Hi its Joe just wanted to quickly let you know that there is no TestTalks interview this week. I’m a deacon for a church and we have all our family over for Easter so I’ve been wicked busy preparing for Sunday festivities.

But hey, don’t worry we’ll be back next week with an awesome interview with David Greenless about his new book Software Testing as a Martial Art . I also have interviews scheduled with Mark Fink author of the book The Hitchhikers Guide to Test Automation and an interview with HPE’s development team to learn about how they used their own tools for their testing efforts.

And If you have an automation success story you’d like to share on an upcoming episode, let’s talk! Send your suggestions to:joe@testtalks.com

So stay tuned and as always test everything and keep the good --Peace!

Managers and engineers can often get lulled into thinking automation is easy. After all, how hard can automation be? You record yourself interacting with the application, then play it back. Done. But how many of us have been burned by that type of thinking? I know I have. It’s up to us as automation engineers to educate the people around us about automation best practices and techniques if we are to have a prayer of surviving in this fast-paced, Agile DevOps world.

In this episode Jim Hazen, a veteran of the software testing trenches, shares with us his years of experience in succeeding with test automation. Discover what it takes to implement automation and set realistic expectations for your teams, keeping in mind that it's automation, not automagic!

Have you ever had the feeling that you’re running too many tests? Or redundant tests that are causing you to spend too much time maintaining an ever-growing test suite of what seems like wasted test cases? Does your test suite take a long time to run when all you want to do is make sure a small change you made to a specific area in your application didn’t affect anything else? And did it leave you wondering what combination of test cases would give you the verification coverage you need?

These are issues I struggle with, as well – which is why last year at HP Discover in London I was interested to learn about a model-based testing using a tool called Agile Designer. Ever since seeing a demo of the product done by Huw Price, I’ve been hoping to get him to appear on my podcast. I’m happy to announce that today, Huw shares with us his thoughts around model-based testing and test data management.

There have been many changes in the software testing industry in the last several years. Those of us who have been testers for a while know that testing is an actual professional craft; nevertheless, many folks coming out of college – and even some of our own developers – have no idea about testing techniques and tools.

If you’re anything like me you’ve probably wished there was a way to keep up with and promote the ever-changing tools and techniques needed to succeed with testing.

In this episode, you’ll discover how this is all about to change as we speak with Anna Royzman about her new organization, A Quality Leadership Institute. The mission of A Quality Leadership Institute is to become the world’s leading advocate for quality in technology. Anna has big plans for the organization, which include developing innovative programs on software testing quality and leadership for the tech community, as well as the promotion of software testing as a real discipline in colleges around the world.