Sheree is a generalist.

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.

Work Journal Entries

SShine Bright Like a Diamond

06/10/2019 — 1 Min Read — In Career, Office

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.

DDefendCon 2019

06/07/2019 — 1 Min Read — In Conferences, Career, Development, Testing

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…

PPop OS Fix Endless Login Loop

05/12/2019 — 1 Min Read — In Resources, Ops, Development

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…

AAssert JS Conf 2019

05/11/2019 — 1 Min Read — In Conferences, Career, Development, Testing

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…

SShould Accountants Learn To Code

05/09/2019 — 1 Min Read — In Office, Career

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…

IIntroducing The Quality Split

05/07/2019 — 2 Min Read — In Testing, Career

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…

SSwapped to Gatsby, Goodbye Wordpress

05/02/2019 — 1 Min Read — In Development, Resources

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…

LLast Day At Foundry Interactive

04/30/2019 — 1 Min Read — In Career, Office

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 .

DDevOpsDays Seattle 2019 Notes

04/24/2019 — 2 Min Read — In Career, Conferences

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…

IIndustry Wide Technical Debt

04/23/2019 — 1 Min Read — In Testing

https://twitter.com/smariapena/status/1121120093201555458 Accessibility automation Observability tooling Testability Advanced monitoring and telemetry Testing in Production Agile DevOps DevSecOps Red…

AAchievement Unlocked

04/16/2019 — 1 Min Read — In Career, Office, Security

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…

RRequired Reading: Ruined By Design

04/09/2019 — 1 Min Read — In Career, Resources

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…

MMarch 2019 Link Dump

03/31/2019 — 2 Min Read — In Office, Resources

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…

AAre You Hot Swappable?

03/22/2019 — 1 Min Read — In Career

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…

SSpring Cleaning

03/20/2019 — 1 Min Read — In Career, Office

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!

AAwesome Uses

03/18/2019 — 1 Min Read — In Career, Resources, Development

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…

SSeattle Vue Meetup

03/17/2019 — 1 Min Read — In Career, Conferences, Development

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/

DDot Dev

03/01/2019 — 1 Min Read — In Career, Ops, Development

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

FFrom A Mentee

02/22/2019 — 1 Min Read — In Career, Office

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.

LLooking Once Again for JS Devs

02/20/2019 — 1 Min Read — In Hiring

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…

SSourcing Resources When You're Not a Resourcer

02/15/2019 — 2 Min Read — In Career, Hiring

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…

GGraph QLub

02/12/2019 — 1 Min Read — In Career, Office, Resources, Development

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…

II Spam Links And You Should Too

02/04/2019 — 1 Min Read — In Career

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…

GGo Get This New Book Tribe of Hackers

02/03/2019 — 1 Min Read — In Career, Security

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…

TTruly Great and Bad

02/01/2019 — 1 Min Read — In Career, Testing

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…

JJanuary 2019 Link Dump

01/31/2019 — 2 Min Read — In Career, Office, Resources, Security, Testing

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…

CChange Your Password Forever

01/27/2019 — 1 Min Read — In Office, Security

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…

PPost Modern Testing

01/24/2019 — 1 Min Read — In Conferences, Testing

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…

TThank U Nuxt

01/21/2019 — 1 Min Read — In Development

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…

22019 Treat Yourself

12/29/2018 — 1 Min Read — In Office

Get prepared. Get pumped. Get organized. 2019 is basically here. My favorite thing to order every year: https://www.stendigcalendars.co.uk/

22018 Learning Slack Channel Link Dump

12/28/2018 — 2 Min Read — In Office, Resources

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…

22018 QA and Test Slack Channel Link Dump

12/27/2018 — 5 Min Read — In Office, Testing

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…

AA QA Onboarding Doc For NetNewsWire

12/26/2018 — 22 Min Read — In Testing, Career

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…

AAn Old Kaleidoscope Test Plan

12/25/2018 — 29 Min Read — In Career

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…

RRefactoring UI

12/14/2018 — 1 Min Read — In Career, Resources, Development

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…

IIt Is Time To Switch To Firefox

12/01/2018 — 1 Min Read — In Security, Development

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…

HHoliday Gift Guide for the CyberSyster in Your Life

11/23/2018 — 1 Min Read — In Ops

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…

SSlightly Smiling Face

11/15/2018 — 1 Min Read — In Office, Project Management

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…

GGlitches and Jank

11/11/2018 — 1 Min Read — In Career, Testing

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…

CCatching Up on Front End Web Dev

11/04/2018 — 1 Min Read — In Development, Career

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…

II Finally Got A Yubikey

09/29/2018 — 1 Min Read — In Security

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…

LLogic Mag is great

09/23/2018 — 1 Min Read — In Office

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…

CCypress Quick Tip: Requests

09/10/2018 — 1 Min Read — In Resources, Testing, Development

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…

AA Shallow Agreement Test

08/14/2018 — 1 Min Read — In Testing

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…

PPM Template: RACI

07/18/2018 — 1 Min Read — In Project Management, Resources

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…

AAdd Lighthouse To Your Dev Setup

06/29/2018 — 1 Min Read — In Testing, Development

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…

PPM Template: Project Brief

06/21/2018 — 1 Min Read — In Project Management, Resources

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…

AAnother Cool Calendar Tool

06/18/2018 — 1 Min Read — In Hiring, Office

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…

DDank Mono Font

06/04/2018 — 1 Min Read — In Development

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…

GGet Computer Glasses, They Are Worth It

05/28/2018 — 1 Min Read — In Office

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…

SSafety Dance As Our Safe Word

05/25/2018 — 1 Min Read — In Office

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…

CCypress Quick Tip: Scripts

05/22/2018 — 1 Min Read — In Resources, Testing, Development

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…

PPM Template: PMO RACI

05/07/2018 — 1 Min Read — In Project Management, Resources

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…

PPM Template: Decision Log

04/28/2018 — 1 Min Read — In Project Management, Resources

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…

PPair Programming for Mana

04/09/2018 — 1 Min Read — In Career

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

AAre You Leaving Behind a Mark?

04/03/2018 — 1 Min Read — In Office

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…

PPM Template: WCAG Audit

03/28/2018 — 1 Min Read — In Project Management, Resources

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…

AAre You Head or Hands?

03/22/2018 — 1 Min Read — In Office

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…

SSEO For Beginners Class at General Assembly

03/19/2018 — 1 Min Read — In Development

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…

PPM Template: Budget

03/10/2018 — 1 Min Read — In Project Management, Resources

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…

GGreat Episode for PMs

03/07/2018 — 1 Min Read — In Project Management

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…

CCypress Quick Tip: Skip and Only

03/04/2018 — 1 Min Read — In Resources, Testing, Development

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…

CCool Tool for Booking Calendar Time

03/02/2018 — 1 Min Read — In Office

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…

UUse Slack Reminders To Keep On Track

02/22/2018 — 1 Min Read — In Office, Project Management

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…

LLinkedIn Recommendations as a Gratitude Practice

02/21/2018 — 1 Min Read — In Office

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…

PPM Template: Scope Log

02/14/2018 — 1 Min Read — In Project Management, Resources

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…

WWCAG Trello Board

02/07/2018 — 1 Min Read — In Accessibility, Development

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…

IIron Triangle or Iron Cross

02/02/2018 — 1 Min Read — In Project Management

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…

PPM Template: Meeting Cadence

01/20/2018 — 1 Min Read — In Project Management, Resources

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…

II just learned about Bullet Journals

01/11/2018 — 1 Min Read — In Office

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…

PPM Template: Estimates

12/14/2017 — 1 Min Read — In Project Management, Resources

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…

CCypress Quick Tip: Adding Faker

11/30/2017 — 1 Min Read — In Resources, Testing, Development

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…

DDumbo’s Feather

11/25/2017 — 1 Min Read — In Office

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…

CCypress Quick Tip: Debugging

11/15/2017 — 1 Min Read — In Resources, Testing, Development

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…

QQA Talk For Code Schoolers

10/31/2017 — 6 Min Read — In Testing

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…

LLet Go and Let Jira

10/19/2017 — 1 Min Read — In Project Management

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…

VVision for the QA/Test Team

10/18/2017 — 1 Min Read — In Testing, Career

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…

MMy First Windows Computer

10/16/2017 — 1 Min Read — In Office, Testing, Development

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…

DDarknet Diaries

10/15/2017 — 1 Min Read — In Security, Resources

What if This American Life was about hackers? This new podcast is kinda like that! Check out Darknet Diaries

CCypress Quick Tip: Configs

10/12/2017 — 1 Min Read — In Resources, Testing, Development

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…

PPM Template: Charter

10/01/2017 — 1 Min Read — In Project Management, Resources

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…

PPlease Relax: Acupuncture, Massage

08/30/2017 — 1 Min Read — In Office

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…

WWide Screen Monitor

08/29/2017 — 1 Min Read — In Office

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…

110 Percent

08/27/2017 — 1 Min Read — In Project Management

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…

OOn Meetings

08/25/2017 — 1 Min Read — In Office, Project Management

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…

NNot Having a Web Site is Like Not Having a Resume

08/18/2017 — 1 Min Read — In Hiring

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…

CCypress Quick Tip: Waits

08/12/2017 — 1 Min Read — In Resources, Testing, Development

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…

GGetting Your Project Charter Right

08/10/2017 — 2 Min Read — In Project Management

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…

PPM Template: QA & Test Coverage

06/15/2017 — 1 Min Read — In Project Management, Resources

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…

22017 PyCon Report

05/25/2017 — 1 Min Read — In Ops, Testing, Development

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…

PPM Template: Post Mortem/Retro

04/15/2017 — 1 Min Read — In Project Management, Resources

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…

CCypress Quick Tip: Fixtures

04/11/2017 — 1 Min Read — In Resources, Testing, Development

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…

PPM: The Post Ship Follow Up

04/10/2017 — 1 Min Read — In Project Management, Resources

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…

PPM Template: Browsers

01/20/2017 — 1 Min Read — In Project Management, Resources

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…

WWhen we talk about Testing

12/12/2016 — 1 Min Read — In Testing

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…

WWriting Tests as Testing

10/30/2016 — 1 Min Read — In Testing

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…

PPyDx 2016 Report

10/03/2016 — 1 Min Read — In Conferences, Ops, Testing, Development

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…

DDIY Standing Desk

09/10/2016 — 1 Min Read — In Office

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…

QQA/Test Required Reading For the Absolute Beginner

09/01/2016 — 1 Min Read — In Testing

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…

CCAST 2016 Favorite Talks

08/11/2016 — 1 Min Read — In Conferences, Testing

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…

PPM Interview Questions

08/03/2016 — 3 Min Read — In Career

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…

CCode School Will Leave You Woefully Unprepared

07/16/2016 — 2 Min Read — In Hiring, Office

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…

RReinventing Testers Retreat, Orcas Island

05/20/2016 — 1 Min Read — In Conferences, Testing

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…

PPersonal Office Sec Checklist

05/08/2016 — 1 Min Read — In Office, Security

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…

PProject Management Traceability

04/23/2016 — 1 Min Read — In Project Management, Testing

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…

GGetting Started With Postman

04/21/2016 — 1 Min Read — In Ops, Testing, Development

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…

TTester Interview Questions

04/05/2016 — 4 Min Read — In Hiring, Testing

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…

DDefine Testability Features in Your User Stories

02/03/2016 — 1 Min Read — In Testing

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…

SShould Developers Learn To Code?

10/05/2015 — 1 Min Read — In Office

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…

TTester Triangulation

10/03/2015 — 1 Min Read — In Testing

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…

DDrinking From The Firehose

09/29/2015 — 1 Min Read — In Office, Project Management, Testing

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…

GGet To Know Your Friendly Local Developer

08/14/2015 — 4 Min Read — In Testing

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…

PPM Quick Tip: Project Vitals

06/15/2015 — 1 Min Read — In Office, Project Management

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…

GGoodbye Feral Scrutiny, Hello Nice Catch!

06/01/2015 — 1 Min Read — In Career

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…

AAndroid Test Setup

05/12/2015 — 2 Min Read — In Testing

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…

SSecurity and Privacy Checklist

12/15/2014 — 2 Min Read — In Security, Testing

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…

MMake Your Own Fucking Table

11/04/2014 — 2 Min Read — In Career

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…

GGit For Everything

07/14/2014 — 1 Min Read — In Office

Put all your contracts in a Git repo. Reference SHAs with your lawyer. Do diffs with your CxOs.

GGit Goin For Newbs

06/24/2014 — 1 Min Read — In Ops

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…

WWWDC 2014

06/06/2014 — 1 Min Read — In Conferences

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.

RRequired Reading: Design for the Real World

05/22/2014 — 1 Min Read — In Career, Resources

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…

QQuickstart: Test Plan for Scaffolding

05/20/2014 — 7 Min Read — In Testing

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…

TThe Tester on Your Team Does Not Assure Quality

03/02/2014 — 3 Min Read — In Testing

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…

MMore Handy Git Stuff

02/22/2014 — 1 Min Read — In Ops, Resources

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…

AA Cover Letter To Whom It May Concern

02/13/2014 — 2 Min Read — In Office, Testing

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…

FFresh Business Cards

12/01/2013 — 1 Min Read — In Career, Testing

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…

NNow Hiring: QA @ Black Pixel

08/20/2013 — 2 Min Read — In Hiring, Office, Testing

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…

TTesting Night with James Bach

08/08/2013 — 1 Min Read — In Conferences, Testing

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…

NNetNewsWire 4.0 Public Beta

06/24/2013 — 1 Min Read — In Career, Office

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…

AA Wild David Hoang Appears

05/31/2013 — 1 Min Read — In Office

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…

HHow I Report Bugs

02/05/2013 — 4 Min Read — In Testing

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…

GGit Image Merge Conflict Tool

01/18/2013 — 1 Min Read — In Career, Resources, Testing

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:

KKaleidoscope 2 Is Here

01/17/2013 — 1 Min Read — In Career, Office

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…

GGetting Rid of My Older Tech Books

12/18/2012 — 1 Min Read — In Career, Office

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…

CCocoaConf 2012 PDX!

10/27/2012 — 1 Min Read — In Conferences

It's happening! Another conference in the books. Took a train down with my boss to learn about iOS Test Automation.

DDon’t Break Apps: Dispel Notions

10/16/2012 — 1 Min Read — In Testing

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…

GGot A Standing Desk Today!

06/05/2012 — 1 Min Read — In Office

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!!

BBaby's First Apple Line Up for New Hardware

03/16/2012 — 1 Min Read — In Office

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.

TTextexpander Makes Tiny Dreams Come True

12/05/2011 — 1 Min Read — In Career

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…