QA Innovation Blog Round-Up

We’ve learned a lot from the submissions to our 13-part blog series raising awareness about testing innovation within the QA community. Today we’re excited to announce Bonfire 2, with new features to connect teams and testers and foster collaboration, so now is a great time to take a look back at everything we’ve heard so far. You can find all the posts in this series under the QA Innovation tag.

We started with a recipe for innovation success from our own Andrew Prentice, QA lead at Atlassian. Andrew started with an idea in 2009 and took advantage of Friday nights at home with a toddler to create our own Atlassian Bonfire, released 1.0 in 2011. Read his full story in Making Bonfire Part I and Part II.

Connecting People: Development to QA

We know that no two agile teams are alike, but we do know they all need to test. I interviewed Andrew to ask just what advantages Bonfire provides for Scrum and Kanban teams, and in the process, I learned a bit more about why keeping devs and QA in constant communication is a good thing.

Catherine Powell circled us back to the connection between dev & QA with her post about finding testing efficiency through engineering efficiency, and Lanette Creamer addressed understanding the source of QA disagreements, which become more relevant as testers pair more closely with developers than with other testers.

Bug Investigation

Our own Penny Wyatt explored the QA engineer’s sixth sense, an intuition for spotting potential disasters, and offered some advice and guidelines for investigating bad smells. Richard Hale argued a sound case for why you should always Enter the Defect. Anne-Marie Charrett challenged us to take a step back and look at Oracles – the baseline or other indication that something was wrong, that lead to the discovery of a particular bug. We rounded out bug investigation with Michael Larsen’s Interviewing the Product.

Beyond the Individual Tester

A few bloggers took a look at testing teams and industry trends. First Mark Hrynczak gave us a 13 step guide to learn and perfect security testing within your organization; later, Kieran Williams looked at the step above the individual with 10 tips for test managers. Bryce Day argued the difference between Testing and Quality, and why we should throw most of the analysis out the window and focus solely on Risk. Paul Gerrard gave us Parts I and II of his take on an industry-wide methodological shift in the Redistribution of Testing, and Craig Smith started his two-part series on the changing skillet of a tester and how to get to ‘Cool’ faster.

We’ve learned a ton over the past few months, most importantly that the QA space is full of new approaches and ideas, with innovation bubbling from every corner.

Bonfire 2 fosters collaboration around testing, so we’ll have lots more to explore in the world of testing, but for now we’d like to know:

How do you test?

Join the conversation – share your testing story in a comment below!

Series Summary

Making Bonfire Part I and Part II, Andrew Prentice
The only way to keep bugs out of your software, Christina Bang
Testing and Bad Smells: When to Investigate Potential Bugs, Penny Wyatt
Interviewing the Product: Making Testing More Flexible, Michael Larsen
13 Steps to Learn & Perfect Security Testing in your Org, Mark Hrynczak
Finding the Right Foot: Testing Efficiency Through Engineering Efficiency, Catherine Powell
On the Redistribution of Testing Part I and Part II, Paul Gerrard
Enter the Defect: When in Doubt, Report the Bug, Richard Hale
When 4/5 Dentists agree, Why Do 4/5 Testers Disagree? Lanette Creamer
Risk: a four letter word for quality management? Bryce Day
The Changing Skillset of a Tester and Increasing the Speed to Cool, Craig Smith
10 Top Tips for Test Managers, Kieran Williams
Revealing Oracles, Anne-Marie Charett