Blogs for the community

At Let's Test in Sweden I finally met Pradeep Soundararajan. In a break which I took from the sessions I had the chance to chat with him and while talking I remarked at some point that I sometimes don't know what is useful for others to blog about. Pradeep raised his Eyebrows and said "This is interesting!" Not knowing what he actually meant, I asked him and he proposed to brainstorm for about 25 things which would be helpful for the community of context-driven software testing to blog about. Here's what we came up with in the next half an hour or so. It's a list for you to be inspired. As it came from brainstorming we did not like all our ideas but decided to still write them down and filter them later if they don't prove right.

What went wrong at your place and how did you fix it?

Sometimes we have similar problems. Knowing what others face and how they actually coped with it could trigger some new ideas, when we face a similar situation.

What did you think went right but actually went wrong?

This is about pitfalls which you might sense after you did fall into them. If we know more about what covers them up we might see through the covers next time.

What went wrong in your company and made you stuck?

These unsolved riddles make people think. And they might even come up with an idea to help you or learn from it.

Hammer problem experiences

When you own a new hammer everything looks like a nail. If you keep pounding on things with it you will learn in which situations that is helpful and when it's a trap.

In what way did we learn something

Sometimes you realize something. Maybe that same experience, told to someone else, can trigger learnings for someone else, too. What happened to you so you had that learning?

Listing test-ideas

You found a new approach? Or you assembled a list of fitting test-ideas which apply perfectly to your context? Great! Share them!

Ambiguity about terms

Shallow agreements might result from terms which are ambiguous to different people. If we uncover them or learn where to look for them we can solve problems before they escalate.

How did you implement a certain heuristic or oracle?

Or when did you not and for what reason? How did that help? Examples might clarify things for people.

Challenging an already published content

You read/heard/saw something which misses a detail or a consideration? Why not add that? Or do you disagree? Then your points might be interesting to talk about.

Promoting other content

You have been on a conference or heard of someone who is new to the community? Or you remembered something which almost forgotten? This could be interesting to write about!

Experience of meeting someone you didn't yet know in person

I had a lot of tweets from Pradeep in my timeline retweeted from my tweeps long before I met him now. Meeting him in person and adding some body language to the static picture can be interesting also to others.

Seemingly contradicting thoughts and ideas

You heard of two ideas which seem to contradict each other no matter if you came up with one of them or both? They could be a start for an interesting discussion.

Experience of a workshop/training

This might be self-explanatory: why should people go there? What is it all about?

What did you learn from seeing someone?

No matter if you know that person, their personality could nudge something in you which you might want to share.

Distractions before you can do test-work

I am afraid of setting up a test framework at clients. It really scares me. Blogs about how to do it would help me a lot. Maybe you find something else worth mentioning to beginners of some color.

Where do you think the community is going wrong?

You have a feeling to walk into a dead-end? Why? What do we have to change? If you reach enough people you might help the whole community before we actually get stuck.

A new tool or utility which might be used?

You tried something new? Was it helpful? In which context? Where do we get more information and how did you stumble on it in the first place?

Testing practice grounds

There are lots of people organizing workshops, retreats and other kinds of meetings where practice grounds can be helpful. Do you know of hard to test software or very buggy stuff? Or did you hear about a company asking for help in testing? Share it!

Testing and tester's cultures around the world

Testing is actually done and valued differently in different cultures, countries and companies. It can be very interesting to search and analyze those differences.

Better approaches to interview testers

You are hiring testers or were hired recently? What are you looking for? How do you get to know people? What challenges do you face?

What did you change at your company and why?

It's interesting to read about impacts and reasons for changes in other companies. Again this is a great way to come up with additional thoughts.

How to get involved with customers

I often see testers huddled up in there test-labs just testing the software. But also expectations and acceptance criteria are worth to be tested. Still many testers don't see or hear real customers. What are ways and arguments to change that?

The cost of not involving testers

Your testers were left out at some point and something went awfully wrong? Warstories like that can be very interesting for others to learn from.

Software engineering practices which don't help

If you copied a practice which you wanted to apply to your context but something went wrong it might be useful for others to know.

Still these are just ideas. We hope that they might trigger you to find new ideas to blog about if you are searching for a topic. Have fun and keep writing!