Welcome to TESTHEAD

OK, why the need for a blog like this? Well, truth be told, I don’t know that there really is a “need” for this blog, but I’m doing this as a challenge to myself. I consider this an opportunity to “give back” to a community that has helped me over the course of many years, as I have been the beneficiary of many great insights and learned a lot from a number of people and sources over nearly two decades.

First off, professionally, I am a Tester. It's been what I've done in one way, shape or form for most of my career. As such, I am strangely drawn to the fine art of "breaking things on purpose" and then trying to find ways to improve the process so that they do not break again.

Being a Tester requires a bit of many disciplines. Saying "I like to test things" really isn't enough. A good Tester needs to have some understanding of the Software Development Cycle. This means that, to really be good at what they do, they need to "embrace the code", and I'll be the first to say I've had my fair share of ups and downs with that. They also need to have some skills with troubleshooting systems and finding solutions to issues. They need to be able to communicate to a broad group of people as to what they are doing, and ultimately, they need to be a part of the solution to the issue whenever possible. It's in the spirit of those areas I hope to contribute something here.

Most of all, this will be a site where I share my own experiences, both good and bad, and what I've learned from them. Expect there to be talk about tools, both proprietary and open source. Expect some talk about test case design (and how I so hate to do it at times). Expect to hear me vent about some frustrations at times, because like all people, I have my share of frustrations when things don't seem to work correctly or go the way that I planned them to. Expect me to share ideas on testing that don't divulge too much of what I do at my day job... much as I find what I do interesting, chances are there's not much anyone who is not in my particular niche market (software applications for the Legal industry) will be able to use outside of that area, but if I come across a cool concept or a neat way to do something, I'll definitely put a more generic example of it here. Most of all, expect to get a real person's perspective on these things and an attempt to communicate them in plain English, whenever I possibly can.