Month in Review: February 2022

Zoopla Work

This month, I helped our team in introducing Pact Webhooks which I blogged about here - Using Pact Webhooks to Improve Contract Testing. The idea is every time there are changes in the consumer contract, our different provider verifications will be triggered automatically. This was postponed for a while due to having a private Gitlab instance so when we've finally switched over to a public Gitlab, I was very keen to get this work integrated to improve our contract testing experience.

We've also finalised our move to LambdaTest which was a smooth sailing experience in terms of inviting users and setting up their access. The support team's been very quick as well in responding to any of our queries on some issues that we've noticed.

From a managerial perspective, I met all of my direct reports in person and we went to the pub for a lunch and team building event. I also started having career conversations with

them on what they would like to focus on for this year.

Community Work

This month, I collaborated with the one and only Callum Akehurst-Ryan and produced a resource on how testers can be more effective when it comes to story shaping! I really enjoyed working with Callum on this one and we talked about what story shaping is, who's involved, why we do story shaping, what we should do as testers, what questions we should ask and how we can uncover risks. We also did an example story shaping session at the end to put it into practice. If you're interested in watching it, the video recording is added below.

After having read Nicola Lindgren's Starting Your Software Testing Career, I provided an honest review about the book. If you're interested in having a career in software testing or you want a refresher on testing practices and tools, then this book is for you!

I've also done some preparation for my first Contract Testing workshop, which was hosted by The Test Tribe community, and created session notes so the attendees can follow along with the workshop.

Personal Development

🏋🏻‍♀️ I was consistent with my movements and kept up with the exercises and even hit 20,000 steps on some days.

📚 This month, I continued reading Kristin Jackvony's The Complete Software Tester book and also started reading How To Talk So Little Kids Will Listen by Joana Faber and Julie King.

🎧 Consistently listened to my daily podcast episodes.

February Favourites

Unfortunately, Gabby caught Covid during the end of the month. She's feeling much better now although she has passed it over to me 😅

I still have a lot of things to be grateful for and the following are some of my favourites for this month.

• Gabby's 5th birthday 💜

• Watching Frozen the Musical (for the second time!)

• Watching Cirque du Soleil

• Meeting all my direct reports in person and having a great time playing Jenga.