I was recently invited by Fabian Böck for a chat over on his Youtube channel where he frequently interviews people in tech on various topics of interest in the industry. My talk was focused on how to steer the direction of your tech career. We had a fantastic talk about how to pave learning avenues, set for yourself time to reflect, and how companies should be enabling their workforce. And most importantly, how to ‘Never Feel Stuck’ in where you are – even if you are happy or not and use continuous learning and self improvement to guide yourself to better places!
Here is a link to the video interview-
Fabian’s company Boeck and XOXO works on Tech Conventions x Matchmaking Marketplace x Tech Talks. Check them out for more interesting talks and content!
I was invited to take a MasterClass by the wonderful people at the Ministry of Testing last month. They had a ‘Communities’ theme going on for the month of June 2021 and they loved my talk idea about Leveraging Tech Communities. So we worked around that theme to create a talk on “Grow your Career with Tech Communities”
I am proud to announce another one of my contributions made its way to the eBook titled ‘21st Century Skills for Software Testers‘. This initiative was started by Emna Ayadi and Ard Kramer asking for contributions from various testers on their thoughts about the essential pivotal skill sets that benefit software testers.
🚀 This bilingual book made by software testers is all about: How we apply 21st-century skills: 🔸 Critical thinking 🔹 Communication 🔸 Collaboration 🔹 Creativity and also how we are going to use these skills in the future.
This was a great initiative to bring together thoughts of many great testers from around the globe. There are some great pieces featured and a number of things to learn. I am super excited to feature in not one but Two sections in there –
Check out what I wrote in the First section of ‘Critical Thinking’ – Section 1.1.15 ‘Stories of Testers from the Present’ and Section 1.2.8 ‘Imaginations and Thoughts of Testers’
Conferences, events and meetups are all things I enjoy. I have been an organizer, speaker & presenter, host and volunteer at many events. When 2020 started, I had big hopes and plans of travelling to speak at multiple international events and also had a few local Bangalore events lined up. But the world had to face a pandemic and everything came to a screeching halt.
As many of you, I was disheartened too. But I still hoped for things to get better, thinking we might get to some of the events at least. Things are different now. We now know that this lifestyle is here to stay. We have been working, learning, recruiting, networking and meeting remotely and might have to continue to do so for a while.
But where does this put the life of a ‘speaker’ – someone who enjoys speaking, being invited to attend and talk at events?
Well, I would like to highlight how I have been pleasantly surprised by the state of our events and their emergence from all the cancellations, losses and hearbreaks!
In the past 6 months, I have spoken at more events I would have normally! I have had the chance to connect with multiple events in various ways and all of them have shown me the resilience of our community.
TestBash Home 2020
It started with TestBash Home. Since TestBash Detroit was cancelled where I was to speak in April this year, I was invited to speak at the Testbash Home. It was a unique and fun event handled superbly by the MoT team. I have written in detail about the event and my experience here – https://testwithnishi.com/2020/05/07/my-experience-speaking-at-testbash-home/
TribalQonf , STeP-In Summit, Test Leadership Congress 2020
I was invited by Mahesh Chikane to speak at the TribalQonf which was a great opportunity. I presented about Adopting a Risk Based Test Approach and my talk was appreciated for which I am always #grateful !
I am super excited to share that I have my first ever contribution to an eBook now published on Leanpub. This eBook called “Software People- Work From Home” is initiated and compiled by Stephan Kamper and Maik Nogens which has many software professionals from all around the globe contributing their stories, experiences and ideas on their work-from-home experiences.
In my chapter , I wrote about Speaking and Engaging from home in this pandemic-induced lock-down situation. I shared my take on engaging with your colleagues, engaging with the community and also with oneself while working from home. Check out Chapter-9 in the eBook to read my contribution. Please give it a read and support this wonderful initiative –> https://leanpub.com/softwarepeopleworkfromhome
Catch updates and opinions about the book, and tweet about it using the hashtag #SoftwarePeopleWfhBook
My Work-from-Home Desk
Another fun aspect of this eBook is getting to see all the fun ‘work-from-home’ setups and desk images shared by the authors along with their write-ups. It brings a sense of belonging, understanding and normalcy to this unique situation and helps you relate to the writer’s life and experiences. I , too shared by home desk image! 🙂
Find out how software people experienced the corona-virus-caused time working from home!
Software people from all over the planet share their insights & experiences, opinions, and tips.
The coronian times during the year of 2020 have – in fact are still at the time of the writing – proven to provide a good number of challenges for everyone.
I recently had a chance to chat with Mr. Thomas Cagley in an interview for his wonderful Podcast channel SPaMCAST. We talked all about Agile Testing, its differences from the traditional approach of testing, Agile Pods and the upcoming trends in the testing world!
It was a wonderful experience and I am grateful for having the chance to talk to one of the people I so look up to in the industry. Here is the link to the podcast show notes and info
I will be presenting a 90 minute- hands-on workshop on:
“Selenium with Cucumber for an extended BDD Framework”
Are you interested in looking into the trend of Behavior Driven Development? Would you like to see it in action using Cucumber? Would you like to integrate your functional tests in such a framework using integration of Selenium within Cucumber? Then this is the workshop for you!
This workshop will cover
Practical issues faced by most testing teams
Behavior Driven Development – the definition and need
Extending the Agile User stories and acceptance criteria in BDD scenarios
Cucumber as a BDD tool
Integration of Cucumber with Selenium in order to perform functional tests
Demo using Cucumber with Selenium with a real use case
Continuing the discussion on the Hawaii Missile Alert which made headlines in January 2018 and turned out to be a false alarm and ended up raising panic amongst almost a million people of the state all for nothing, (read here for detailed report) I would like to bring back the focus on implications of poor software design leading to such human errors.
Better software design is aimed at making the software easier to use, fit for its purpose and improving the overall experience of the user. While software design focuses on making all features easily accessible, understandable and usable, it also can be directed at making the user aware of all possibilities and implications before performing their actions. Certain actions, if critical, can and should be made more discrete than the others, may have added security or authorisations and visual hints indicating their critical nature.
Some of the best designers at freelancer.com came together to brainstorm ideas for better software design and to revamp the Hawaii government’s inept designs. They ran a contest amongst themselves to come up with the best designs that could avoid such a fiasco in future.
Sarah Danseglio, from East Meadow, New York, took home the $150 grand prize, while Renan M. of Brazil and Lyza V. of the Philippines scored $100 and $75 for coming in 2nd and 3rd, respectively.
Here is a sneak peek into how they designed the improved system :Read More »
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