Welcome
Why I started Test from the Top
I'll get right to the point. Testing is something every software leader must be aware of. Whether that's quality assurance or security testing, we can't ignore it. Small startup to huge global company, testing is equally important, if different in scale and concern.
So let me appreciate you for your interest in testing. I truly believe savvy leadership makes all our lives and work efforts better.
I love software testing. Yes, I realize that's weird.
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Hi, I'm Ross Radford. I grew up in Colorado, moved to Texas when I was twenty, and still enjoy the warm weather. I love technology, art, music and spicy food.
I have more than a decade of experience building software and leading teams who do. I've always been a computer nerd. My non-professional experience programming actually goes back much further to my teenage years modifying video games and building embarrassing fan websites for cartoons back in middle school. I still look back fondly on those old projects, but if you ask to see them I will politely decline.
I have more than a decade of experience building software and leading teams who do. I've always been a computer nerd. My non-professional experience programming actually goes back much further to my teenage years modifying video games and building embarrassing fan websites for cartoons back in middle school. I still look back fondly on those old projects, but if you ask to see them I will politely decline.
From the beginning, I was always testing my code, manually.
I'll never forget my first real job coding. The gig was building automated tests for a friend's large enterprise website project. That's when I realized testing could be automated. It was already evident that code for testing was just like any other code: it had bugs. It could break. It took a lot of time and effort to build.
Later, working for Experian as a full-stack senior engineer, I became absolutely fascinated with automated testing. I built (and still maintain) huge testing suites and integrated systems for test data management. I learned a lot of hard lessons about managing resources for testing, leading teams of test engineers, what works and what doesn't.
Nothing less than industry wide quality improvement is my goal.
I developed cutting edge strategies to improve testing efforts at my company, and wanted to share them with the world. For me, that world was other individual software engineers. I shared ideas with my friends and peers. I talked at conferences. The reaction was positive, but I kept hearing roadblocks when engineers described their work culture. Some were simply indifferent to testing, it wasn't taken seriously in their organization.
Managers, Directors, and other leaders approached me for advice on testing, and I knew there was an opportunity for a bigger contribution.
Make no mistake, you test every line of code you produce, either intentionally within your development pipeline (That's good!), or you let your clients and customers do it for you (This is terrible).
I knew I had to get through to managers and leaders with the higher level perspective of testing to make a real difference. Resource management, company culture, hiring. The ability for teams to leverage testing starts from the top.
The beautiful thing is front-line engineers are more than ready for leadership to let them loose on automated testing. Experienced leaders know this enthusiasm carries its own inherent risks. Keeping testing projects on the rails can be a new challenge, and my experience has brought me here, warning, perhaps even pleading with you to take testing seriously, and give it the careful consideration you bring to all your product development efforts.
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You're reading this because you care about software quality and security, to serve and delight customers, and guiding happy, productive engineering teams. Stay tuned. I have a lot more to share.
ross@testfromthetop.com