30 Days of Testing

The Ministry of Testing has a fun 30 days testing challenge. It goes like this:

One challenge per day, 30 days of adventure and discovery. This kind of challenges are like going to the gym, or playing batucada. The more you put into it, the more you will get out from it.

This post will be my diary with how my journey happens to be.

#1 Get a Testing book, and read it before day 31. Getting the book was easy,  so the tricky part must be finishing it before day 31.

#2 Take a photo of something I am doing at work. We are welcoming @emerrefe our third Software Tester, now we are a team!!.


#3 Listen to a testing podcast: Podcast Addict is my app choice.

I found a podcast from The Testing Shown where they interview James Bach after his retreat in Orcas Island. The conversation was very interesting, even that I don't agree with everything James said. My team is an agile team, and I don't see my testing role to be threatened by any agilist around. However I did agree with the need we have as testers to care about our business and our own careers as testers. At the end this was a great podcast.

#4 Share a testing post with a non-tester. I picked this post from Amy Phillips, and shared it on the channel we have for readings. I'll update any conversation.

#5 Comment on a blog post. I added my comment in Javier Garzas blog.

#6 Perform a crazy test. I went for a road trip this summer with my family, 2 weeks on the road with 3 kids... And while we were cruising Germany and the Autobahn, in a non-limited stretch with no traffic I decided to test how fast our Renault Scenic would go. When I got close to 150 I decided to declare this speed as 'Fast Enough', concluded the test and went back to confy 120 km/h.

#7 Find an accesibility bug. I found a map from Valenbisi, the Public Bicycle rental service in Valencia, where the North is pointing to the East. This can be misleading for humans, who expect the North to be up, and for dwarfs who expect the East at the Top of the map.

#8 Download app and send 5 bugs. For this I picked Stridekick, a nice app that will allow you to create a challenge between people with different activity tracking devices. If you care about how many steps you take every day, and you know someone else who also cares, go and give them a try.

#9 Create a mindmap. This is not really a challenge, since I use mindmaps to document my testing plans, so every complex feature has his own. If you want to learn about what can get done with a mindmap, get a cup of coffee and check The ministry of Testing or TestInsane

#10 Find an event to attend. Finding testing events in Valencia is complicated, so we're hosting our own TestNight

#11 Take a picture of your team.
Well, here I have my small team, the ones who show up on the daily standup:


Then there is the local team, the ones we share our Valencia office.


Then there is my big global flywire team.



#12 Doodle a problem. This is something I do as I talk. My notebook is full of paintings explaining issues and tests, so instead I learnt how to do a prezi.

#13 Find a user experience problem. I reported this while doing #8, but it goes like this. If you have a mobile app, not being online should not be users problem, as an app, you should figure a way to deliver some value to the user.


#14 Step outside my confort zone. I arranged time with Customer Support team, so we spent some time watching them interact with our users. This was so fun, that we decided to repeat the experience, but since I went from my confort zone to a fun zone, I decided to try another thing.
I accepted the invitation to deliver a talk in Finland at the European Testing Conference about how is the testing I do.

Yah... this IS outside my comfort zone.


#15 Find a problem with a E-commerce site. I tried to make a Karma wireless hotspot work, but the app would refuse to accept a Paypal payment, maybe because the account was set in a different country. Again, if you plan to have users from all over the world, have this in mind when testing payment methods.


#16 Go to a non testing event. We host a Hacknight every last thursday of the month, this might be my non-testing event.


#17 Find and share a quote: I´ll give you two:

Rock'nRoll == learning new things and having fun.


Yogui Berra and his software testing estimation knowledge...

#18 Find a broken link. Doh! Found it and reported it. Hopefully we'll fix it soon as well.

#19 Find and use a new testing tool:
I got two, sublime text editor and oh-my-zsh mod for iTerm. After some months, I kept Sublime, and uninstalled the zsh one.

Uh, I also learnt something called jmeter.

#20 Find a good place to perform some security tests.
OWASP Top Ten, on our website.

#21 Pair Test with someone.
Yeah, almost every day.

#22 Share your favourite testing tool.
I'd say Xmind for mindmaps, and is you are into SBTM try Rapid Reporter.

#23 Help someone test better.
I run a weekly meeting where we watch a video from a testing conference, having a subscription to the DOJO is just an awesome source of testbash talks.

#24 Connect with a Tester you haven't previously connected with.
Not just one, I help running the local TestNight meetup, so it's pretty easy to connect with anyone whiling to attend to one meetup.

#25 Contribute to a testing discussion.
My view about what being a Context Driven Tester is like.

#26 Invite a non-tester to a testing event.
On our last TestNight, we had teachers and university students attending along with testers.

#27 Say something nice about the thing you just tested.
We made it!

#28 Summarise an issue in 140 characters or less.
As a tester,
I want to finish my #30DaysofTesting challenge
Even if it took me 30 days... and 5 months to complete.
So that I can close this project and move on to the next fun challenge ahead!

#29 Find an out by one error.
When you start writing a post using Blogger, and you get a permalink, and you schedule the publish time, when your post get's published it is under a different link.
The permalink was from the date I started writing the post.
The published link is from the date I published the link.

Then I wonder what is the value of getting a permalink that won't link to anywhere.

#30 Give someone positive feedback.
Done!, (check #31)

#31 Share your 30 days challenge.
Yeah, if you got this far, I am very grateful for your time.
Thank you!

Looking back to 2016

Here goes a post about how 2016 went. (Short story, hey, it has been great!).

We started the year with a hell of a party. Celebrating success when it happens is a great thing to do, bring on new challenges!

We managed to get Adrian (the father of the hacknight) to our office, so he got to know Miguel (the kid from the hacknight).

We went to Brighton(UK) for TestBash!

And I joined John Stevenson while Testing in the Pub.

We passed the BBST Foundations test!

We delivered our talk about 'Hiring testers from a small City' in ExpoQA Madrid, There is a recorded version of this talk both in English and Spanish.

I got visit! Gina & Santhosh came all the way to Valencia and we ended up drinking a beer together.

We hired MC! now we are three testers on the Flywire dev team.

This summer, the family went for a awesome road trip, so we visited Tudela, Bordeaux, Paris, Arnhem (That bridge, you know), Berlin, Prague, Vienna, Venice, Milan, Genoa and Perpignan. Good old Europe.

Because the dev team is growing a lot, we did a retreat out in the country.

I took the family on a trip to Boston, two weeks living in a house, driving a v6, shopping in a mall, discovering what living in the States is like.

With Tomislav, we delivered a talk about training testers and building testing communities at the local testing conference.

And at the end of this awesome year, I got tired of the beard, and we suited up one day just for fun.

We also tested features, deployed code to production, processed more payments than ever, hosted our TestNights, solved some of the problems that got out of the blue...

... And made plans to make 2017 another awesome year.