👋 Welcome to February’s issue of MoT Monthly. Once a month we share a round-up of the ever-expanding MoTaverse. We recommend exploring the following links. Let’s go! 🚀
🆙 Product and Community updates
Our small team has been working hard to continuously be shipping, here’s what we’ve been working on:
- Releasing new modules for STEC, Module 7 is live!
- We launched a glossary, and added a whole bunch of terms that you can also add to yourself.
- We’ve been improving our MoT Profies with new content pieces now being added automatically to help build up your portfolio.
- Badges are here, have you gotten any yet? We’re just getting started and have new ones dropping regularly.
- In addition to our Community Certificates, community contributions can now lead to an Above & Beyond badge.
- We’re doing the work to remove links to X. They are no longer allowed on our platform and we have removed the option to have them on MoT Profiles.
- Our localised meetups are growing, over 500 people across the world gathered in January and two new meetups groups have been started just in the past week. Is there one near you?
- We’ve been onboarding companies onto our Partner Program.
- Rosie Sherry soft launched a newsletter — Letters from the CEO.
- Introducing the 2025 Ministry of Testing Ambassadors. 🤩
🗓️ Join these events
New events are always added, so keep checking the events page for up-to-date info.
- This Week in Testing Fri 7 Feb 🎙️
- Topic Speed Up, Scale Up: Smarter Test Management with AI & Kualitee! Wed 12 Feb
- Berlin Meetup Thu 13 Feb 🇩🇪
- Coventry Meetup Thu 13 Feb 🇬🇧
- This Week in Testing Fri 14 Feb 🎙️
- Manila Meetup Thu 18 Feb 🇵🇭
- Athens Meetup Tue 25 Feb 🇬🇷
- Episode Nine: Exploring Systems Thinking Thu 27 Feb 🪐
- What Sets a Top API Testing Solution Apart? Thu 27 Feb
- Munich Meetup Wed 5 Mar 🇩🇪
- Newcastle Meetup Mon 10 Mar 🇬🇧
- SeleniumConf & AppiumConf Valencia 2025 Wed 26 Mar 🇪🇸
- Episode Ten: Exploring Quality Coaching Thu 27 Mar 🪐
- TestBash Brighton 2025 Wed 1–Thu 2 Oct 🤩
All recorded events are added to the Ministry of Testing catalogue. Professional members have access to the entire catalogue of learning material. 🤩
🥞 Collections
- AI & Automation
- Career Toolkit
- Building Effective Streams of Communication
- The Community's Guide to Systems Thinking
- Regression Testing
- Interviews, Resume, CVs
- The Community's Guide to Quality Engineering
📊 Testing trends
- Do you proactively read pull requests?
- Testing Trends Weekly — Issue 1
- Testing Trends Weekly — Issue 2
- As part of the interview process, do you ask software testers to do a test?
- The community writing trend towards quality engineering, continuous quality and holistic testing
- Open to Work: November and December 2024
- Testing Trends Weekly — Issue 3
🎓 Certifications
The MoT Software Testing Essentials Certificate (STEC) gives junior testers confidence, community and connections. A true alternative to ISTQB. It’s time to approach learning about testing differently.
The Software Testing Essentials Certification from Ministry of Testing is a modern introduction to the world of testing software. It features important lessons from many experts from within the software testing industry.
🖼️ Memes and memories
Photo memories and memes create history and stories.
Help expand the MoTaverse. Add one today.
🎓 Articles
- Metamorphic and adversarial strategies for testing AI systems by Amruta Pande
- Testing software smarter, not harder: the shift-down strategy by Manish Saini
- From software tester to interviewer: Lessons from my first interview process by Kelly Kenyon
Express yourself through writing. Share your thoughts, ideas and stories with the community via an MoT article. Share an idea for an article. 📝
🎤 Talks
- Breaking stereotypes: who is testing and why it matters with Isabel Evans
- Building open source agents for software testing with Robin Gupta
- What is Quality Engineering? with Stuart Thomas
- Cosmic conversation: quality engineering models & systems with Anne-Marie Charrett and Niko Mangahas
- Why does Quality Engineering matter? with Stuart Thomas
Do you have a talk idea? Submit one today. If something doesn’t fit our current events schedule we can record it with you and publish it on the MoT site.
🔥 Hot topics
Join the conversation on The Club, our dedicated forum for all testing, QA and Quality Engineering professionals.
- 📚 Y is for […]
- Email verification
- M is for MoTaverse
- Has the AI bubble burst?
- MoT banning of links to X
- Move career into AI testing
- Exploring What if Questions
- Manual to automation testing
- Deal with burnout as a solo tester
- What are the definitions of a test?
- Capturing what has been automated
- What do you think of OpenAI’s Operator?
- What are the risks of over-relying on tools?
- Should I use disabled buttons on my website?
- Is your current role remote, hybrid or in office?
- SDETs are Devs and Testers, so what is a QE?
- Weekly Reflection: What questions would you pose?
- How is a Quality Engineer different from a Test Engineer?
- Is the quality and testing market showing signs of recovery?
- Help! What is the difference between a Test Strategy and Test Plan?
- When working with developers, how do you keep those relationships healthy?
- What is your companies DR (Disaster Recovery) strategy if Github goes down?
- Have we reached peak LinkedIn for QA/Tester/Quality Engineering job seekers?
- How widely are the ISO 29119 standards and the TMMi Framework used in your day to day activities?
📚 Glossary updates
Glossary definitions that you can add to. Expand the following and many more.
- Continuous Quality
- Systems thinking
- System mapping
- Holistic thinking
- Manual testing
- Pull requests
- Zooming
- Test
🎡 Continuous Call for Contributions
Contributing to the testing community is a positive way to support your career and the careers of others. Submit an idea today. Learn how to earn a community star and certificate: The MoTaverse Community Algorithm.
🤝 Let's connect
We're committed to connecting testers no matter what challenges the world brings us. Here are the safe and inspiring spaces we provide and curate for the software testing, QA and quality engineering people: MoT Slack, Threads, Bluesky, LinkedIn, Instagram, The Club, TikTok and Mastodon.
Join the MoT Slack to chat with the community and the MoT team. Log into My MoT, select "My Slack" and "Join MoT Slack". It’s a great way to connect with fellow professionals.
🎁 Recommend the Scholarship Fund
Ministry of Testing gifted our first scholarship in 2013. Since then, we've committed to matching all funds raised and donated by the community. Anyone can apply for our scholarship fund, which can be used towards a Professional Membership, Certification, or TestBash Conference. Know someone who would benefit? Share the scholarship page and encourage them to apply.
🧭 Boundary test how far you can take your career
What's Ministry of Testing Professional Membership all about? A look inside at how we support the software testing, QA and quality engineering industry. Today is a good day to upgrade your Professional Membership. Available for individuals or teams. 👍
♾️ Simplicity with Unlimited Membership
A lot is going on at Ministry of Testing and our goal is to make it as easy as possible for you to access everything we do. We’ve seen how much of a stumbling block getting sign-off for budgets can be. To address this we’ve packaged everything up into one annual, much-reduced price and Unlimited membership. What do we mean by ‘everything’?
- Everything included in your professional membership plus
- Attend any TestBash
- Get certified with any of our 3 Test Automation Certification Courses
- Be the first to access and get certified with our Software Testing Essentials Certificate
- Any certification, event or TestBash we launch in the future.
That’s over £3,000 in value for just £1,499 (+ tax) a year. Go Unlimited. ♾️
👋 That’s all for now. Have a good month and we’ll see you around the MoTaverse.
