Eighteen months, 19 modules, and 59 amazing contributors later, the MoT Software Testing Essentials Certification is complete! Looking back, my favourite part has been seeing so many community m...

Does emphasis on formal test planning imply a lack of Continuous Delivery?

I use my saved prompts when working with Gen AI platforms, the results are more predictable and it saves me time.

Cassandra H. Leung helps you make your work, and your wins, more visible. Learn how to share your impact, highlight team success, and build a brag board at TestBash Brighton 2025, October 1–2.

About Me: 👋 I’m coming from: Munich, Germany My role is: Senior Quality Engineer I’d love to meet others who are into: UX, ethics, risk mitigation, sustainable working I'm coming to TestBash 20...

Can you find Cosmo the Space Duck on their real-life adventure?

For me, YAGNI is a great heuristic to help me stay focussed and optimise the work not done.For example, it can be very easy to get sucked into a task, like automating a workflow, and start thinking of all the variations you could automate, functions you could make reusable, and fancy frameworks you could explore.  But what are you trying to achieve right now, and what do you need in order to do that?  What's your minimum viable / valuable product in this situation?  If you don't need it now, how likely are you to need it in future?  YAGNI says you ain't gonna need it.  So don't spend time on it right now.  It's great to future-proof a little, and build something that's good to work with, but don't go putting on all the bells and whistles right now.  If you need it in future, you can get / do / create it in future.  For now, take things one step at a time, and get some feedback on what you already have.

Glue work is often work which is unloved, yet essential successful teams / projects.  While it's usually not large or innovative, glue work is a collection of smaller contributions which keep things running smoothly.Some examples include taking notes, noticing when someone has been missed from an important meeting invite and adding them, or making sure someone responds to an incoming enquiry in a timely manner.  Without this glue work, the team may waste time repeating discussions they've already had, have to postpone important decisions, or cause stakeholders or users to feel unheard or unhappy.One great irony of glue work, in my opinion, is that it often goes unappreciated, yet is a sign of leadership, maturity, and being a team player.  For this reason, it's a good idea to keep an eye on how much glue work you're doing, and what you're getting back from it, so as not to end up sacrificing your personal success and happiness for the sake of the team / project.For more information on glue work and how to deal with it, check out this talk from Tanya Reilly: https://www.noidea.dog/glue

aving joined my first Salesforce project just over six months ago, we’re now ready to consider automating the UI

In the context of software testing, I think of a specialist as someone who is the go-to person for a particular area / topic / technique, etc. A person who is often associated with something specific, because of the level of skill / experience they have in it. A specialist will typically be able to consult on, educate, and train people on the given topic.