the reluctant tester

Perpetual learner of the craft of Software Testing,Servant Leadership and creating better Teams

Testing/Leading

  • Starter pack on Penetration/Security Testing for newbies

    As an experienced Tester, recently I have been endeavouring to grow my Penetration & Security Testing skills. As with any new skill-set the journey can get overwhelming very quickly , because of the vast number of concepts, new terminologies, lack of dedicated mentorship and research sources . Based on my learning and explorations over the… Continue reading

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  • Testing is “easy”

    Testing is easy, you just have to ….. 1. Elicit user needs from missing or no requirements (usually in a single Tester Team) 2. Be great at analytical thinking and detecting your own biases  3. Analyze and understand end to end architectural risks 4. Analyze and understand end to end business process  5. Be resilient in… Continue reading

  • Organisational QA/Testing smells

    On the lines of “Code smells” , QA/Testing related smells in my experience, fall into these 4 broad categories (of root cause(s)) Apathy – Disregard for Testing as a function/craft Hubris – Talent or position driven blindspots that lead towards flawed decision making Ignorance – No one has shown them how to do better or… Continue reading

  • Reflection :: The toll of Leadership and an year of being self employed

    I have been very fortunate to be in leadership roles for 8 years now, ranging from Team Leadership, mentoring, to leading a practice (business line) of extremely competent Testers. It has been in the top 3 fulfilling experiences of my professional & persona l life. Seeing individuals succeed with (some of) your assistance, advise and… Continue reading

  • Heuristics for debugging integration problems

    Outstanding Testers (that I have had the chance to work with/coach) did not just “report that there was a fire” , they were skilled at investigating and communicating – How long the fire has been burning ? What is the scale of impact ? Which areas are affected vs not ? What is the nature… Continue reading

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  • There will always be a job for you , if,

    Stop sweating over whether <insert latest tech trend> will take your job away, rather focus on getting better @ Learning new tools and practices with curiosity Putting Team outcomes before individual outcomes Sharing your knowledge Improving your facilitation skills Improving your public speaking Learning to build persuasive  business cases Writing code every day Volunteering in… Continue reading

  • Failure is good, it is an actual option, take it

      Since childhood (or the time when we were all artists) , we have been programmed to perceive failure as a non-viable option. Something that needs to be avoided , dreaded and is socially unacceptable “If you fail at <x> exam, you will end up being a failure in life” , constraints like this are… Continue reading

  • Testing != Automation

    Automation is not the goal . The goal(s) is to – Make humans effective at the craft of discovering,communicating and advocating risks to user experience,commercial reputation and utility of what we ship. Keep feedback loops to humans as short as possible Provide information to humans that is reliable and consistent( to answer the question…”if we… Continue reading

  • Self assessment skills matrix for a Testing practice

    During my stint as a Test Practice Lead last year, one of the key strategic initiative that I created and led was to assess and uplift skills and capability of the whole test practice. The process that I employed to deliver on that initiative was – Create a framework for Testers in the practice to… Continue reading

  • “Testing is slowing us down” , moving from blame to involvement and engagement

    “It is Testing that is really slowing the Project down” “Why are we finding all these bugs, so late in the Project” “Testers must be testing edge cases to death” I dont know of many experienced Testers who haven’t heard  some or all of the above statements before . I heard it again yesterday and… Continue reading

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About Me

I’m Sunjeet Khokhar

An experienced People Leader,Practice Lead  and Test Manager .

I am driven by the success of people around me, am a keen student of organisational behaviour and firmly believe that we can be better craftspeople by being better humans first.

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