Grand Rapids Testers May Meeting
May 8, 2012
Tester Training!
Cool things we're chatting about before the meeting actually starts -
Cool tools that are worth a look - Rapid Reporter - http://testing.gershon.info/reporter/
And Away We GO!!!!!!!!!!!
Hmmm - OK - since there were FOUR of us, we went downstairs to SanChez to talk and nosh since people were kinda hungry - something about dinner time and coming straight from work (or Traverse City) - and we lost internet access... so catching up...
Conferences -
STAR *;
CAST - Conference for the Association of Software Testing - http://www.associationforsoftwaretesting.org/conference/cast-2012/ ;
PNSQC - Pacific Northwest Software Quality Conference - http://www.pnsqc.org/2012-conference ;
STPCon - Software Test Professionals Conference - http://www.softwaretestpro.com/default.aspx ;
etc., etc.,
Websites/Blogs –
Michael Bolton http://www.developsense.com/blog/
James Bach http://www.satisfice.com/blog/
Bret Petticord http://testingwithvision.com/
Johanna Rothman http://www.jrothman.com/blogs/
Markus Gartner http://www.shino.de/
Phil Kirkham http://expectedresults.blogspot.com/
Selena Delesie http://www.selenadelesie.com/
Jamws Whittacker http://blogs.msdn.com/b/jw_on_tech/
Karen Johnson http://karennicolejohnson.com/blog/
Wade Wachs http://www.wadewachs.com/
Alan Page http://angryweasel.com/blog/
Fiona Charles http://quality-intelligence.blogspot.com/
Or, well - go here: http://www.softwarequalityconnection.com/2011/09/29-testers-to-follow-on-twitter/
Online Forums / Magazines -
SQAForums – http://www.sqaforums.com/ubbthreads.php
TechTarget (warning - this is a pay site) http://searchsoftwarequality.techtarget.com/
StackOverflow – http://stackoverflow.com/
Training sources -
AST BBST – http://www.associationforsoftwaretesting.org/training/courses/
Certifications – well – they may help but…
Do they give us a standard definition across all of them?
What is being learned?
Greg – The one thing that can be said is that it gives people who don’t have a vocabulary at hand, a set of terms available for use.
We can agree on terms only if we have a common understanding -
Wade –
How do we get people atarted? Where do we find reliable sources?
- Reach out and find idea sources –
- You don’t need to AGREE with those sources
- Studying the ideas around what people say can help us re-examine our views on testing – what do we really believe, think – and why.
Linda & Wade both talked about how hard it was to motivate people to learn more about testing on their own (reading books, magazines, blogs, etc.,) This is a challenge for passionate testers when working with people who look at this as "just a job."