The Testing Show

How many times has the death of testing been touted? How many talks have been giving declaring the death of testing? Granted, those talks have a specific context that is not often noticed, but the statement gets said a great deal. In this episode, Senthil Ayyappan, Head of Market Strategy for Qualitest, joins Matthew Heusser and Michael Larsen to talk about how Quality Engineering is much more than basic testing and how it is very much a growing industry. In short, reports of testing's death, especially Quality Engineering's death, have been greatly exaggerated.

As the idea of melding operations and software development led to the discipline of DevOps, so has the idea of melding testing and operations led to the concept of TestOps where many of the operations areas also fall under the role of the testing teams(s) and help organizations actually get a handle on how they can better test for infrastructure needs and make sure that feature enhancements and code changes aren't just deployed efficiently but work their best as well. For this episode, Alex Langshall and David Vydra join Matthew Heusser and Michael Larsen to discuss TestOps, its role in the development lifecycle, and ways that organizations can leverage the benefits for better systems and better release management.

Does the idea of wearing a device that can monitor your movement, heart rate, and blood pressure to lower your health insurance premiums (or raise them in some cases) intrigue you or scare you? Does the idea of a plug-in for your car that measures your driving habits, perhaps affecting your insurance rates have you questioning things? If so, then come join Matthew Heusser and Michael Larsen as they talk with Simon Pickersgill and Anthony White about some of the areas related to testing in the world of insurance. Whether it be auto, home, health, or life insurance, more and more organizations are moving to models where big data, Artificial Intelligence, and Machine Learning are playing a part in determining premiums and claims payouts. There's a lot of coding happening and a lot of testing opportunities, so listen in and get a bird's eye view of an interesting area.

Today's show gets away from the typical risk and testing approach, as in what techniques to use. Instead, Jenny Bramble, Director of Quality Assurance at Papa, joins Matthew Heusser and Michael Larsen to discuss the more challenging aspects around talking about risk, specifically how to talk to people who don't want to recognize that it exists or is possible.

It's our 100th Episode and Qualitest has a new Chief Executive and "Chief Testing" Officer designate in Anbu Anbu Muppidathi who joins Matthew Heusser and Michael Larsen to talk about Quality Engineering as a unique discipline and differentiator. How does Quality Engineering go beyond traditional notions of Quality Assurance? Come join us for this milestone episode and find out how COVID helped make the case for quality orchestration and where Qualitest thinks quality is going both now and into the future.

For many organizations and educational systems, there's a need for testers and testing talent but there isn't a clear path for someone to go learn about testing and become a software tester, at least not in a traditional education sense. There may be a school or two that has some testing curriculum specifically but for many educations systems, it's taught superficially if at all. How does a potential tester learn what they need to and how can they be encouraged to pursue software testing in the first place? Dave Harrison and Simon Prior join Matthew Heusser to talk about the need for software testing to be considered a viable path for colleges and universities, the type of education that would be helpful for institutions to teach, what types of people and educational background would work well as testers, and how to help them get the best leg up if/when they decide to make that decision.

What does test management mean in today's software development world? Matthew Heusser and Michael Larsen welcome Gwen Iarussi and Lalitkumar Bhamare to talk about the differences in test management of previous decades vs. today's needs and requirements. Finding that "what is the value driver for our business?" is a critical piece among many.

Have you ever wondered what happens when something like a nor'easter, a tornado, a blizzard, or a wildfire comes through your area? How to critical systems like utilities, hospitals, and emergency services deal withy these situations? How can they help ensure their IT capabilities will remain intact, or as intact as possible? Matthew Heusser and Michael Larsen welcome Kimberly Humphrey and Scott Swanigan to talk about Storm Readiness Testing and how organizations can plan for the worst and be up and running as quickly as possible.

In todays fast paced and ever more complex software development landscape, Application Programming Interfaces (APIs) are more important than ever. Testing them has their own unique challenges. This week, Matthew Heusser and Michael Larsen talk with Beth Marshall, Ben Dowen, and Andrew Knight about the unique challenges testers face when working with and testing APIs and the variety of methods to make those challenges a little less daunting.

Once upon a time, testing was about creating the right documentation, making sure requirements were correct, be the quality police, and tell everybody else to do their job well. Lagter, we focused on specific testing, diving in to find defects and problems, and act like an insurance policy so that if there's a problem, we find it, but stop telling people how to do their jobs. Have we gone too far from that original focus? Is it possible for us to give generalized observations about the quality of the software we are delivering? How would we do it? To answer those questions, Rachel Kibler and Chris Kenst join Matthew Heusser and Michael Larsen to discuss where testing and quality interact and make a case as to which is more important and at which point in time.