclature of Manual and Automated Testers: An Interview with Michael Bolton