SShine Bright Like a Diamond
Very excited to be working with the Sketch team starting this week. Had a great time with some of the folks attending WWDC and LayerConf.
They do testing and automation for work. They do web development for fun. They also do technical program management because it needs to be done. They love systems thinking and operations processes. They cut their teeth in the DIY world and got into tech through their fascination with the do-it-yourself nature of open source. They believe in co-mentorship, skill-sharing, and the criticality of mutual aid. Residing in Portland, OR, and working remote every day. You can reach out to them at shereemaria@gmail.com
They have a page to show you what they've been up to lately.
They maintain a page of current and recent readings and books that might interest you as they have interested them.
They have a for your professional convenience. You can hire them through NiceCatch.co
They maintain a page because they use a lot of things and would like to share them with you.
This is their journal where they log things they were doing and thinking during their work, on the clock or off.
Very excited to be working with the Sketch team starting this week. Had a great time with some of the folks attending WWDC and LayerConf.
Looking for some local security focused conferences and found DefendCon is happening in Seattle on Sept 26-27, 2019! They are still in CFP mode but speaking of cook acronyms, looks like they even…
I've been watching a ton of streamers on Twitch lately. I'm not one much for games but I love watching folks code and hack. Check out these folks doing cool things LIVE! Suz Hilton open source…
As someone who reads and runs Unit Tests more than writes them, I have found Majestic to be a good visual alternative to running Wallaby.js in VSCode. You can easily update snapshots, easily browse…
Pop!OS recently updated to 19.04, after upgrading I found that I was unable to login to my desktop. This is what I did to get out of the issue. After much research I found that there are many…
Assert(JS) Conf is back for 2019. If you're serious about testing in the modern JavaScript world, I recommend checking it out. This will be in Toronto on September 12th, 2019. The tickets are on…
The robots are coming and they are us. Everyone should go to a code school not only because code school grads aren't wanted for most dev jobs but your office roles are begging for your Jr dev…
We've all seen the software testing pyramid by now, in all it's various forms. There are a lot of interpretations about it's scope and applicability but it's proven to be a useful hueristic. Not…
Ditching my old site This blog is more of a personal career journal and work blog, so it makes sense to keep it in my personal site, instead of my biz site. I've also had to deal with more than enough…
After 5 years at Black Pixel and 1.5 years at 800 5th Ave , it's time again. Watch me age in reverse! Here's to 3 cool years at Foundry Interactive .
https://twitter.com/smariapena/status/1121193014175473669 Just got done with a local DevOpsDays conference. It was a hybrid single track plus OpenSpace style event. I missed a lot of talks for…
https://twitter.com/smariapena/status/1121120093201555458 Accessibility automation Observability tooling Testability Advanced monitoring and telemetry Testing in Production Agile DevOps DevSecOps Red…
I don't know how much I've been able to accomplish at the office but I did meet one goal at least. Getting half the office to pick their first locks! If you're in Seattle, you can get a starter…
I pre-ordered this the moment I heard about it. From what I could tell it was the logical next step after Papanek's "Design for the Real World" . It is worth your time and a quick read. It's…
At my day job , we hire plenty of juniors, fresh out of code camp. We make a pretty decent effort to mentor and guide them. Of course, we could improve but I'm pretty proud of most the work we do…
I really do spam links a lot. I feel like this month slowed down from some previous months . These are in no particular order. seattle js meetp :taco: :woman-shrugging: https://www.meetup.com…
Accessibility Camp Seattle is back and happening Saturday, May 18 2019 at Seattle Central College! Brought to you by @devonpersing and @marcysutton ! Register and bring a cool talk !
Today in a conversation with software professionals, a topic came up about fear of moving roles/jobs because the person was load bearing and no one else knew how to do critical tasks. This struck me…
My colleague Alex @ Foundry is pretty much the only other Vue fan I know. We chatted recently about submitting talks to the local Meetup group . Here's my brain dump of talk ideas. Nothing…
When was the last time you ran brew cleanup or maybe a docker system prune -a or even a xcrun simctl delete unavailable eh? Spring cleaning, y’all! And don't forget to BACK UP YOUR DISK!
https://twitter.com/lfnw/status/1107715628394254337 https://twitter.com/devseccon/status/1108049861092495360
This magically appeared in my GitHub feed because I follow Kent C Dodds and saw his fork activity. I am a big fan of Awesome lists , snooping on other people's set ups and Wes Bos so this is…
Hello Seattle Vue party people. I've had a blast learning Vue recently and saw that Seattle now has a meetup group! I'll see you there! https://www.meetup.com/SeattleVueJS/
I caved under absolutely no peer pressure whatsoever at all. Not a victim of social media pressure or marketing in the slightest. They're mine, all mine. testops.dev && sheree.dev
Another round of end of month links I shared with my team. TestChan Links :vibration_mode: https://medium.com/@sgrif/no-the-problem-isnt-bad-coders-ed4347810270 https://go.nrwl.io/nrwl-connect…
I'm not crying, you're crying. Sidenote: I hate the term mentor/mentee. I believe in co-mentorship and skillsharing, we all have our own experiences and skills to lend each other.
It's that time again, Hunting for JavaScript Contractors Again! we're Looking for Seattle-based Mid-to-Sr JavaScript Devs These are the things the bossman is looking for. Do you have them? Give…
Sourcing candidates is hard, recruiting is a whole ass profession. I don't do it as my primary job but it's a critical component of being succuessful at my work. I don't have any official experience…
My team is doin' this free GraphQL online bootcamp together and levelin' up en masse. Like anything free, buyer beware, but it's super fun so far and my team self organized and even did the homework…
My last team and the team before know that I share links to articles and tools constantly . When you're in the tech industry you have to stay up to date and informed. Keep a pulse on what's new and…
This is just oozing with value. For a young teen deciding what direction they want to head into, it's full of real and practical life advice and stories of success and overcoming failure. For the…
DevOpsDay Seattle is back for 2019 April 23rd and 24th, speakers just announced. Looking forward to the DevSecOps, Observability, and Test Automation talks. https://www.devopsdays.org/events/201…
My pal and former colleague mentioned recently https://twitter.com/rudyrichter/status/1091725981797306368 I won't pretend that I'm truly great but I have seen some truly bad. https://twitter.com…
Wrap up of January links I thought were interesting that I posted to my team throughout January. Testing, Quality, Ops, Sec :foxwave: https://twitter.com/AlexanderOnTest/status/108096399508181401…
We haven't yet been able to get rid of passwords. Every other day I spam my team with this or that breach notice in Slack, they're so often they are hard to differentiate. For my team, I look up their…
Big fan of Ash and have been following her journey through test and management. Will be excited to see her again and I'm glad she's still hanging with the test community. I am extra excited to see…
Way back in October 2012 I attended an Unconference put on by Deloitte folks around Mobile+Agile+QA and I heard Jason Arbon talking and was mesmerized. This guy was spitting truth and talking about…
I wrote a pretty simple Vue.js site, just winging it. When I was done enough I realized I didn't have a good way to deal with "page" titles or meta header tags. And my performance was not snappy at…
Get prepared. Get pumped. Get organized. 2019 is basically here. My favorite thing to order every year: https://www.stendigcalendars.co.uk/
Much like my #softwaretesting channel contributions, I also spam a larger team-wide channel dubbed "LearnChan". This is 2018's output. https://hackernoon.com/im-harvesting-credit-card-numbers-and…
In the #softwaretesting channel at work, I post the output of my adventures in self-edification and any interesting links I encounter on the 27 Slacks, 3 Discords, 500 RSS feeds and 1 well manicured…
Now that I've spent some time walking down memory lane thinking about Kaleidoscope , I dredged up another nice document for NetNewsWire, this one is less of a test plan and more of an onboarding…
This is old and musty and I had to clip some things out but you might find it interesting. Shipping Kaleidoscope updates and then working on V2 was so much fun and I had the best team around. It's…
This last week I went to the 2018 Linux-CloudNative-Kubernetes Conference in Seattle. I attended two talks on Chaos Engineering. What struck me was that there was a repeated refrain about how it wasn…
Today I grabbed the much anticipated Refactoring UI: Book by Adam Wathan and Steve Schoger . I follow both of them on Twitter but really became interested in the project after watching a…
https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/developer/ There is no cure all, there is no free lunch. Your privacy and rights matter and if you look around, it's hard to feel like any giant tech orgs agree…
I often wonder what kind of mark am I leaving behind at work. Attempting to have some self-awareness and introspection on what I bring to a particular table. What I want to be known for (empowering…
It's black friday. Time to crank up the consumerism for tchotchkes for your loved ones. I have here, the ultimate gift guide for the opensourcer syster and/or codewitch in your life. Or, things I…
A recent Slack exchange in a Project Mangement group. I hang out in too many Slack channels. Why are people like this? Please call out bullshit when you see it. Christine Nov 14th at 5:14 AM Hi…
I recently heard about a young gamer going after in-game bugs to exploit errors for goods. This gamer calls it glitching . Designers and front end devs have been calling it jenk or Janky . How to…
This is a real quick one! If you need to test on an API failure, it's super easy to make one with cy.server and cy.route like so. There are so many other things you can do but you sure better be…
Circa 2005-2007 I was obsessed with Ruby and then later Rails. 2007-2009 was when I was really into web dev and was writing PHP to talk to MySQL and also pretending I knew anything about design. Boy…
I absolutely love my new Galago Pro from System76. On the inside, it's running Pop!OS and on the outside, well, see for yourself. I don't have sticker problems, I have sticker solutions .
Our passwordless future is almost here. I put off getting one because I knew new ones were comin' and they are here! Check it out. Secure yo shit! Works with LastPass, Google, Twitter and browsers…
I just discovered Logic mag. As a tester, developer and all around software professional, I am duty-bound to learn about failures, bugs and various technological foibles. I ran into a tale of an…
I finally buckled down and spent some of my learning budget on Linux Academy. I had heard it was good but the price was high. What no one bothered to mention was just how good it is. Why it's worth…
The classic use case for making direct requests to your backend outside of your front end application, is to create, login and seed the local browser with user creds so you can cleanly run whatever…
Full Stack JavaScript Developer (React/Node) REACT NATIVE EXPERIENCE A PLUS Foundry Interactive is looking to add a web-focused, contract developer with excellent JS skills in both front and back-end…
Given my recent move to full-time Linux on the desktop, I've looked for local user groups and conferences to support the local Linux community. I found a cool conference happening November 9th and…
One of the slickest moves you can pull out of your Software Tester bag of tricks is asking all the people who will be working on a particular user story about what they understand needs to be done and…
TestBash San Francisco is happening in the states again Nov 8th-9th 2018, spearheaded by test heroes Ash Coleman and Angie Jones. They've got some heavy hitters like Jason Arbon and Elisabeth…
Why You Need This Responsible, Accountable, Consulted, Informed. This is a very high level RACI sheet to log the basics of who's on point for what. They can get much more complicated but it's good at…
When you are running Cypress, day to day, in the course of your development in a kind of squishy TDD/BDD sort of way, you wil find yourself wanted to crank out tests. Get and Contains are the backbone…
You hand your dev team a brief and ask for estimates. Maybe it's just a stack of mocks and a loose assertion of the client's preferred stack. Or maybe you get a proper RFP. Whatever it is, you gotta…
Lighthouse is a great tool to check your website for common issues around accessibility, performance, SEO. I've been using it in the browser/extension for a while but I just figured out that you can…
Code school advice around getting into tech is all about networking but it's so often voiced in terms of what a connection might lead to suit or benefit you. That kind of thinking is self-serving…
Why You Need This A project brief can be a useful guidepost when planning and collaborating on a project. Whether you need a brief or not is up to you. These tend to be more important for projects…
I love Calendly for coordinating meetings with people who can't see my calendar. It's extremely useful for recruiting and hiring, however, I didn't really like having to auth access to all of my…
Both James Bach and Michael Bolton will be hosting this public session of Rapid Software Testing on September 26-28 in Seattle. This is the 4.0 iteration and it is extremely rare to have them both…
I'm not sure how I found out about Dank Mono but I really love it. Goodbye Inconsolata, you served me well. It was 40£ and worth it. It was handmade by a developer and he releases updates as one…
Project management isn't just running standup and updating a Google document. It's a creative and strategic position. Are you a highly-organized self-starter who can manage the details without losing…
We're looking for contract web testers able to automate simple E2E BDD-style checks in JavaScript-based frameworks against feature work for an in-flight React/Redux/Node-based web applications. You…
Even if you don't need glasses, if you're looking at screens all day, please consider getting blue blocking computer glasses. I got a pair and they have made such a huge difference. Absolutely worth…
My team is heavily focused on React and it's ecosystem but occasionally we have the need for WordPress devs. We'd like to expand our relationships with some local freelancers specializing in WP dev…
Full Stack JavaScript Developer (React/Node) My team at Foundry Interactive is looking to add a web-focused, contract developer with excellent JS skills in both front and back-end platforms/frameworks…
Safe words aren't just for lascivious matters. You can set and make them in any context to provide an in or out for trusted parties. I woke up today with one ringing out in my head for the ladies in…
In your package.json the simplest setup is running your testrunner for day to day development and running your tests on the commandline, perhaps for continuous integration. This could be as simple…
I've been hearing this unofficially for years now. This is the first time I've seen it explicitly stated.
Why You Need This Why does your PM need it's own RACI? Because our work can be invisible when done well. Your work deserves to be accounted for in the project and without this level of breakdown, your…
This is a contract role with potential FTE. Risk-focused testing of front-end web development efforts. We are a pure-play development agency with customers big and small. We're looking for a technical…
Why You Need This A decision log serves a few purposes. Where I find it to be most valuable is as a gift to your future self or perhaps other project spelunkers. Over the course of a project there…
These make me incredibly happy and they feel amazing to type on. I might have a problem.
Of course you care about security and of course, you wouldn't just sticky note the Jenkins admin password to your lead dev's monitor. Perish the thought! For any non-trivial project, you will have to…
absorb their power OBTAIN THEIR STRENGTH S T E A L T H E I R K E Y B O A R D S H O R T C U T S
I noticed that the only thing some people leave behind at work is a custom emoji or two in the company Slack. Nothing in Dropbox. Nothing in the company wiki. Nothing that can be pointed to. Then I…
Why You Need This You should pay a professional to do accessibility auditing, especially if they are a member of a marginalized group due to aspects of their abilities. But we can't always unlock that…
Hands. They're important but replaceable. Anyone can tap out the code. Anyone can file that bug report. Anyone can run stand-up. These all need to be done. We can all pitch in. Not all of us can keep…
My favorite bad-ass TPM Steph Datu shared this with the team today, it's a little old but a good walk through of junior front end web dev trivia that might come up in interviews. What is the level…
I recently realized the only thing I know about SEO is that having good AX/a11y and a good mobile experience was good for SEO. I saw that the local General Assembly school had an inexpensive beginners…
You can add a style to your browser, for example on FireFox using Stylus plugin, to show the active focus when using keyboard navigation: Pretty handy!
Why You Need This These templates were made in an agency context and might make zero sense for your use case. They are skeletons and do not have fancy calculations everywhere. But! They may prove…
If you think a lot about the planning fallacy and question your optimism bias this Freakonomics podcast episode is perfect for you, and any project manager really. Featuring a PM from Asana…
In your day to day use of Cypress, especially using it for day to day development, you will want to focus on your signal from the noise that a constant testrunner can evoke. Only the Lonely When you…
Trying to coordinate a meeting with your team is pretty easy when you can see each other's calendars. But when interviewing applicants, I had been going in blind, just doing a best-guess from either…
Aligning your team and having a plan is critical. No question about that. For a low-friction way to get that and build a culture around your team so they self-organize that way, you can use this small…
Whether your team is two or twenty. Whether your testers code or not. Whether your devs or ops folks get involved or not. There is really no reason not to dip your QA team of testers into Capture The…
Slack has a very simple yet powerful feature called Reminders. The syntax takes a little getting used to. I've found them to be a low stress, high impact. Here's a few ways we've made them work for…
There is a common mindfulness practice of writing a gratitude list. This serves to recenter your thinking on the good things and to focus on humility. Now take this thinking and turn it towards your…
Why You Need This Of course you defined scope already. And of course you called out what's definitely not in scope. But that's just not how software works. Especially in an agency context. Your scope…
I'm a big fan of templatizing, checklists, Trello, and accessibility. You can quickly scaffold out your own WCAG audit by importing the guidelines into an actionable form. Review https://www.w3.org…
You've heard of the iron triangle of project management: Budget/Cost, Timeline/Schedule, Scope/Features. Sometimes you will see this with Quality shoved into the middle. Other sources have quality as…
Why You Need This You need a meetings and communication plan with a known and predictable schedule. These moments are the heartbeat of the project. The plan will also help onboard new team members. If…
The amount of things I must document to survive the work day is enormous. I pretty much always have a notebook or two and a fist full of pens at the ready. I have stacks of filled journals. It's my…
Looking for a project manager with agency experience in any capacity (as a dev, QA, admin, PM, anything). The needs of this role are pretty classic to PM and include but are not limited to the…
Projects for specific platforms have lots of commonalities. You're always going to have to deal with 404s for a website. You will always need a favicon. Why think about these things more than once…
Why You Need This Your project estimates will need to be defensible both internally and externally. In your project planning you should have these phases mapped out with at least a back-of-the…
I've been immersed in client services lately and wanted to share a very simple yet handy template. For every client project you have in flight, you should be sending a weekly checkin email about it…
A lot of your testing will be done with mocks, fakes, stubs and fixtures of some sort. Sometimes in a test you don't want flat data, but something dynamic for each run. You can use tools to create…
Working with a new team has shown me a lot of things that I was blind to, having come from IT and a senior-devs-only agency. I didn't know what it was like to work with people for whom it was their…
https://twitter.com/search?q=upload%20resume%20next%20page&src=typed_query It's a straight up meme at this point but I think applicants aren't thinking this through. Upload your resume in a PDF file…
I will admit, I don't really know JavaScript too well. I am not a webdev whiz but I do a fair amount of general debugging and sometimes outright stepping through a debugger to diagnose a problem. Did…
I'm really allergic to forcing standup into the out-of-the-box shape at all costs. You can still meet the intention while iterating on the process. Do you read off the project tracker? if not, try it…
You have your project all planned out. Your communications plan is ready to go. The kick-off deck is ready for the meeting. The team is all lined up. They've had buy-in participating in the…
Let's be real, The Viper Pit just sounds cool. Don't you want to be in the viper pit, on the viper team, doing viper things? Of course, you do. That's the informal name we use for technical kickoffs…
This is a stub based on a talk aimed at Junior Devs. It's a bit of a mess in this format and I've got some attributions to work out but warts and all, here is a talk I gave on QA/Test. QUALITY…
Design http://contrast-finder.tanaguru.com - suggests colors that meet contrast http://www.webaxe.org/color-contrast-tools/ (huge list of color checker tools) https://hexnaw.com/ - Hex Naw is a…
After years of deftly avoiding it and begrudgingly tolerating it when unavoidable, I'm now implementing it. This is how mind-blowingly awful the out of box experience is with Mingle. Apparently Mingle…
Be proactive, not reactive: build programs that reflect where the business/team is going not where it’s historically been. Kill sacred cows, kill your darlings: the traditions and ideas that got you…
My new project is Windows-heavy. I have up to this point made a career out of avoiding anything to do with Web or Windows. Now I'm doing both and feeling a bit lost. To better myself and get some…
What if This American Life was about hackers? This new podcast is kinda like that! Check out Darknet Diaries
One of the first things you will want to do when spinning up Cypress in your project is setting up your configs. You can get pretty far without it and they come with sensible defaults. After you…
Why You Need This A charter can be one of the most useful tools in a project managers toolbox. The scope, vision and clarity this document provides should last the entire project through and should…
Another 1.5 years of PhotoBooth selfies. Not a new job, just a new project.
Why You Need This Having an end to end mapping of your project is critical to managing it. With a high level view you can map out not just the implementation but the whole program or project in a…
I've been work-stressed lately, moving off one giant project and directly onto another. All those things I had wanted to do but never got around to. All those loose ends. All the ramping up and…
Now that my long-term client-site staff-augmentation-style project is coming to a close, I will now be able to work from home. After working for a remote-first company for ~5 years, having to be on…
Ten percent doesn't sound very big. Sometimes as a tester we can only make so much of a dent. Can we test the product and coach our team towards quality so that the app responds 10% faster? Can we…
A rule to live by is: never misuse time. Always communicate the meeting value to the attendees. To make the best use of meetings, please consider the following: Check your teammate's schedules before…
My dearest code school grads, my career switching friends, my been around a long time peers. It's 2017 and you will be Googled. If you ever plan to work for money, for a job or for your self, the…
This is a longer term contract role with potential FTE. Start date ASAP. Regression focused automation-first testing of front-end web development efforts. Are you looking to make the switch from hands…
One thing you will want to do very often when testing a React or Vue UI is waiting for the view to do something. The big use case here is waiting for an API response so that your UI can display the…
Beyond the project hard facts of budget, stakeholders, dates, and milestones, your project should have a high-level charter that helps align you with the client and the team with the vision. This can…
Why You Need This You need a quality and testing plan for your projects. This one is just a scaffold and not heavyweight at all. It's enough to get you going but not enough to take you there. I have…
If you want to loop over a set of items, you can create an array of objects, use wrapping and each to chew through your items. Sweet!
PyCon was giant. It felt like WWDC. Here's some stand-out talks. Ying Li, David Lawrence: Introduction to Threat Modeling Lynn Root: Tracing, Fast and Slow Digging into and improving your web service…
Why You Need This Your using a continuous improvement methodolgy somewhere in your process. This will naturally include moments to review and reflect on the status quo. Use these questions to help…
Having worked for agencies, studios, consultancies for years one thing that I've managed to live through time and time again is being on a greenfield app project that depended on a API/backend that…
Begin with the end in mind, as they say. Your client services team should have a plan for what happens after the boat is in the water. You don't want to just disappear on your client. It's a…
Why You Need This Logging risks and opportunities together gives you a more holistic view of the project. You will want to leverage this in the planning stages to help figure out your budget. There…
Why You Need This To log and track your internal and external stakeholders, with quick access to their vitals. Making this available to your team will help with onboarding. If you are using a RACI…
You might see that combining multiple items into one logic function is a smart way to dry up your code, naturally you might add a utils.js file and then import that into your test.spec.js files but…
Why You Need This These templates are for logging your browser support for a project. Your client will either know offhand what they want and can fill it in themselves. If they really know what they…
Testers and muggles need to get on the same page about Testing. It's not "manual" testing, it's just TESTING . You wouldn't call it manual programming, would you? All testing is done by a human. We…
If you search around for code schools, you will find dozens. If you search for their curriculums, they are usually on their marketing sites. If you search GitHub for the classes, BOOM, they're almost…
Sponsor me Post It. I'll drive a car with your logo on it.
Much like code reviews can serve to contribute to the shared knowledge of the code base the act of writing automated tests can, in fact, be a perfect moment to test your app. In a code review maybe…
I’m a fervent believer in code reviews. I assert anyone on the team can meaningfully contribute . I think they should have some measure of formalization and templatization . I tend to speak of them…
I've been heads-down in Python lately and love an excuse to go to Portland. So I saw PyDX conference pop-up and had to attend! Quick review: The talks were half squishy, half technical, I would prefer…
As a QA or TPM who doesn't code (or maybe isn't for this particular project) but is participating in the development process and is reasonably responsible for the quality of the system, you should…
I had a standing desk at my last job and really really missed it at the home so I fashioned one myself. I put a chair on my desk for the monitor and some LP boxes for the keyboard. It's actually…
I often get asked how to get started in testing. There are a lot of ways to go but reading should be a big part of it. These teach you: The kind of Exploratory testing you need to know in modern…
I gotta admit, I am pretty burnt out on spending \$2000USD to hear the same talks over and over again. These, however, from CAST this year were pretty great and worth your time! Why Companies Without…
Recently contributed to helping interview some PM candidates for a client. You may find these interesting or useful. They are clearly steeped in my own bias but I also tried to crosscheck them with…
Let's face it. Code school barely taught you how to CSS. They handwaved it in your general direction. They only gave you rudimentary HTML skills and alluded to semantic tags and muttered something…
This is a contract role. Start date ASAP. Whether you're a hands-on exploratory tester, a test-case driven analyst, a tools-driven QA engineer, or a test automator or just a technology-focused…
You're a project manager, coordinator, QA or a lead. Whatever your role or title, you're helping to steer the ship and leading by example, with or without authority. You're just making it happen. One…
I'll write more later, still ingesting it all, but I had a good time and stretched my mind a little. Met lots of folks. Rode in a tiny waterplane. Good stuff. Role Dynamics Testopsies Heuristics of…
There are so many more things you could do but this is the minimum bar I set for my team, they're all software developers so I don't harass 'em too much. We're a BYOD shop but I still like to remind…
Just like your developers and testers want to be able to debug a stacktrace, so do your project managers want to trace issues at the project level. How do we do this? How do we work in a traceable way…
This is a collection of resources I've collected for getting my junior testers started with API testing. Postman is an incredibly friendly and useful rest tool I recommend to all. Brief Intro http…
Just started a new gig and was nonplussed at the way the team handled code reviews and pull requests. The culture seems to be putting a link manually into a Slack channel, mentioning the reviewer and…
Five years of PhotoBooth selfies.
There’s a lot more to hiring than the interview questions but recently I came across someone looking for a list so I thought I would share my own. The context of these questions is an interview for a…
Not every little thing can live in your definition of done. I know, I get it. The problem is that user stories and Jira tickets typically don't have enough functional requirements. This causes a drain…
a cool way to get rid of imposter syndrome for the day is to filter through dozens of resumes of people aiming for the job you have.
Yes, I'm having a laugh but this is serious. ...should designers learn to code ...should testers learn to code ...should project managers learn to code https://twitter.com/smariapena/status…
How do I let my team know where I'm at in my testing? On the one hand, overreporting and unutilized documentation is a waste of resources. On the other, you want to keep your team informed and up to…
Whether you are a PM or QA, you want to have your finger on the pulse of a project. If you've got Slack, you can leverage applications and integrations to find that vein. Create a dedicated channel in…
Befriend and bemuse them with your uncanny ability to keep them on their toes. It should go without saying, but let’s do it anyway in case you’re new here. Your team’s software tester should be…
For the company blog. I'm ok at titles but who doesn't fancy themselves an ideas man? My draft bucket is out of control. Using Instruments To Test Your iOS App For the Complete and Total Noob…
We all know that Documentation is Critical and Shared passwords are too . We may not always need a multi-page wiki document but getting a quick list of project vitals and pinning them in a Post in…
Swapped my domain from feralscrutiny.com, a nod to my relative inexperience at the time, to Nice Catch! which is my favorite thing to hear at work. I am not repointing or forwarding traffic on account…
Most of this is to simplify handling apps across multiple devices at once. Sourced from my pal @jackbrewster and messed up and mangled by me. Add these to your ~/.bash_profile Setup your…
If you work across many projects and have to juggle dependencies you should consider using this cool new git repo tool: Pug . Not only can you git pull from a group of repositories but the…
I'm no sec wizard but we can all get a bit better at our app sec. This list is mostly mobile oriented but it's a start. Hope it helps jumpstart your appsec! Application Security & Privacy Basics Login…
This is mostly for testers and QA professionals but the same is true for any office or knowledge worker. If you don't like the status quo, don't be a victim. Ask yourself "So? What are you going to…
Mr Bach gave a great keynote Test Cases Are Not Testing It was by far and away the most diverse conference I have ever been to The hallway track was more interesting than half the talks Ben Simo gave…
Put all your contracts in a Git repo. Reference SHAs with your lawyer. Do diffs with your CxOs.
Dive headfirst into the thing the dev asks about after you get a build and simply say “Uh-oh...”
Wrote this up for my partner, taking intro to HTML & CSS at School of Visual Concepts. You don't have to be a Git master to leverage it for your projects. git init freely! Enough Git to Get Going If…
Back at Moscone for World Wide Developer Conference 2014! Still can't talk about all this cool stuff under NDA but check out the goofy swag that I will never wear again.
Papanek's "Design for the Real World" I just finished this book and now I want every designer, developer, tester, project manager, and especially QA/testers to read this. This should be the required…
What is this app? 30K ft. view. Keep it short Document Usage Guide Introduction This is where the project mission statement goes. If you don't have one from outside, write your own. Provide an…
https://twitter.com/smariapena/status/449106999137931264
Having a tester on your team is no assurance of a Quality end product. That carrot dangles in front of all of our faces. It is a shared burden and responsibility by the whole team. Your Tester is…
Recently I shared some scripts under Git Image Merge Conflict Tool and Quick and Dirty CI/CD Git Based Release Notes but I also have some git one liners that I use constantly that you may find…
Have you ever needed a quick auto-generated release notes for your daily builds? Well, here ya go!
QUALITY ASSURANCE IS MORE THAN TRYING TO BREAK SOFTWARE It's about finding empirical evidence of alignment of project needs, vision, and strategy. The project needs constant and immediate feedback…
Now that I've been doing some independent consulting for iOS Software Testing I got myself some cards. They are goofy and I will probably only use them to try to win a free burrito or while my info…
RESPONSIBILITIES The kind of QA person we're looking for will know as much about the current state of the application's requirements as any developer, designer, or project manager. They will know the…
Tacit knowledge plays a huge role in our ability to test, and that's why so many people think that testing is simple and easy. Ask any experienced tester how to test and you are likely to get mumbles…
Everyone's favorite RSS app for the Mac has a new version out. It's a 4.0 Public Beta built from the bones of the Lite version. Check out the official announcement! Oh, and please file some bug…
Sometimes people are sort of like unicorns. You know they exist. You know they are magic. You don't know how you came to understand their magic. Then they suddenly appear in front of you! Mr Hoang…
Agile certification mostly just reinforced my hatred of Scrum and my love for Kanban.
As a UX-focused software tester who is passionate about the usability of software, accessibility has been of particular interest to me. People accept technology into their life because of an unspoken…
As a fervent exploratory tester, a single test session may produce upwards of 40 issues I’d like to investigate further or report in some way. Turning a 90 minute QA flâneurship into 40 stellar bug…
You probably won't ever need to create dozens of git repositories that have conflicted image files to diff and resolve, ( WINK ), but if you ever do, I got you covered:
I can't say too much that couldn't be uncovered by participating in the public beta but it's finally here and official. I'm especially proud of a corner-use-case I advocated to get turned into a solid…
Any interest? Hit me or Craigslist up, I have more!! Computer books are the worst thing to invest in as they are out of date before they are even printed. The thirst for knowledge can't be quenched…
It's happening! Another conference in the books. Took a train down with my boss to learn about iOS Test Automation.
Of COURSE they caught me at the accessibility talk! https://twitter.com/MAQConf/status/259392475192492033
You might have heard it from a tester or two, now and again: “I get paid to break apps”. It’s cute & funny and who doesn’t love being both or either? But, it’s wrong. Unless you are writing and…
I've only ever saw it on the Internet but today I got to see it in the real world. It was something to behold. I've been incredibly lucky to be sent to WWDC by Black Pixel. Wow!
I wish there was more surface area and I think I need a mat but super stoked Black Pixel styled me out with a standing desk!!
Today we stood in line, in the rain, like a buncha goons, for new iPads. You can't really tell it's us, but we're just hanging out in University Village, having a good time.
It's silly but all I wanted to do was rotate my salutation when writing customer support emails. Hi. Hola. Hello. Howdy. Ahoy. Hey. Hey there. You get it. So I wrote to the folks at TextExpander and…