PRASHANT HEGDE
LEADER - BLOGGER - SPEAKER

In today's technologically advanced world, leadership is crucial to a business's success. New generations of leaders are taking over the torch from established leaders, ready to make their mark. As your testing career advances, it eventually leads to more responsibilities, including management and leadership. A testing leader's role goes beyond being an excellent tester. As a testing leader, you are responsible for the success and well-being of your team.

When testing leaders take on leadership roles, they usually do not receive any guidance or training on leading their teams. Whether you are a new testing manager, a seasoned one, or an informal leader, you will benefit from reading this article. What does true leadership mean? Let me share a story with you. In the epic Ramayana, there is an inspiring story about leadership that I often share with testing leaders. I want to share this with the readers of Tea Time with testers. Let us set aside the spiritual part of this anecdote and focus on the leadership lessons it offers.

The following is a summary of my interview with BugRaptors - Software Testing Company.

The discussion covered a variety of topics, such as self-discovery, what inspire me, test automation, myths about software testing, and quality engineering, among others. I hope to inspire others to pursue their passions and make their mark on the world of technology by sharing my insights and experiences.

I had a great time talking to BugRaptors 🐞🦖, check out the full blog post here👇

Gamification can be a powerful tool for engaging, motivating and developing testers within an organization. In this article, we will discuss everything you need to know about gamification and how to incorporate it into some of your software testing tasks.

​

We explore how gamification 🎮 can be used to make software testing more engaging, motivating, and fun. Game elements such as points, badges, and leaderboards can enhance motivation and performance among testers.

A must-read for software testers, developers, managers, and gamification enthusiasts👇
 

User experience design is increasingly essential for businesses today. 70% of online businesses fail because of poor UX (Uxeria). Startups either lack the budget to recruit a UX team or underestimate its importance. Testers can fill a great deal of that gap. Testers can make an impact by helping their organization create a world-class UX to delight customers beyond their expectations. 

My two-part article continues to explore some real-world examples of poor UX and how it affected me. Through these anecdotes, you will learn helpful UX concepts you can apply to your daily work, thus I also call them UX lessons.

In today’s digital world, software quality is key to the success of every organization 🔑 Customers keep coming back for quality products and services that work seamlessly without issues. Testers are the unsung heroes of software development who enable organizations to deliver high-quality software at a rapid pace.

​

If you are just starting out in testing or have been doing it for a while, you should read this article till the end. This two-part series discusses ten things you should learn as a new software tester to navigate a successful career in software testing. 

Building positive working relationships with team members is critical for testers’ success. There is, however, a catch. Testing requires skepticism, questioning, and critique. Because of the nature of the role, some people may even perceive testing as a destructive activity.

​

Testers have to disagree, debate, and sometimes even fight with their teammates to roll out a high-quality product. For the most part, a tester’s job is to find faults in others’ work. Despite their best efforts to be diplomatic and tactful, testers may find themselves in a conflict. As a result, testers may have strained relationships with their teammates. 

​

This article will discuss a helpful reasoning tool called Hanlon’s razor from the perspective of a tester. You will learn how to apply it in your day-to-day life to navigate through stressful situations and improve your workplace relationship.

Being an effective tester requires you to think like a detective, and no one is a born one. You don’t have to be a genius as portrayed in the movies, but just to think like a detective.

In the book, “Lessons Learned In Software Testing” they say that the difference between excellent testing and mediocre testing is how you think. To master your thinking, you need to understand how your mind works.

This article will discuss heuristics, biases, and some more practical tips to unleash the detective within you! A must-read for testers.

Innovation takes a back seat when testers are busy with day-to-day tasks like writing test cases and reporting bugs.

​

A Testing Center of Excellence (TCoE) is the hub of innovation. This team of experts, researches and adopts the latest trends, technologies, and tools to maximize the value of software testing across an organization. The TCoE constantly focuses on improving and standardizing testing and quality processes to provide a competitive edge for the organization. 

​

In this article, we’ll show you everything you need to know about the Testing Center of Excellence (TCoE) and the benefits of implementing it in your organization.

Organizations worldwide are adopting open-source software to drive technological innovations. Testers look beyond the obvious benefit of cost while embracing open-source test automation tools. The reliability, transparency, flexibility are added benefits of choosing an open-source test automation tool.

Saving time is saving money! Open-source tools save time reinventing the wheel to build your test automation framework from scratch.

“There is a wide range of open-source test automation tools available in the market today, but which one to choose?” 

Most testers do not follow a structured approach when evaluating an open-source automation tool. This article will discuss the factors you need to consider for choosing a test automation tool. 

Building effective teams is a necessity for every testing leader today. Successful leaders have one thing in common - their vision, the ability to see the big picture, and visualize success in the long term. At some point, all testing leaders ask themselves,

“How do I take my testing team to the next level?”

• Are you a QA leader striving to make an impact in your organization?

• Does your testing team have everything needed to succeed, but something keeps them back from reaching their full potential?

​

 This article discusses ideas that will help you to maximize your team’s engagement and productivity. Here are five clever ways to take your testing team to a whole new level.

Moving to a leadership role is an exciting opportunity for every tester to make an impact. However, stepping into it brings challenges and can be daunting.

Many young leaders don’t know how to handle this change. This article discusses the most common challenges they face and how to overcome them, to shape a successful career.

The map is not the territory - Testers, be skeptical about maps and models, understand their limitations.

Here this latest article I discuss a particular mental model called “The map is not the territory” and how it can guide your decision-making as a tester.
 

Testing is an intellectual activity that requires testers to explore, question, experiment, and even compare similar products. Most testers rarely conduct competitor analysis because they feel it’s not their job, and confine themselves to fewer testing responsibilities.

Competitor analysis is an excellent way that testers can add more value to their organizations. Here is an article on how competition analysis can help you 

• Mind map-driven testing can enable testers to prevent comprehensive forms of test documentation and focus on test idea generation.

• Mind mapping-driven testing exposes you to your thinking. It enables you to brainstorm and organize your ideas effectively.

• Lean test artifacts help you provide quick feedback to your developers and stakeholders, hence reducing the time-to-market of your software while ensuring high quality.

• Are you an experienced QA leader and were not trained on leading a team?

• Have you been just promoted as QA Lead or a Manager? And want to know how to succeed in your new role? 

• Are you a Sr. QA engineer aspiring to be a QA leader?

• Are you the informal lead of your team?

If yes, you have come to the right place. This article will deep dive into what leadership truly means and how QA leaders can be successful in their roles while creating a deep impact in their workspace.

Learn how to increase your productivity as a tester and make your life easier. Here is my latest article on Pareto’s principle and how you can apply it in your day-to-day testing activities.

When performing software testing, we fall prey to some unconscious psychological biases which lead to errors in our decision-making. Being aware of various cognitive biases helps you to counter their influence over you.
 

 Test Automation is the biggest enabler of agility. Test automation increases test effectiveness, efficiency, and coverage, saving time, effort, and cost. However many of us struggle to justify and measure the value of test automation. This is simply because we don’t measure it! What gets measured, gets done.

​

Measuring the value derived from automated testing using an ROI formula does not make sense. We should rather measure and justify investment in automation in terms of VALUE.

Prashant is an active participant in our community and has received the Golden Feedback of the Week Award. In order to know more about his background and gain some insight into his passion for the work he does in Quality Assurance, we decided to ask him some questions about his experiences, personal development, and advice for those looking to advance their QA careers.

Organizations no longer have the luxury to trade-off ‘quality’ over ‘speed,’ or vice versa, when delivering software. Organizations today have started to realize that in order to stay competitive, they need to deliver high-quality software at an accelerated rate by keeping the cost to a minimum. Organizations aspire to reach there by leveraging Agile and DevOps methodologies. 

“How to achieve quality faster?” Continuous Testing is the answer to the core question.

Chhatrapati Shivaji (Maratha King) was one of the most progressive and sensible rulers in the history of India.  We have heard countless stories of his victories when his tactics and practicality helped him win battles even when he was outnumbered.

​

An interesting lesson that we testers can learn from. history.

Let’s look at some fun sprint retrospective ideas that will help you to overcome the lack of creativity in the retrospectives boring.

An appraisal is an assessment of an employee. An employee’s performance is evaluated at an appraisal, and salary raises are given according to the employee’s performance

​

The appraisal process varies from organization to organization. The purpose of this article is to provide tips based on my personal experience in preparing for appraisal meetings and how to negotiate. Whatever your company’s appraisal process is, these tips will help you greatly to stand apart from the crowd. These tips will also help you with salary negotiations when you move on to a new job, The article is geared toward testers, but many ideas discussed here are applicable to everyone who want to ace their performance reviews.

This article explores three ways testing leaders can make a significant impact on their teams and organizations. These ideas will help change the perception of testing, drive better decision-making, improve collaboration, improve processes and ultimately deliver more successful outcomes.

​

Quality Assurance (QA) and Testing leaders must continually drive improvement and innovation within their teams and organizations. Testing leaders play a vital role in guiding their teams to deliver high-quality products that delight the users. Testing leaders must be proactive in adapting to rapidly changing business environments.

​

Click on the image to read more...

UX is not the only responsibility of the UX team. As a tester, you can add significant value by identifying features that compromise the User Experience(UX).

Some things are better learned through experience.

In this two-part article, I discuss some fascinating real-world examples of poor user experience and how they affected me. These examples will teach you a few UX principles that can be applied to your everyday work.

The article is a must-read for anyone involved in software development, including testers, UX professionals, and developers

The first thing that comes to mind when we think about Software testing is Functional testing. Non-functional testing is just as vital as functional testing. However, non-functional testing is many times an afterthought. Several testers refrain from performing non-functional testing because they feel it is outside their scope of testing.

This article covers what non-functional testing means and how we can prevent missing out on testing the non-functional requirements.

Software quality can make or break a company, and mistakes made in software testing can lead to significant financial losses for the business. Software testing is currently one of the most exciting and in-demand career options in the software world.

​

If you’ve decided to pursue a career in software testing but aren’t sure where to begin, you’ve come to the right place ✅ In this article, we’ll go over a few things that every new software tester should be aware of. 

​Software testing and detective work have a lot in common. In fact, testers are software detectives🕵️‍♀️ . To be an effective tester, you need to think like a detective. Both testers and detectives need to rapidly make critical decisions based on limited information at hand.

Unfortunately, we are not taught how to make good decisions under pressure in our education. In this two-part series, I discuss several ideas that can help you unleash your inner detective.

If you are a tester, you should not miss this one! Learn how to think like a detective -

Software testers depend on numerous testing techniques to unearth bugs and minimize the risks before the software reaches the end-users. In software testing, there is a misconception that Adhoc testing is ineffective. However, most testers are skeptical of this method and tend to use more formal techniques for finding errors.

​

• Is Adhoc testing worth performing?  

• Is Adhoc testing really ineffective?

• Is Adhoc testing the same as exploratory testing?

• ​

Let's find out.

Pair testing has been around for many years, and it is still popular among testers. Pair testing is a cheap and effective way to get more ideas about improving a product. It helps increase collaboration and team spirit, which encourages innovation. It has its advantages and some challenges too.

This article will discuss everything you need to know about pair testing.

Even with the increasing adoption of Agile and DevOps, many organizations still consider testers the gatekeepers of quality and are solely held responsible for the quality and approving releases. Such organizations blame testers for a missed production bug. 

​

No matter how much you test, a few bugs can still slip through the testing phase & reach production. Every software tester would have come across a situation of a missed bug. For many testers, it’s a terrifying nightmare. Such situations can be overwhelmingly stressful and scary!

​

This is a must-read article for testers,  that will discuss how a tester can deal with a bug in production. 

A High-performing team gives organizations a competitive advantage by achieving superior results.

​

​I’ve been building and coaching high-performing teams for several years. I want to share some insights and learnings from my personal experience in this article.

Open source test automation tools have revolutionized the way teams test software. This article discussed everything open-source and the benefits of choosing an open-source tool for test automation.
 

Have you noticed that the toddlers watch how their parents behave and later imitate what they observe?  Most of their learning happens through observation and mimicking the observed behavior.

Did you know that observational learning can act as a powerful learning tool for adults as well?

Learn how testers can benefit from observational learning.
 

Take a look at this checklist:

• Are you a tester who wants to do more than just finding and reporting bugs?

• Are you looking to add more value to the software development process?   

• Are you thinking about how you can prevent bugs that can bother customers? 

• Are you willing to go that extra mile for your users, to deliver the best customer experience?

• ​

If the answer to these questions is yes, you should continue reading…📖

Testing isn’t just about functionality anymore. Tester's need to focus on what matters to their customers by adopting a customer-first mindset. A customer-obsessed tester focuses on satisfying their customers by thoroughly understanding them and acting on those insights.

Are you a customer-obsessed tester? How are you as a tester providing the best possible experience to your customers?

Bug Bashes🐞 are a secret weapon that several organizations employ to roll out high-quality software. Bug bashing is an effective technique to combat bugs before major releases. Here is my latest article, which explains how to organize bug bashes by harnessing the power of your entire organization.

Learn how to make faster and effective decisions by leveraging a popular philosophical razor called Occam’s Razor. This is a very interesting post!

Detectives, doctors, and even scientists have used this mental model in their respective fields to find solutions by cutting unnecessary assumptions.

Read my latest article on "The Role of Occam’s Razor in Software Testing"

Overcome the barriers for testing at the speed of Agile/DevOps by embracing In-sprint test automation.

Several times testers fail to discover the problems that customers encounter. Why?
Many times it’s because of the Test data that is being used.

Organizations have embraced Agile and DevOps to deliver high-quality software in a faster and more efficient way. Test Automation is considered to be one of the biggest promoters of agility. But several times, the investment in Test Automation might not deliver its value with an ineffective strategy.

​

In this article, we will discuss devising an intelligent Test Automation strategy that can help us prevent common Test Automation failures.

This is critical for Software Testing, where Automation’s effectiveness is constantly debated. Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) play a crucial role in measuring the effectiveness and accuracy of your team’s automated testing efforts. KPI’s can aid in improving your automated testing process and tracking its status. Additionally, by communicating KPIs, your executive team will have more clarity about what exactly Test Automation can achieve.                                    

There are many different KPIs you can use. You do not need to use all of them; rather, choose those that best align with your business objectives. We chose 5 KPIs that we find quite universal and applicable to many industries and projects.

Postman is a Google Chrome app that helps you to create, save, send HTTP requests and test the response data.  It helps to automate the process of making API requests and testing API responses, allowing testers to establish a very efficient workflow. Most programmers and testers are familiar with Postman. However, many use it just to check the response for the services that they are working on. They are unaware of the powerful features that postman offers like: Collections, Tests and Pre-request scripts. In this article, I would like to give a quick overview of the test snippets provided by Postman.

Let’s look at some fun sprint retrospective ideas that will help you to overcome the lack of creativity in the retrospectives boring.