It was great to be part of the audience with the winners of the 2025 BCS Lovelace and Society Medals in March 2026. The Lovelace Medal celebrates people from academia, industry or education who have had a major, notable impact in their field. The BCS Society Medal celebrates people who make extraordinary use of IT …
Category Archives: Testing
Put quality at the centre of what you do – A Review of ‘Out of the Crisis’ by W. Edwards Deming
I bought this book when I was a Test Lead at a startup that made a successful exit. We began working iteratively and discussed how to use the Deming Cycle. It was a useful book for me as a Test Lead because its philosophy helped us put quality at the centre of what we did. …
Your Quality Engineering will be richer if you know how Quality Engineering originated
It is useful to know that Quality Engineering originated in Japan in the 1950’s because it gives you long-term engineering memory. If a company has a long-term memory of previous engineers’ work, it can learn from it and build on it. This will enrich your Quality Engineering. Taguchi wrote that Quality Engineering originated with his …
Improve quality by learning from your process data – a review of “Twenty Things You Need to Know” by Donald J. Wheeler
Donald Wheeler has over forty years of experience in the study, practice and collaboration in data analysis. In “Twenty Things You Need to Know”, he shares this experience in the form of questions and answers. What are two mistakes in data analysis? Mistake one: “Interpreting the routine variation of noise as if it amounted to …
Help for you on your systems thinking journey – A review of “Thinking in Systems: A Primer” by Donella H. Meadows
“Thinking in Systems: Primer” is a great resource that can help you whether you are beginning, or have already started your systems thinking journey. Meadows helps us understand what a system is. “A system is an interconnected set of elements that is coherently organised in a way that achieves something”[1]. “Once we see the relationship …
Quality comes first – A review of “Deming’s Road to Continual Improvement” by William W. Scherkenbach
William Sherkenbach was Corporate Director of Total Quality Planning and Statistical Methods at Ford Motors and Group Director Process Improvement at General Motors. He wrote that “both of these great companies are better because their journey included Dr. W. Edwards Deming”[1]. In this book, Sherkenbach explains “how to operationalize the Deming philosophy in business, government …
Collaborative customer-focused systems thinking – a review of Sys-Tao: Western Logic – Eastern Flow by Bob Browne
In this book, Bob Browne recounts how he drew on ideas from both the East and the West, including the philosophies of W. Edwards Deming and Eli Goldratt, to make the Great Plains Coca-Cola Bottling Company a success. In 1980, Bob Browne, with the help of a few others, acquired the Great Plains Coca-Cola Bottling …
We can learn so much from how AI got here – A review of Rebels of Reason by John Willis with Derek Lewis
Much like the aliens in the sci-fi movie Arrival, AI has now arrived. Rebels of Reason tells us how AI arrived, and in doing so, provides us with a deeper understanding of AI. “We learn how foundational ideas have been refined over time, informing the rapid technological advances of our era”[1]. AI has been developed …
Is the job market for testers over a century out of date?
Testers are building their careers in a job market that many experience as difficult. Our ancestors from the early years of the twentieth century would have recognised today’s job market. One of my relatives has researched the family tree. He found that when he researched individuals, they had different jobs each time they appeared in …
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Learning from winners
When we are testing it helps to be aware of the perspectives of people who work in other fields within IT. I attended an audience with the 2024 British Computer Society Lovelace and Society Medal winners. It was great to hear talks from the medal winners and to network at the event. Listening to the …
Dear Software Testing
This weekend, I saw a play that showed a manager driving out fear to lead his team to success. The play was ‘Dear England’ and dramatised Gareth Southgate’s term as manager of the England men’s soccer team. The play shows Southgate using psychology. He hired the psychologist Dr Pippa Grange to be Head of People …
Exploring Systems Thinking
Systems thinking is an important part of a tester’s skill set. I really enjoyed discussing systems thinking on the Ministry of Testing’s Testing Planet with Simon Tomes, Sarah Byng and Rachel Kibler. It was great to learn from everyone on the broadcast. Thank you, Ministry of Testing, for inviting me to talk on Testing Planet …
Thank you software testing.
I have been a software testing professional since 1998 and am now changing my employment type on LinkedIn to “Mostly retired”. I saw that Dot Graham had set her employment type to “Mostly retired”, and it feels appropriate for me, too. I have retired, mostly. Software testing has been my second career. It has been …
We need cooperation between testers and developers
Sometimes there can be competition between testers and developers. Cooperation between testers and developers is better for the company and the customer. “A system must have an aim”[1]. A company is a system and so has an aim. Testers and developers are components of the company’s system and so share the company’s aim. “The obligations …
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There are advantages to using the API to tear down automated end-to-end tests
When I automate a test I create a clean starting position for each test so that the automated tests can run concurrently. “The establishment of a known-good starting position for the test before it is run, and its re-establishment at its conclusion, is vital to avoid cross-test dependencies”[1]. Re-establishing the start position of the test …
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