Anne-Marie Charrett

anne-marie charrett

More than a maverick tester

Some of you may know I've changed the title of my blog from Maverick Tester to AnneMarieCharrett.com. But why the change? These days I write about a lot of things, and some of them are outside of software testing.. I write about quality engineering,  leadership and sometimes about women

Quality Engineering

Habits and Shu Ha Ri

Whatever happened to Shu Ha Ri? It was the bees-knees of learning processes about 4 years ago. Now crickets...or perhaps I'm not moving in the right circles. Anywhooo, had a lunch chat with the lovely Paul Hughes from CultureAmp. (If you're wondering, he ate healthy carrots and tuna, I

Quality Engineering

Habits in Quality

I often get asked as a quality coach, how do you get teams to do more software testing? It's a tricky one, because as quality coach you don't have any direct authority over anyone in the team. You could try and tell them to do it, but in my experience

Quality Engineering

It's all one elephant

Recently, I posted on twitter a representation of how I see the differences between coaching, mentoring and training. The lens I chose to look through was that of direction. How much the person coaching, is actively providing guidance. > Its just a question of quality - quality strategy https://t.co/

Quality Engineering

3 Amigos - a sequel

In agile, the 3 Amigos is a collaboration event that takes place between QA, Product and Engineering [https://www.annemariecharrett.com/3-amigos-in-agile/]right before the start of software development. The purpose is develop a shared understanding over what is being built, and what will be tested  In this new version,

Software Testing Content

The 3 Amigos in agile

I’m exploring the 3 Amigos in agile at the moment, as I feel it may be in need of a makeover. But first, the traditional view of the 3 Amigos. I know, there’s already loads of articles on the 3 amigos, but I thought it might be useful

Leadership

Supporting the whistleblowers

Whistleblowers I’ve written before on how software testers [https://mavericktester.com/2020/05/23/inflicting-help/] think differently and play a different role to others in a technical team. In the past, a typical non testing view of the role was gatekeeper. This really didn’t turn out so well.

Leadership

Be your best self

Leadership is being your best self. Easy to say, harder to implement. For starters, what the hell does ” be your best self” mean? And why is that leadership? For me, being my best self, doesn’t mean achieving goals. It doesn’t mean going to the gym, eating the right

Software Testing Content

The Scab Picker

As I child I received the usual number of knocks and bumps, cuts and the inevitable scabs that grew as my body healed itself. I enjoyed nothing more than spending time picking away at these scabs. I wanted to explore and uncover, pick and observe in fascinating as the pink

Quality Engineering

Creating a Culture of Quality

A culture that is embedded figuratively eats everything around it. Once a culture is defined, it takes on a life of its own. Slowly, bit by bit, more bricks are laid on top of those early foundations, those decisions. And, before you realise it, your culture has been set.

Leadership

Questions over Answers

Growing up, I remember listening to Bob Dylan on the radio with perplexment. He would sing: > “the answer my friend is blowing in the wind” To a twelve year old, this made little sense. How could wind, something invisible, fluid and uncontrollable provide any solution, any answer? And because the

Leadership

Look for the helpers

* Its not about winners and losers * It’s not about right versus left * Its not about good or bad, right or wrong * Its not about pass or fail, testing versus checking, manual versus automation Its’s about the helpers. Always look for the helpers [https://youtu.be/-LGHtc_D328]. It’

Quality Engineering

Keynoting Remotely Selenium Conf 2020

I had the absolute pleasure to be invited to keynote at SeleniumConf 2020 in Bangalore. I had decided in February to talk about test leadership and how to lead through uncertainty. And that was before COVID-19 came on the scene! It’s the first time I’ve spoken ‘live’ online

Quality Engineering

Outcome over output

I discovered the concept of outcome over output in 2014 through Jenny Mar’s work on OOPSI [https://jennyjmar.com/2016/04/16/bdd-discovery-and-oopsi/]. This led to Teresa Torres [https://www.producttalk.org/] awesome work on outcomes and opportunity This blog post is tagged #qualityhack. A quality hack reminds us

Quality Engineering

The Software Mechanic

Having explained the role of a software tester to a non IT person they replied: > So it’s like I’m taking my car to a garage to get serviced by a mechanic and all that the mechanic does is to find everything that needs to be fixed, tell me

Quality Engineering

Good Enough (Perfectly Applied)

This is a series of blogs posts tagged quality hack. Quality Hack is a phrase I’ve coined to emphasise the importance of focusing on delivering “good enough” software, and embracing the cult of imperfection. If you wish to contribute a post, contact me either on twitter [https://twitter.com/

Leadership

Coaching Upwards

I struggle to complete blog posts. Lena Wiberg [https://twitter.com/LenaPejgan] suggested we do pair-blogging on a same topic. It’s a great idea. Here’s my version. Lena’s angle is more personal and I love it. You can read it here. Thanks Lena for the suggestion. This

Quality Engineering

Inflicting Help

Pain is our bodies way of telling us to stop doing something. Stop putting your hand on a hot stove, stop hammering your thumb, stop walking into lampposts… Like it or not, our profession, software testing, unwittingly creates pain in others. Shattering illusions does that. Have you seen that look

Software Testing Content

The beginning of discovery

Lisa Crispin [https://lisacrispin.com/] picked up on this small seemingly innocent sentence about the importance of ‘shallow tests’ in discovery > “These [shallow] tests are often essential beginnings to discovery”Anne-Marie Charrett“Shallow Testing gets a bad rap” [https://mavericktester.com/2018/10/17/bos-series-shallow-testing-gets-a-bad-wrap/] I’m glad she did,

Quality Engineering

When the rubber hits the road

Anyone who has attempted to create and then implement a strategy,  will know there’s a big difference between what is intended when the strategy is written, and what is realised on implementing a strategy. To the point in software testing, there’s been a push away from writing formal

Leadership

Test Management Revisited

The concept of test management sits awkwardly in agile, mostly because it’s a construct derived from the time when testing was a post-development phase, performed by independent testing teams. These teams were often of significant size, to reduce the time required to perform test execution. A test manager was

Quality Engineering

Starting Something

Your first child. Like many parents, I vividly recall my moment of reality when I realised my life (in a weird and wonderful way) would never be the same again. Being pregnant with my first child now feels like a time of great excitement and also great indulgence. Baby showers,

women in tech

The Gratitude Jar

2019 has been an eventful year for many and the start of a new year is a great opportunity to say throw a slip into a gratitude jar [https://josierobinson.com/journal/how-to-use-a-gratitude-jar] to thank to those around you who have supported you in some way. Being the blog author

Software Testing Content

2020: The year of dumping old heuristics

When software testing, it’s handy to use mnemonics/heuristics to refer to. They can be useful as generators of test ideas, or reminders to test in a particular way, or to consider some aspect. What’s a heuristic? Think of a heuristic as a rule of thumb that helps

Quality Engineering Featured

13 Low Cost Ideas to start Quality Coaching right away!*

The idea of being a Quality Coach or starting a Quality Coach program can seem overwhelming. Where do you actually start? You might get advice like the one above from the King in Alice in Wonderland gave which can seem profound, but in concrete terms, not very helpful! The scope