SWTC Cambridge - Ask us anything!

hank you all for attending the final session from SWTC Cambridge 2018/19. We hope you enjoyed the meetup, thanks to all of you that contributed questions and many thanks to Dave, Neil, James, and Alison for joining us up front to contribute to the answers on the evening. Also a huge thanks again to DisplayLink for hosting us.

Below are the questions that were asked during the evening and links to some of the references made in the answers.

How was your experience as a SWTC mentor?

Which SWTC session was most revealing or surprising?

What was you favourite SWTC session?

I’m new to the software testing world, what advise would you give?

Ministry of Testing DOJO

Are test certifications key for being a tester? / Qualifications for testers?

Rapid Software Testing

Any tips or applications best to test Accessibility (websites and software)?

W3C Standards

What’s the worst thing you can do / have done as a tester?

Does Swiss-German pop music make you a better tester?

Testers Island Discs with Karo!

What tips do you have for when a developer doesn’t take pass-backs / feedback well?

What is the ideal QA / Dev ratio?

What is your top tip for being a combined developer-tester?

What are Oracles & Heuristics?

Cheat Sheet

James Bach

Mary had a little lamb

UX Improvements - Any suggestions to prepare for this?

What are the biggest challenges as a mentor?

Who should we follow on twitter?

@testobsessed Elisabeth Hendrickson

@michaelbolton Michael Bolton

Unfortunately, we ran out of time and we did not get around to answering the following questions:

Who wouldn’t you want to work for as a tester?

Who inspires you?

What is your take away and lessons learned as an organiser from one year of Cambridge SWTC?

What do you think about having the same interview process for software and test engineers?

What business drivers lead you to hire an employee who is only a tester?

What is your view on QE Transit?

Test Automation - can you provide a quick summary of that meetup?

Best ways to avoid project feature blindness?

Reasons for QA to be considered for sizing a story?

What are the quality criteria for torpedos?

How do you balance speed and quality?

Please feel free to post answers of your own to any of them (don’t forget to quote the question you are answering).

Look out for forthcoming announcements on the new series soon!

Here’s a few links to things that I mentioned:

Black Box Software Testing courses (Association of Software Testing)

The Art of Giving and Receiving Feedback

The assertiveness training my team at Linguamatics did.

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And some more links mentioned during the evening:

I’m new to the software testing world, what advise would you give?

Ministry of Testing has rss feeds on different topics - blogposts, podcasts, events - you can sign up here: Ministry of Testing Newsletter | Ministry of Testing

Any tips or applications best to test Accessibility (websites and software)?

Advice from the UK Home Office, e.g. do’s and don’ts: Dos and don'ts on designing for accessibility - Accessibility in government

Resources on accessibility on the Dojo: https://www.ministryoftesting.com/search?utf8=âś“&q=accessibility

What are Oracles & Heuristics?

We’ve covered some in our session on Designing Tests, have a look through the links there:

Who should we follow on twitter?

Rich Rogers has lists,
For twitter: Who should I follow on Twitter? – richrtesting
For blogs: Which blogs should I read? – richrtesting
For books and resources: Which blogs should I read? – richrtesting

Enjoy!
karo