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Michael Bolton

Experience Report: mabl Trainer and runner, and related features

Screen shot from Mattermost while testing mabl

Warning: this is a long post. Introduction This is an experience report of attempting to perform a session of sympathetic survey and sanity testing, done in September 2021, with follow-up work October 13-15, 2021. The product being tested is mabl. My self-assigned charter was to perform survey testing of mabl, based on a performing a basic task with the product. The task was to automate a simple set of steps, … Read more

To Go Deep, Start Shallow

Here are two questions that testers ask me pretty frequently: How can I show management the value of testing? How can I get more time to test? Let’s start with the second question first. Do you feel overwhelmed by the product space you’ve been assigned to cover relative to the time you’ve been given? Are you concerned that you won’t have enough time to find problems that matter? As testers, … Read more

Alternatives to “Manual Testing”: Experiential, Interactive, Exploratory

This is an extension on a long Twitter thread from a while back that made its way to LinkedIn, but not to my blog. Update, 2022/12/07: James Bach and I have recently changed “attended” to “interactive”, to emphasize the tester’s direct interaction with the product that happens during so-called “manual” testing. “Interactive” is more evocative of what’s going on than “attended” is, but it’s also true the tester’s interaction might … Read more

Test with Brains or Bots

Fireside chat with Michael Bolton | QA TechTalks Community 0:10 / 55:43

Topic: Would you prefer to test with brains or bots? An interactive short talk & discussion about test with brains or bots or both with best practices, evidence, proofs, examples, and inputs. A weekly fireside chat series to share with the community.

Speaker: Michael Bolton I help people and organizations find product problems and solve testing problems quickly and expertly with Rapid Software Testing. developsense.com / rapid-software-testing.com https://www.linkedin.com/in/michael-b…

Takeaways:
1. Real-time examples
2. Tools & Techniques
3. Rapid Software Testing
4. Best practices and strategies
5. Advantages & disadvantages with manual and automation testing
6. Scope of testing in future

More details here: https://www.tech-talks.info/registration

Exact Instructions vs. Social Competence

An amusing video from a few years back has been making the rounds lately. Dad challenges the kids to write exact instructions to make a peanut butter and jelly sandwich, and Dad follows those instructions. The kids find the experience difficult and frustrating, because Dad interprets the “exact” instructions exactly—but differently from the way the kids intended. I’ll be here when you get back. Go ahead and watch it. Welcome … Read more

Testers: Focus on Problems

A tester writes: “I’m testing an API. It accepts various settings and parameters. I don’t know how to get access to these settings from the API itself, so I’m stuck with modifying them from the front end. Moreover, some responses to specific requests are long and complicated, so given that, I have no idea how to test it! Online examples of API testing tend to focus on checking the response’s … Read more

Unlimited Charges

I noticed something interesting while reviewing my credit card bills a couple of evenings ago: monthly charges for $9.99 from “Amazon Downloads”, going back several months. I buy a lot of e-books. I looked for receipts from Amazon in email. I found a bunch, but none from Amazon for $9.99. I never delete email receipts; I put all of them into a separate folder so that I can collate them … Read more

Tech Talk with Amit & Rinat – Episode 026 – Rapid Software Testing

Software is everywhere. And good quality software has become very important and sometimes even critical as well. But with rapid progress in development cycle, testers don’t often get enough time to test software. What if there is a better way to test software without compromising quality, which is more focused and which can be completed rapidly.

In this week’s #TechTalk, Amit and Rinat talk with Michael Bolton, co-author (with James Bach) of Rapid Software Testing (RST), about software testing, context driven testing, Rapid Software Testing, and a lot more!