Thinking out loud as usual. If I say we have been failing at finding a #ContemporaryExploratoryTesting profile, I don't by all means think we have talked to every possible candidate. But I find it fascinating how people would think the ones they employ and hold on would be so much better than the excellent people on free market we have not yet found.

I believe there are a lot of good people. But also a lot of mismatch correctable by training.

We have been unsuccessful at recruiting a tester for a team building embedded devices. We've looked for seniors. We've looked for promising juniors. But the leap of faith on believing their background knowledge would help them succeed has been quite extensive.

So today I am dreaming of a whole team of newbie testers to train. If only I had the time and the budget.

#ContemporaryExploratoryTesting - resultful testing - is hard to find.

Modeling #ContemporaryExploratoryTesting, bits worth remembering.

Meeting another company's managers reminded me that we model what and where is #ExploratoryTesting very differently. Instead of drawing the box of exploratory testing that includes all worthwhile parts of test case -based testing, I split this to timeline of activities.

I've been identifying with the #ContextDrivenTesting crowd professionally for decades while stepping away from the pair of individuals who make appearances of it being their thing. Seeing CDT described as
- non-automated
- whole-product
- exploratory-focused
helps me see difference that lead me to #ContemporaryExploratoryTesting that is:
- automating
- all levels leading up to whole products
- exploratory-focused centring agency and learning

Slides for a new improved version of Whose Test Is It Anyway for #DevTalks uploaded at https://speakerdeck.com/maaretp/whose-test-is-it-anyway

It strips away the parts of messaging I confused myself and audiences with a week earlier, and comes to yet another framing I have for #ContemporaryExploratoryTesting in intersection of Improv in Testing, Ensemble/Pair Testing and Programmatic Tests.

Next week I introduce to the test conferencing world my best addition to testing, my lifelong gift that keeps on giving and a brilliant senior tester: @Mii who also happens to be my sister. She will join me at #EuroSTARConf where I keynote.

She advanced in her career titles at a record pace, and excels in what I have come to speak of as #ContemporaryExploratoryTesting.

If you are around, come and talk to us on all things testing and some beyond.

Episode highlights article from #QATherapy episode with me on #ContemporaryExploratoryTesting. https://www.getxray.app/blog/contemporary-exploratory-testing-podcast-highlights

[Blog] Tale of Two Teams #testing - #ContemporaryExploratoryTesting #TraditionalTesting https://visible-quality.blogspot.com/2023/04/tale-of-two-teams.html

Testing vs. Checking is making rounds again on LinkedIn to the extent that the number of new people jumping to correct my language of "tests" to "checks" is approaching overwhelming.

I think the language correction - and this particular language correction - hasn't driven a positive change in the last 10 years even though I have a sense of small improvement on understanding #ExploratoryTesting and #AutomationInTesting (#ContemporaryExploratoryTesting).

When I read a list of brilliant people AND notice I no longer am the only one with #ContemporaryExploratoryTesting on their agenda, I am just happy. https://agiletestingdays.com/blog/100-women-in-tech-to-follow-learn-from/

I met another one identifying as REBEL leaving her LEGACY in the world: Shruti Pandey. While I have dubbed the way I teach testing #ContemporaryExploratoryTesting, I recognise so much in common for us. Foundation of programming/automation. Going for results over split to manual/automated. Wanting to help others grow.

Next week we work together on unlearning. No idea what will come out of that, but sometimes those are the best sessions. I envision a "LAWST in scale" in a distributed world.

Very cool applications of ML / computer vision on particular visual representations of data. The things humans recognise from an image recognised automatically, allowing less attended work on looking at the visualisations and being called in when needed. Sounds so much like things I work on with #ContemporaryExploratoryTesting. But ML in test is lower priority than ML in products so we miss "data and payer of new solutions" as Heini Ahven summarised in thesis work: https://itinsider.fi/blog/tekoalyn-haasteet-testauksessa-ovat-data-ja-maksaja/

#ContemporaryExploratoryTesting frames automation as something that is an integral part of how we test. It serves at least four purposes. We document with automation. We use automation to get to places. We use automation to call us to attend. And we use it to force us detailed understanding.

People keep saying that manual testing is time-consuming and error-prone, especially in comparisons with automated testing. With the amount of time we use on automated testing and the special profile of errors we catch and completely miss, it just isn't the dimension we should be discussing.

I use attended and unattended testing in frame of #ContemporaryExploratoryTesting. Results, direct costs and opportunities costs must be balanced, and we want systems do (some of) the work when we're gone.

Tested today: explaining to a director that the same way we moved from "manual testing" to "automated testing", we are now transitioning to "programmed tests" and it is essentially different way of thinking about how testing is organised. Makes a good elevator pitch for #ContemporaryExploratoryTesting.

Making my way though organizing all the talks, panels, tutorials, workshops and trainings I’ve done and that is a lot. I have clearly these periods of ‘something new’ and then I go back to integrating that to how I teach #ContemporaryExploratoryTesting . My attitude of ‘sure I got plan why you need to see it when you aren’t doing any of it, trust me’ all maps back to this too. Continuous planning and learning.

If #ContemporaryExploratoryTesting and figuring out what is wrong with the popular notions of how people still describe testing as 'manual' and 'automated' are things you might want to do, we have a slack space for it: https://forms.gle/ksjNouzn3HQvBEqG7

I should really set up more automated way of bringing in new people.

When I teach #ContemporaryExploratoryTesting with Automationist's Gambit, I usually end up throwing a group on newbies at test automation with python-playwright. Yesterday brought out the common question: where do I initialise the webdriver. People with some experience get very confused when things are abstracted away and they aren't doing polytool / polyglot work.

Being asked if the #ExploratoryTesting I am researching is 4.0, my first response is that there is no version number to what I now consider #ContemporaryExploratoryTesting. Then I found older illustrations. While the five still stands, the first words to describe have changed since I did this.

With #ContemporaryExploratoryTesting, I have two types of test automation. I have ones that belong to us all and ones that belong to me. For a long time I thought I don't need the second, but I do - to ground a few major outwards facing things that should not change without me realizing. I can't see this change without automation as my grounding point.