Michael Bolton is a consulting software tester and testing teacher who helps people to solve testing problems that they didn’t realize they could solve. In 2006, he became co-creator (with creator James Bach) of Rapid Software Testing (RST), a methodology and mindset for testing software expertly and credibly in uncertain conditions and under extreme time pressure. Since then, he has flown over a million miles to teach RST in 35 countries on six continents.
Michael has over 30 years of experience testing, developing, managing, and writing about software. For over 20 years, he has led DevelopSense, a Toronto-based testing and development consultancy. Prior to that, he was with Quarterdeck Corporation for eight years, during which he managed the company’s flagship products and directed project and testing teams in-house and around the world.
Co-author, Rapid Software Testing
Co-creator (with creator James Bach) of Rapid Software Testing, a methodology of testing that focuses on the skill and the mindset of the individual tester to perform excellent testing more quickly and less expensively, in a way that stands up to scrutiny.
Teacher
- twenty years of teaching Rapid Software Testing courses and workshops on six continents and online
- four years of prior experience teaching software testing techniques with author Ross Collard
- specialized tutorials and workshops at conferences around the world
Consultant
Over 20 years of experience providing training and consulting services to companies involved in a wide variety of software and Web development projects including
- large banking organizations
- big retail firms
- mass-market commercial software
- telecommunications
- networking
- utility software companies
- startups
- boutique service shops
Practitioner
Practical experience in all aspects of software development work, including
- specification
- programming
- testing
- configuration management
- technical support
- marketing communications
- training
- technical writing
- end-user documentation
Writer
- Contributing Author, Agile Testing (Crispin and Gregory)
- Contributing Author, “An Analysis of Costs in Software Testing”, How To Reduce the Cost of Software Testing (Heusser and Kulkarni, ed.)
- Contributing Author, “It’s All Relative”, The Gift of Time (Fiona Charles, ed.)
- Writer and Columnist for Better Software Magazine, 2005-2011
- Technical documentation for a innovative, patented mathematical product
- End-user documentation for a commercial network analysis tool
- Technical documentation for a machine-learning-based optimization pipeline
Speaker
- respected and highly rated keynote and track speaker at more than 200 conferences on six continents over 20 years
- keynotes, tutorials, and/or presentations at EuroSTAR every year, 2007-2022
- keynotes, tutorials, and/or presentations at STAR East and/or STAR West every year 2006-2021
- presented company products as primary speaker at Comdex USA, Comdex Canada, Pacific Rim Computer Show, and other national and international trade shows
Conference and Community Organizer
- Conference Chair, EuroSTAR 2013
- Program Chair, Conference for the Association for Software Testing, 2008
- Program Chair, Toronto Association of System and Software Quality, 2005-2008
- Founder (with Fiona Charles) of the Toronto Workshops on Software Testing
Award Winner
- Winner of the inaugural CapGemini Award for Innovation at EuroSTAR 2008
- Winner of the Software Testing Luminary Award, Software Test Professionals Conference, 2016
Program Manager
- four years experience as program manager for a Quarterdeck, an innovative commercial software company, delivering eight major releases and ten maintenance releases which set the company’s highest standards for quality and timeliness. Products included
- QEMM-386 (which was, at its time, the best-selling software product in the world, per PC Magazine)
- DESQview / DESQview 386 / DESQview X
- Quarterdeck (later Norton) CleanSweep and other products
- repeatedly assigned to rescue troubled software projects late in development process, bringing them back on schedule to release
- co-ordinated first company releases of several externally-developed products
- directed internal product teams averaging twelve core members and up to thirty associated members, including subsidiary offices in Europe
- successfully managed relationships with outside development groups in external sites from Los Angeles to Israel
- principal author of company-wide product life cycle manuals and extensive technical documentation
Programmer
- author of VSS2CCM, a tool to migrate Visual SourceSafe version control databases to Continuus/CM, a configuration management product
- co-author of INTLAPI, a software library written in C++ to aid companies in rapid internationalization of existing code
- creator of front- and back-end database software for a recruiting agency