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  • Only one week left to register for the TASSQ session on January 27, 2026

    Only one week left to register for the TASSQ session on January 27, 2026

    How a Coach can transform your IT Career

    Presenter: Rob Virdee Location: Online – Zoom

    When: Tuesday January 27, 2026 6:15 p.m. (until 7:30 p.m.) EST

    Cost: $20.00 (CAD)
    Register at https://tassq.org/events.

    Presentation Abstract: HOW A COACH CAN TRANSFORM YOUR IT CAREER In today’s fast-paced tech landscape, technical skills alone won’t get you to the top. Whether you’re a developer, engineer, analyst, or aspiring leader, the key to thriving in your IT career lies in mastering the human side of success—clarity, confidence, and strategic growth. This webinar dives into how professional coaching can accelerate your career trajectory, helping you navigate challenges, build influence, and align your work with your deeper purpose. Join us to discover how coaching empowers IT professionals to break through plateaus, lead with impact, and future-proof their careers in an industry that never stops evolving. If you’re ready to move from reactive problem-solver to intentional change-maker, this session is your launchpad.

    National Software Testing and Quality Engineering Conference 

    The National Software Testing and Quality Engineering Conference is scheduled to take place on May 26, 2026, at the Delta Marriott in Downtown Toronto– 75 Lower Simcoe St, Toronto, ON M5J 3A6, Canada

    This conference is specifically designed for experts in software testing, quality assurance, and quality engineering, and it aims to provide a thrilling new gathering tailored to their needs.

    The field is currently experiencing a revolution with the introduction of AI, making this an ideal moment for professionals to take charge and stay ahead of the curve.

    By attending this one-day event in May, participants will have the opportunity to network with industry pioneers who are shaping the future, as well as leverage the power of AI through interactive workshops.

    About
  • AI and The Test Lead/Manager

    AI and The Test Lead/Manager

    In late 2025 NVP ran a webinar about the impacts of AI on a Test Lead/Manager.  We discussed both the changes by using AI in testing (test preparation, execution and reporting) and testing an AI infused system (non-deterministic output).  Recently we had a discussion with someone tasked with the latter problem and his solution to most of the problem.  Clearly there was more work to be done.   With the field of AI moving very quickly, some of what we said several months ago needs to be updated.  A new instance of this webinar will be run in March 2026.  Stay tuned for dates, times and registration details.

  • TASSQ Webinar for January 2026

    TASSQ Webinar for January 2026

    How a Coach can transform your IT Career

    Presenter: Rob Virdee Location: Online – Zoom

    When: Tuesday January 27, 2026 6:15 p.m. (until 7:30 p.m.) EST

    Cost: $20.00 (CAD)
    Register at https://tassq.org/events.

    Presentation Abstract: HOW A COACH CAN TRANSFORM YOUR IT CAREER In today’s fast-paced tech landscape, technical skills alone won’t get you to the top. Whether you’re a developer, engineer, analyst, or aspiring leader, the key to thriving in your IT career lies in mastering the human side of success—clarity, confidence, and strategic growth. This webinar dives into how professional coaching can accelerate your career trajectory, helping you navigate challenges, build influence, and align your work with your deeper purpose. Join us to discover how coaching empowers IT professionals to break through plateaus, lead with impact, and future-proof their careers in an industry that never stops evolving. If you’re ready to move from reactive problem-solver to intentional change-maker, this session is your launchpad.

  • A vision without the ability to execute is probably a hallucination

    A vision without the ability to execute is probably a hallucination

    This quote is interesting and would probably be disputed by many people. They would say that a Vision is something you want to do and whether or not it can be executed has no impact on its validity (or whether it is a hallucination).  While the quote is not new, the applicability to today’s world with the concerns expressed about AI Hallucinations provides it with a fresh applicability.

    Over the years we have encountered a lot of Visions for Software Testing and Quality Assurance.  Unfortunately, many of them do not get realised.  Budget is often stated as the main culprit despite the fact that almost all Visions relate to doing tasks better and cheaper.  Quality Assurance Visions are even worse.  Saying that we want to make Process Improvements without some concrete actions to back it up (not part of the Vision directly but certainly related) does not go very far.  But with no Vision at all, no improvement will ever occur and the same processes and same errors will recur for every project or initiative.

    Make 2026 the time you realise your Visions for Software Testing and Quality Assurance.

    Software Testing solves your problems for today and yesterday. Quality Assurance makes your Vision reality.

  • Half the money I spend…

    Half the money I spend…

    “Half the money I spend on advertising is wasted; the trouble is, I don’t know which half.” The above quote is attributed to various people. We want to apply it to Software Quality Assurance. 

    Quality Assurance is one of the areas where people (not in QA) feel that resources or funding are wasted since they see no immediate benefit. Avoiding the process improvement and incremental changes are simply piling up technical and resource debt for the future.  Bad processes do not fix themselves and usually get worse over time.  The cumulative debt increases until it is unmanageable.

    Every problem avoided is one less to fix. When creating or improving processes and applying them to any particular situation, it is necessary to measure the improvement by taking a baseline and checking for improvement or degradation.  The effort invested in measurement will pay back with further improvements.

    Software Testing solves problems for yesterday and today.

    Quality Assurance solves your problems coming tomorrow!

  • You can only predict things after they occur

    You can only predict things after they occur

    “You can only predict things after they occur” This quote was attributed to Eugene Ionescu in the source I had.

    There are several related quotes:

    “Those who have knowledge don’t predict” and its corollary “Those who predict, don’t have knowledge.”

    Or lastly: “The best way to predict the future is to create it” (Peter Drucker).

    Maybe we could use these quotes the next time someone says how long testing is going to take.  The interesting part is when you push back and say: “How long did it take last time?” or “How much bigger (in whatever the favourite measure is) is this project compared to the last one?”.  Neither of those questions elicit much useful information or a response at all so the analogous method using internal numbers is unavailable.

    If you have no previous statistics from the organisation, there are lots of statistics available online or you can use one of the Estimation Methodologies (PERT, Planning Poker, WBS, Function Point Analysis or Test Point Analysis).  They provide a good starting point but must be adjusted for the particular situation. 

    One of the major aspects of Quality Assurance is to gather up statistics on what occurred last time and use that to predict the future. While no one can get 100% accuracy, it certainly helps to know what occurred in the past.  Adjust for the situation at hand and go forward.

    Software Testing solves problems for yesterday and today.

    Quality Assurance solves your problems coming tomorrow!

  • Don’t fix issues later; fix them now – Part 2

    Don’t fix issues later; fix them now – Part 2

    Last week we discussed the problems of putting off resolving issues and the extra costs incurred.  Due to the response received we thought we would revisit the issue with one further example and how it was solved.  Please review the post from last week, and particularly the third example (reproduced below) as an introduction to the problem.

    1. Failure to agree on defect metrics lead to inconsistent counts and hours wasted reconciling expectations between the vendor and client.

    The above, more general, problem manifested itself in a particular instance shortly after a new QA Manager showed up to take over the project.  About a week later, there a ‘crisis’ about 6 missing issues recording enhancements that needed to be costed by the software vendor.  The QA manager had not seen them at that time.  The vendor seemed to have no track of them.  However, the issues were recorded in a well-known issue tracker so they weren’t lost, just somewhere with a wrong classification.  Eventually they were found and put back into active consideration.

    Process changes solved the issue for the rest of the project:

    1. An initial classification was carried out by the client QA manager and then discussed at the Daily Issue Review meeting with the vendor to ensure that all issues were correctly classified within 24 hours of being raised.
    2. The second change was to add a view to the Issue Dashboard to list issues that had not been touched for 3 days.  This was a secondary check in case something was misassigned and was not begin addressed. It would be picked up 3 days later and checked.  N.B. Obviously this could be gamed by having someone go through and look at every issue every couple of days and stop them landing on the list.  See point 3.
    3. Every month and more frequently as the project came close to completing, a full listing of all Not Closed issues was reviewed just to ensure that nothing was being lost or simply moved forward without resolution.

    ‘Crisis’ solved and it did not return for the duration of the project. 

    Clearly, if there were few enough open issues, then memory would be enough to know what should be there.  In a multi year project with many testers and an external vendor this was more critical.

    Software Quality Assurance solves problems for yesterday, today and tomorrow.

  • Don’t fix issues later; fix them now!

    Don’t fix issues later; fix them now!

    “Don’t fix issues later; fix them now ” or “Never put off to tomorrow what you can do today”. This seems so obvious but try doing it in a project when the schedule and budget are under pressure.  If this is restricted to Software Testing then issue classification and prioritisation can help to clarify which issues are worth fixing and which can be safely left for a future release. 

    However, if the issue relates to a process used in the project, then not only does the issue potentially impact the schedule and budget at the time it is discovered, but it will impact the project each time that process is repeated.  Fixing it now will not only save the current project time and money; it will save the coming projects a lot more assuming it is documented and the fix is implemented.  Some processes we have seen add time and budget to a project include the following:

    1. Failure to classify defects and move them to the relevant group allowed one person to repeatedly reclassify defects and change priorities until the software vendor bogged down in multiple half completed code changes.
    2. Moving ahead with documentation that had not been fully reviewed and approved lead to more changes and a huge recoding effort.  In particular, adding an approval step to every piece of documentation in a system meant opening every function to code an extra step.
    3. Failure to agree on defect metrics lead to inconsistent counts and hours wasted reconciling expectations between the vendor and client.

    Fixing any of these would have saved millions of dollars and years of time on the project.

    Software Quality Assurance solves problems for yesterday, today and tomorrow.