Welcome to another episode of the Testing Peers. This episode is special to us for two reasons. Firstly, this is being released exactly a year since we released our first episode and it is humbling to see how far we have come in that year and how many of you have listened. Secondly, and more importantly for this episode, it’s Mental Health Awareness Week from 10th-14th May which means it felt like a good time to release an episode about our own experiences around Mental Health, specifically Burn...
May 09, 2021•27 min•Season 1Ep. 27
Thank you for joining us for another episode. On this episode, we are talking about our experiences of leading upwards and allowing our teams to lead us. This topic came from our good friend Beth Marshall who sent us a tweet asking for our thoughts on tips with leading our managers and other senior stakeholders. Before diving into the topic, Simon asks the peers what apps or technology has changed the way they all do things. Honourable mentions here for Last.Fm, Timehop, Strava, Apple Watches (S...
Apr 25, 2021•29 min•Season 1Ep. 26
Welcome to the 25th episode of the Testing Peers Podcast. Join Russell, David and Chris as we discuss the unexpected. After talking about unexpected or anti-climactic events in our lives, specifically food and movies, we look at how it applies to us in the workplace. Whether it is a colleague leaving unexpectedly (or even if it isn't a surprise), or being blindsided by surprising appraisals, changes to project scope, or team dynamic shift - we all have to deal with the unexpected. We share what ...
Apr 11, 2021•29 min•Season 1Ep. 25
Welcome to another episode of the Testing Peers. On this one, we are discussing how companies can attract the best talent to their testing roles. Before we dived into the main topic, David asked us to think of occasions where we had taken a punt (much like sometimes companies do with their hiring) and whether it paid off or not. It's fair to say, most of the scenarios covered by the peers ended in failure, including Simon's attempt to be the ultimate romantic, but we are saved by David's culinar...
Mar 28, 2021•31 min•Season 1Ep. 24
Welcome to episode 23 of the Testing Peers. This time we talk about reputation and brand. We cover what it is, why it matters and some tips to help you. This week we start off discussing Beth Marhshall's reputation audit template . A great tool for self reflection on your reputation. We move on to discuss how reputations can be a double edged sword that can help and hinder you. This leads us to share some of our experiences on our own reputation and our wider thoughts on brand. We conclude by sh...
Mar 14, 2021•30 min•Season 1Ep. 23
Welcome to episode 22 of the Testing Peers podcast. This week the Peers tackle exploratory testing. After the important check-in on David’s potato harvest, Simon asks us if our curiosity has ever led to us breaking anything – which eventually leads us to the main event. What do we mean by exploratory testing? How does it differ from ad-hoc testing? What skills are required? How can we tackle the KPI/Metrics conversation? Have we been exploratory testing without explicitly calling it that? The Pe...
Feb 28, 2021•30 min•Season 1Ep. 22
Welcome to episode 21 of the Testing Peers and thank you for sticking with us. What better topic to discuss for our Valentines Day release than our experiences of dealing with conflict? We are a three again for this episode with David's dulcet tones missing from the recording. So Simon, Russell and Chris do their best to fill the void. The peers start by discussing how they deal with arguments/disagreements generally in everyday life (and it seems like Russell and Simon deal in similar ways) bef...
Feb 14, 2021•34 min•Season 1Ep. 21
Welcome to episode 20 of the Testing Peers podcast. In this episode, the Peers discuss something that we all are confronted with in life - imposter syndrome. The Peers open by defining what we see imposter syndrome is and is not. Terms like 'feeling out of depth', 'shame', 'new pupil at school' are used and we can all resonate with them. We talk about our own experiences, both in starting new jobs and as attendees, or even speakers at conferences and meetups. The conversation moves on to how we,...
Jan 31, 2021•26 min•Season 1Ep. 20
Welcome to Testing Peers! Each New Year, many of us reflect on the year we've had and think about the year ahead of us. We make resolution for the items we want keep doing or change we want to make. It seems quite timely to be talking about retrospectives and sharing our thoughts and experience in this episode. There are many different contexts that a retrospective can be useful to not just for Scrum but agile, projects and life in general. At Testing Peers (virtual) HQ we love retrospectives. W...
Jan 17, 2021•30 min•Season 1Ep. 19
Happy new year and welcome to the first Testing Peers episode of 2021. Hopefully, you have all managed to enjoy the holiday season given the restrictions. In this episode, the Peers discuss one of Simon’s pet projects . We discuss the lack of testing being taught in Universities and how we as an industry can help to attract more people into testing roles. We also talk about what skills we should look for when hiring people into first testing roles. This leads us onto discussing a syllabus which ...
Jan 03, 2021•28 min•Season 1Ep. 18
In this the last episode of the Testing Peers podcast of 2020, join Festive Cheers with the Testing Peers for our special Christmas episode. In this special edition of the podcast, the Peers are joined by four friends of the podcast who kindly agreed to give up some of their time to join us for our recording. We were joined by Shey Crompton , Bruce , Beth Marshall and Dave Shorter. After we get to know each other discussing Christmas songs that we skip we get into the main event. RiskStorming Sa...
Dec 20, 2020•41 min•Season 1Ep. 17
Thank you for joining us again! We had the great pleasure of being asked to do a live recording of our podcast at the EuroSTAR conference this year. Due to the kind of world we are living in at present where everyone is working remotely, conferences are virtual and we are all socially distancing, we thought we would discuss the topic of this remote world we now find our selves in. Unfortunately, Simon and family had the unfortunate pleasure of a stomach bug on the day of recording, but the remai...
Dec 06, 2020•29 min•Season 1Ep. 16
Welcome to episode 15 of the Testing Peers Podcast. After getting over the initial disappointment of Russell not making this episode, the Peers talk about dealing with wider disappointments. We start with the disappointment of old films in retrospect, but eventually move on disappointments within testing. There are various forms of disappointment we face in our day-to-day roles. Sometimes we fear we've disappointed our customers, colleagues, our teams, our partner or our own leaders. As testers ...
Nov 22, 2020•32 min•Season 1Ep. 15
Welcome to episode 14 of the Testing Peers Podcast. This week, the Peers have new mics and are a trio for the first time. We will be working out in the coming weeks how to best configure these, any feedback on this is always welcome. Great thanks again to our sponsor Saffron QA for enabling us to work on these audio improvements - more details about Saffron QA can be found in the footer of this post . We tackle the age old baggage that is, defect management, or perhaps bugs or issues, or whateve...
Nov 08, 2020•28 min•Season 1Ep. 14
In this episode, the Peers talk about their journey of personal development. We all come from varied backgrounds into testing so as you can imagine, the learnings paths we take to get where we are today are just as different. When talking about how we developed, it became clear the importance of having people around to aid us, support us and guide us to where we want to be. Russell discusses how his learning was impacted by reporting to a DBA and Simon talks about needing that mentor to help him...
Oct 25, 2020•26 min•Season 1Ep. 13
Welcome to episode 12 of the Testing Peers Podcast. This time the Peers are using a Donna Summer reference for all you music fans to discus when is enough testing enough. The question that drives many a test discussion be it with a stakeholder or amongst testers, when is enough testing enough? As we meander to our discussions you'll find out a little insight into the Peers competitiveness at family games. Are we all win at all costs people or more meh whatever. You'll have to listen to find out!...
Oct 11, 2020•33 min•Season 1Ep. 12
Welcome to episode 11 of the Testing Peers Podcast. This time the Peers are following on from episodes 6 and 8, where we covered CVs and preparing for interviews with our Patreon voted topic of Telephone Interviews. Patreon you say? Why yes, we have a Patreon available at https://patreon.com/testingpeers If you like what we do and want to support us, then please do visit and consider becoming a Testing Peers Patron. Anyway, back to the episode at hand. The Peers touch on experiences as interview...
Sep 28, 2020•31 min•Season 1Ep. 11
Welcome to episode 10. We’ve made it to double figures! Thank you to everyone who has downloaded one or more of our earlier episodes and given us the encouragement to keep this going. In this episode, the Peers talk about our thoughts on what testing may be like in 10 years time. What will the tech world look like? How will testers have evolved? Will we still be debating whether manual testing is needed? We also cover what we as leaders will need to do to enable our teams to progress and stay re...
Sep 13, 2020•34 min•Season 1Ep. 10
Welcome to episode 9 of the Testing Peers podcast. In this episode, we talk about passion. This is a topic that was inspired by a post by Philip Wong in the Podcasters Club in Ministry of Testing’s The Club: https://club.ministryoftesting.com/t/introduce-your-podcast/40932/5?u=christovskia “Passion was a big word that was mentioned in the episode. For a tester like me who doesn’t know where they are headed yet, what if you don’t know your ‘passion’? Can it be ‘built’ up? I don’t know about you, ...
Aug 30, 2020•28 min•Season 1Ep. 9
Welcome to episode eight of the Testing Peers podcast. This week, the Peers are following on from our CV episode ( Podcast Episode 6 – CVs ) with a discussion around interviews. Tips, techniques, pet peeves and of course, David's potato harvest. We discuss how to prepare for an interview as both an interviewer and an interviewee, how we use CVs and research the company. Bias and objectivity are covered, and the struggles around that. Peeves covered include salary conversations and communication ...
Aug 16, 2020•29 min•Season 1Ep. 8
Welcome to episode 7 of the Testing Peers Podcast. Yes, we made it to 7 episodes! This week the peers are going to reflect a little on who initially inspired our testing journeys and also give you an insight into some of the books that have helped us on our way. As a group of peers, we can all say it was a talk or an event that inspired us to be more engaged in testing. Hearing someone passionate about a subject talk and share their knowledge ignited a desire in us to learn more. Right now more ...
Aug 02, 2020•21 min•Season 1Ep. 7
Welcome to episode six of the Testing Peers Podcast. This week the peers are talking CVs. In a time where lots of people are finding themselves looking for new roles, we thought it might be a great time to discuss CVs. We summarised our tops tips on our blog - testingpeers.com Let us know your thoughts on CVs, what works or doesn't work when your sifting CV's. Send us your feedback via email to contactus@testingpeers.com or @TestingPeers on Twitter. NOTE: After Chris so boldly claimed that he ha...
Jul 19, 2020•35 min•Season 1Ep. 6
Welcome to episode five of the Testing Peers Podcast, we're practically old hat at this podcasting malarky now. Hope you are still enjoying our random wittering with each other. In this episode, we dive into the topic of reporting your testing, the various forms that may exist in, corporate or regulatory demands on how you should report your results, and what benefits these reports provide to you as a test leader and also to the wider business. In many respects, articulating your testing results...
Jul 05, 2020•24 min•Season 1Ep. 5
Welcome to episode four of the Testing Peers Podcast. This week we the peers are talking Cognitive Bias. We find cognitive bias everywhere, the awareness of our own biases and challenging ourselves on those biases are really important. We discuss cognitive biases that we have encountered in the testing world, biases that we have and the power of influential language projecting biases. This is a topic close to our hearts, and one that is so important to continue to discuss and challenge each othe...
Jun 21, 2020•36 min•Season 1Ep. 4
For episode three, the Peers talk about their experiences around empowering teams, what has worked and what didn't. We'd love you to get in touch, so email us at contactus@testingpeers.com or reach out to us on Twitter @testingpeers Support the show
Jun 07, 2020•21 min•Season 1Ep. 3
This time around the Peers talk about out positive and negative experiences on 1 to 1s and what has shaped the way we do them as leaders. As you’ll hear from the discussion, we all have different experiences. We also discuss Simon's shirt choice. Is it Pink or Brown? Check the image out on our twitter! Support the show
May 25, 2020•21 min•Season 1Ep. 2
Thursday July 18th 2019 is a significant date in the short history of the Testing Peers. Simon had finally convinced Russell, David and Chris to explore the possibility of podcasting together, and this was when the #testinpeerspodcast channel started in our Slack group. We were more than half a year into our joined-up adventure and our output had so far provided us with a supportive and accountable peer group, but no output that would be visible to many. There was a hunger to do more, my initial...
May 10, 2020•24 min•Season 1Ep. 1
