Q&A with our Test Consultant - Ryan Dudley

1. How long have you been working in testing?

I've been in testing now for 6 and a half years. I joined nFocus fresh out of college as an apprentice at the age of 18 and never looked back! I've been exposed to a wide range of testing approaches and technologies and I've been able to work on a variety of different projects all with their own challenges.

2. What is your favourite area of testing?

Automation Testing - I find it fascinating how you can automate a task, removing the need to check that piece of functionality manually. This then allows you to have a great regression pack to be run whenever you like, giving you confidence when you are heading into a new release.

Returning to the Office - Surprising Things that I Miss

My normal weekend routine is to get up early and make a large coffee. Then I crawl back into bed with my iPad and start writing. In addition to this blog, I’m also working on two novels, so I rather enjoy the peace and quiet of weekend mornings to hammer out as many words as I can on my various projects. However, as a writer, I’m also an expert procrastinator (comes part and parcel with the job title) and my procrastination tool of choice this morning, was sleeping in late followed by a McDonalds!

The Pomodoro Technique - An Agile Way of Working

If you’re able to work from home, then you have probably been working from home for some time now. You probably have mastered a routine, have adjusted your work/life balance and are used to attending meetings in jogging bottoms and bedroom slippers!

But then, someone like me comes along and asks if you know what a ‘Pomodoro’ is and how it may help you improve your working day. The Pomodoro Technique is a very simple technique to learn, incredibly quick and easy to apply. All you need is a pencil, paper and a timer then you’re ready to go!

Quality Assurance in Education - An Insight into the Role of a QA Tester

The higher education sector seems to be ever-growing with different faculties updating old student management systems to innovative new ones. Working on a project in this industry has a lot to offer and it can be really exciting to see how a system/application can evolve over different development and test phases.

As a tester of Quality Assurance in Education, this sector has the potential to expose you to many different types of testing. Here are just a few I have been party to so far:

Returning to the Office - do we really need to? 

Our guest writer, Renée Mineart explores how and where we work has changed. There has been a lot of discussion lately at work about returning to work or perhaps I should say returning to the office and considering the new lockdown exit plan announced recently, I imagine a lot of you are thinking about this as well.

Continuing with the theme of legendary people in world of computer development, we have Renée Mineart back with a blog about Alan Turing. If you haven't read it yet, check out her blog on ‘Pioneering Coder Grace Hopper’.

Alan Turing - The Father of the Modern Computer

I’ve always wanted to write a piece about Alan Turing (1912-1954), another hero of mine in the development of computers and this seems the perfect month in which to do so.

A special thanks to our guest writer, Renée Mineart for writing this blog article. 

Someone asked me recently what I enjoy most about being a Developer and Tester, and I thought what a great topic for a blog!

So, here we are…

For me, pretty much everything I do comes down to one of two motivations: either creating something new or solving a problem. Often, the thing I’m creating is designed to solve a problem, so most things really come down to solving problems, which is one of my passions in life.

Today we welcome back our guest writer, Renée Mineart. 

Rear Admiral Grace Hopper (1906-1992) was one of the first computer programmers in the world and she is the reason why we write code today with words, not zeros and ones.

Hopper wasn’t just one of the first developers in the world, she was also the first hacker, computer technical author, tester and considered the ‘Godmother of COBOL’.

Today, we welcome back Scott Summers with the final piece in his 'Testing Centre of Excellence' series. 

In this blog, I’d like to wrap up this series by providing some possible components for the scope of services that a TCOE might deliver. The scope of the Testing Centre of Excellence services should, ideally, fill the gaps in the testing and quality approach within the organisation. These can be identified through the review process I outlined in the previous blogs in this series:

Today we welcome back our guest writer Renée Mineart with a new blog on Women in IT. 

Have you ever been in a meeting where others would constantly talk over you whenever you try and raise a point? Or had something you said been completely ignored by everyone else in the room? Do you struggle to be taken seriously by your teammates when proposing highly complex solutions?

If you experience any of these conditions on a regular basis, then you might be suffering from being a Woman in IT. Now, you might think this isn’t a real issue or is no longer a reality. Surely, we have, in the 21st century, moved beyond these outdated attitudes towards women. If you think this is no longer an issue in the workplace, then you should probably think again.