Philippa Jennings

Do we think this is really the salary on offer here ... it seems worryingly low for a lead qa! Why do companies think it's okay to pay such low salaries for quality and testing experts? Let alone for someone you want to manage others and responsible for quality processes etc 🤔🫣

@FriendlyTester We decided today was the day for a glass or several and found ourselves at our local needing to top up with more 😂

@QualityPip I had Test Card, only had time for one, was just popping in with Finlay for a deserved refreshment after taking him up a hill!

Love it when the beer names mean I don't have to make a decision

@TesterFromLeic Aha I did wonder how you had written so much ... I figured you were just special 🤪😉😀

@QualityPip I pay for Twitter/X but I haven't done the same over on LinkedIn yet. I'm going to be honest. I enjoy the increased character limit 😇

I've been thinking about social media quite a lot lately. It came to a head last month with a wonderful post* from Thierry (btw if you're in tech and not following Thierry on LinkedIn, I recommend you fix that ASAP!). It resonated with me because: - I was also lamenting pre-takeover Twitter - I wasn't exactly sure what I was missing - I was surprised at how much time I was spending on LinkedIn because it seemed... cool** What helped me figure this out was a chat with my pal @christovskia. Chris pointed out that on Twitter, he didn't have to think too hard about what things he wanted to talk about. While he predominantly tweeted about testing with other testing peers (see what I did there, Chris?***), that wasn't 𝙖𝙡𝙡 he tweeted about. He put it like this: "I could be my whole self on Twitter." Oooooooh boy! Nailed it 🎯 That's what was bugging me. I don't have anywhere I can engage with people on allTheThings. I joined because of Software Testing Twitter, but I stayed because of... - Content Creation Twitter (which turned out to be YouTube Twitter, Copywriting Twitter, Podcast Twitter, and more!) - Coaching Twitter - F1 Twitter - Liverpool FC Twitter - Money Twitter (which turned out to be Solopreneur Twitter, Entrepreneurship Twitter, Investment Twitter, Property Twitter, Online Biz Twitter, and more!) - Software Development Twitter (which led me to Cybersecurity Twitter, Systems Thinking Twitter, Design Twitter, Public Speaking Twitter and more!) - Old-school Hip-Hop Twitter ...and I could go on (but I've been doing enough "going on" in this post already 😅! Please hang in there 🙏🏾) That presented a new dilemma. What do I do about it?! I don't know about you, but I feel like LinkedIn is 𝙉𝙊𝙏 the place to talk about anyOrAllOfTheThings and I'm mostly ok with that i.e. there's nooooooo way I'm suggesting we turn LinkedIn into another Twitter, Facebook, Reddit or anything else (Bloody hell 😳). I have at least two options as I see it: - Be more proactive on this post post-Takeover Twitter/X and make new friends - Post about more topics I'm interested in here on LinkedIn The answer is clear. Both! So what does that mean going forward? Twitter/X: I need to remember the social part of social media and get more involved again. There are still people I can vibe with. I just need to be more... sociable. LinkedIn: You can expect my usual software quality and coaching posts with a light sprinkling of topics like copywriting and entrepreneurship too. A tasty garnish if you will. And that's that. Thanks for attending my TED talk 😅 * Go and read Thierry's post that got me thinking about all this in the first place! I'll post a link below. ** That last bullet isn't something I thought I'd ever say 🤯 *** Chris is a co-host of the @testingpeers podcast and co-organiser of PeersCon, a new and excellent Software Testing Conference. Now you see what I did there too I hope 😊

My dear Developers, My dear Software Engineers, It's part of your job to explain to the business/product/company that making the new feature takes time. It's part of your job to explain that you must apply some code quality and software engineering best practices (writing tests, etc.) If you don't, if you accept the pressure you can receive from them to deliver as quickly as possible and deliver a piece of software that is impossible to maintain because you bypassed all the best practices (no tests, etc.), THAT IS YOUR FAULT! It's not the fault of the business/product/company. And once the unmaintainable software costs so much to barely be maintainable and barely evolveable, once everyone is too scared to touch it, once the complexity is so big that each time you make a change you introduce a bug in prod, they will blame YOU! And they will be right! That's part of their job to defend their constraints, which can be time, budget, etc. And that's part of your job to defend your engineering constraints! You need to find a common ground between all the company constraints, engineering constraints being part of it. We can't only accept theirs and ditch ours. By maintaining some software quality, you'll maintain a healthy software, a healthy delivery pace over a long period of time (years), and a healthy quality of life in your job. Thank you ❤️

@FriendlyTester That sounds about right ... the greed of Apple stealing from Android 😂

Today I learnt that if you plug your Android phone into your MacBook and approve it as a device, your MacBook will charge FROM your phone! Now I have 10% left for the flight on my phone 😥 I've changed this setting to stop it happening again, who decided this was a good idea!

How many development environments do most people have ... 3 e.g. dev, qa and preprod OR 2 e.g. dev and qa OR any other numbers and combinations? What benefits or problems do you see with the combinations?

What does one do if you've just started a job, then go on a permitted holiday, just to return and be really poorly? Sat in A&E for last 8 hours already, and not expecting to go home for another 2+ hours ... but terrified to call in sick as I'm so new.

Today my squad lead said that she had let the team know before I started that it would still be everyone's responsibility to test as my role was more than just testing as it also encompasses quality + more!! Music to my ears ... I feel blessed to have such an wise squad lead!

@ministryoftest But ... it works on my machine 😂

B is for bugs! What else is B for?

Does anyone in the testing community network work in/with a conversational design team for a AI Web messaging product? I'm looking for connections to talk about testing strategy ideas etc 😁

@_lee_jensen Yes I agree - and so why are you putting a QA column into the workflow as if it comes at a certain stage of the lifecycle? Really what we're both saying is that there should be a massive QA umbrella that sits over the whole workflow from so we can bring our skills throughout.

@QualityPip If quality is low, than the problem is upstream! This is where you can improve the process, do a qa review of the requirements/design before devs start coding. You can also teach devs how to think like a tester! This should be how you advocate for quality!

Has anyone successfully managed to convince their team to get rid of that QA column on the board or not to put a QA column on the board at all? If so .. 1/2 #notthegatekeeper #continuoustesting #continuousquality #qualityadvocacy #qualitycoaching

@_gordongeorge Good question ... for me it's about ensuring quality and testing happens continuously and throughout and the QA is not seen as the gatekeeper or a bottleneck. Its about preventing bugs not hunting for them. It's about quality advocacy and coaching ... and pairing!

@QualityPip Out of interest, why would you want to remove the QA column?

@_lee_jensen I'm intrigued by your response ... why would you argue for it to be added?

@QualityPip If the QA/test column is missing, I'd be arguing for it to be added, which I've done before!

how do you capture your work now ... do you carry out your work alongside the devs whilst the ticket is "in progress" and assigned to the dev or do you have a process that requires the dev to include you in the peer review or something else?

Day 1 complete .... I finally received my laptop mid morning and then spent alot of the day trying to log on and get past all the authentication gubbins by mid afternoon. Made a start on the mandatory training 😀 .. now ready for Day 2 tomorrow 🥳

@testingpeers Please would someone be kind enough to send me the QR code for the conference feedback form .... my phone had died by the end and I couldn't get a scan 🥴