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From Drowning in Data to Driving Decisions: A Solo Tester’s Journey

When I first joined a rapidly growing startup as the solo tester for the web team, I made every mistake in the metrics book. Fresh from an enterprise background, I tried to measure everything. Six months and countless spreadsheets later, I had plenty of data but no real insights. Here’s how I turned it around. […]

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Three Metrics That Actually Matter When You’re Testing Solo

As a solo tester in a growing company, you’re bombarded with advice about what to measure. Code coverage, test execution rates, bug counts, automation percentages … the list seems endless. Add DORA metrics to the mix, and it’s easy to feel overwhelmed. Here’s the thing: when you’re testing solo, you need metrics that provide maximum

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The Solo Tester’s Dilemma: When Enterprise Metrics Don’t Fit

You’ve just joined a growing startup as their first tester. Coming from a large enterprise, you’re keen to implement proper quality metrics. After all, data-driven decisions were key to your previous success. Yet three months in, you’re drowning in spreadsheets and complex tools, with little to show for it. Sound familiar? The Enterprise Metrics Trap

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Optimising QA Workflows with DORA’s Lead Time for Changes Metric

The pressure to deliver high-quality software quickly has never been greater. Quality Assurance teams often find themselves walking a tightrope between maintaining thorough testing practices and meeting aggressive delivery timelines. This is where DORA’s Lead Time for Changes (LTC) metric can be a valuable tool for QA teams looking to optimise their workflows without compromising

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Is Quality Engineering the Future of Testing?

Quality Engineering (QE) is shaping the future of testing by fundamentally changing how we approach product quality. Unlike traditional quality assurance (QA), which typically focuses on identifying defects late in the development cycle, QE shifts quality considerations left—embedding them at every stage, from design to production. Why Quality Engineering is the Future of Testing The

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Cheese pyramids

The Swiss Cheese Model vs. Test Pyramid: A Complementary Approach

Recently somebody mentioned to me that they don’t really like the test pyramid, and prefer the swiss cheese model. So I looked it up (again), and thought “yeah, that’s nice”. And you know how it sometimes goes, it kept niggling away at the back of my brain – now there’s a mental image you didn’t

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Don’t Let Your Automated Tests Gather Dust: Integrate Them Into Your Pipeline

Fairly regularly, I see advice on LinkedIn and other platforms that one should “check one’s automated test scripts regularly” so they can be “kept up to date”. This advice always baffles me. How are these automated tests used if they need an intentional action to be checked for up-to-dateness? If you’re not using your automated

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