Test from theTop

Ready to Test

I'm Ross Radford and I love software testing.
My new online course Ready to Test for software managers is your fast first-step toward knowing who to hire, and how to talk to your team about testing.

Why am I doing this?

We need to talk more about Quality in the software industry.  So much of the process ensuring quality outcomes is tied up in opaque technical details, and the high level strategy just doesn't bubble up to leadership.

My course Ready to Test will transform you from total beginner to test aware leader in an hour or less.

Leaders need a distilled, concise primer on testing so they can make decisions on policy and resources. I've done the hard work for you, and made it fast and easy to learn.

I've been writing software professionally for more than a decade, and every single line of code was tested.  Code gets tested no matter what.  Either manually by yourself, manually by your customers (worst case) or with automated tests.

I've worked on products with millions of daily users, and I've worked on small projects that barely saw the light of day.  I've designed and implemented internal company applications with a small but absolutely mission critical user base. All needed testing.

Some of my first professional work was automated testing.  I love it! (and I realize how geeky that sounds).  The fact is testing makes software development easier and faster.  It's a great way for me to support my team, who just want to build great things.

How can we increase quality in the products we build?  Testing can show the presence but not the absence of bugs.  We can write tests all day long, strive for 100% coverage, (and never achieve it), and there will still be bugs, always.

Software is a moving target, and we need constantly evolving tools and process to test it.  Simply understanding how to measure coverage is critical to testing outcomes.  By the end of my course you will know:

As a young junior software engineer I dreamed of talking to my executive team and direct manager about testing.  I knew they where on my side, they were asking for tests!  But the jargon, complexity and evolving best practices of the software word are a real challenge to communicate from an individual contributor level.  Almost like a translator was needed.

As merely a single voice in my organization, I understood it's hard to effect policy upward.  All my peers share that frustration!

However, not all engineers are aware of, or have experience with automated testing. To an individual engineer, they might never have taken the time to learn the benefits. It can seem like a distraction, or even a point of pride. Surely MY code never has bugs!. (It does). Senior devleopers know the benefits of testing and work to leverage them.

That's the engineer's perspective, but what about Managers?  Smart leaders know it's critical to hire the right people.

The truth is that hiring the *wrong* people is an expensive mistake that is hard to correct.

A misspent salary, sure, but the negative productivity effect on the team overall can be devastating and leave a legacy of bad will long after the bad hire is corrected.

Think long term value.  Hiring the right testing experts is crucial.  Software engineers are the obvious target, but don't overlook project managers, scrum masters, user acceptance engineers, or even manual testers if you need them.

Let me help you succeed hiring testers.  The value of good hiring decisions pays off hugely over time.  This fact alone justifies the cost of the course.

   

Ready to Test - Click here to sign up!

For more on software testing in depth, check out my other websites below.