Gateway to the MoTaverse: MoT Weekly – Issue 502

What does your MoTaverse look like? Find out what's been happening in the testing, QA and quality engineering community and join events to enhance your career. Read this week's MoT Weekly.

Explore MoT Software Testing Essentials Certificate (STEC)

?? It’s time to approach learning about testing differently.?STEC is the certification that gives junior testers confidence, community and connections.

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What's been happening in the testing, QA and quality engineering MoTaverse? Let's go!???

— Simon Tomes, Community Lead at Ministry of Testing

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Community

This month we have over 500 folks attending MoT Meetups around the world! Manchester, London, Newcastle, Bengaluru, Auckland and Leeds.???

What a turnout! Couldn’t be happier with how our first event of 2025 went last night at Auto Trader UK ????. Nice one, MoT Manchester.

Emily O'Connor and Angie Jones will speak at the MoT Athens Meetup on the Beach in 2025!

Fantastic news! Stuart Day will join the MoT Coventry Meetup for a session on ‘What is Quality’. Happening on the 13th of February, from 5:30 pm onwards! Sponsors: Xpertise Recruitment . Hosts: Sainsbury's Tech. Organisers: Russell Thomas and James Wadley .

Ministry of Testing Newcastle - The Accessibility Empathy Lab.

"Another successful Open Space meetup in the books! Our cozy group proved once again that quality conversations don't need huge crowds - they need engaged people with great ideas." Well said, Christine Pinto .

Reading "The Testing Planet" with our budding software testers at ifm engineering, Pune.

?? Gotta collect all those meme badges.

I'm most proud of the scholarship hero badge that signifies giving back to the community. I feel this can make a huge difference to someone's life with simply giving them a chance. It's such a great initiative and one I'm happy to have contributed to. – Melissa Fisher.

2i acquires nFocus. Bug congrats to both companies.

MoT banning of links to X.

I’m burned out, and I don’t know what else to do. I’m the only one who automates tests, and I’m not synced with my fellow developers testing the new functionalities that they constantly release.

????♀? MoT Profiles now appear in search results, try searching your name.

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Career Growth?

Job moves

• Janna Loeffler starts as a Director of Software Quality Engineering at The Walt Disney Company. Bug congrats!
• Sérgio Freire starts a new position as Director of Solution Architecture & Testing Advocacy at Sembi.
• Maddy Kilsby-McMurray officially joins Rail Delivery Group after working with them as part of Sparta Global.
• Bug congrats to? Connor Westley for?starting a new position as a?Test Engineer at Victorian Plumbing.

Now hiring

• Maryam Umar is looking to grow her team of Test Engineers at Booking.com in their Centre Of Excellence in Bangalore.
• Mary Jose is hiring a Staff Quality Assurance Engineer with expertise in Automation (iOS/Android/API).
• ?? Zachary Borrelli shares that Henry Schein One are looking for a junior Quality Engineer.
• Test Lead, The National Trust, Swindon, UK.
• Hiring? Advertise for free on?the MoT job?board. ??

Open to work

• Tim Holmes is looking for Test Analyst, Test Lead, Test Manager, Senior Test Analyst, and Test Consultant roles.
• As a Senior Test Manager specialising in Accessibility and Testing Framework definition, I’m looking for my next role in either Senior Test Management, Head of Testing or Test Manager roles. Jane D'Cruze is open to work.?
• Professional members can now set their MoT Profile to open to work. See who is open to work.

I recently read an incredible article, A Tester's Journey by Petros Plakogiannis , published by the Ministry of Testing and shared by Rahul Parwal . It was inspiring to see how the journey of a tester unfolds with challenges, learning, and immense growth. ?? – Atharva Khairmode .

Bridging the Employment Gap: Making Your Time Work for You by Chris Armstrong .

Onboarding Tips for Testers by Cassandra H. Leung . What experiences do you have with onboarding onto a new project?

9 out of 10 testers - Fake it till you make it!

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Essentials

Is Testing an activity or a skill? A power sticky note from Jesper Ottosen .

What is a test?

What does testing debt look like and how do you keep on top of it?

Very happy to comment this as part of Lesson 3 of the Software Testing Essentials course! Get involved in the conversation via MoT-STEC.

What is Compatibility Testing? with Daniel Knott .

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Quality Engineering

Have you got early access to Melissa Fisher's book? Quality Engineering: A pocket handbook. Purchase it now to support its completion.

The community writing trend towards quality engineering, continuous quality and holistic testing.

Explore the principles and practices of quality engineering. Join The Testing Planet Episode Eight: Exploring Quality Engineering. ??

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Tooling

??? Tool of the Week:? BrowserStack

New talk: Building open-source agents for software testing with ??Robin Gupta .

New tool on the?MoT Tools Directory: BugBot. Added by Kanika Vatsyayan .

Check out ? Judy Mosley 's latest quick tip: Use Cypress to find your .parents()

The Test Drama (The Opening Salvo): Cypress vs Playwright Installation - The Good, The Bad, and the... Bug-ly!

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?? Powerful Course: Prompting for Testers

As Generative AI continues to gain popularity, knowing how to use it effectively can make a big difference in your daily testing tasks and long-term career goals. A key skill in making the most of this technology is prompt engineering—the practice of designing and refining prompts to get the best results from large language models (LLMs).

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Automation

Testing software smarter, not harder: the shift-down strategy by Manish Saini . Strengthen your test automation strategy by shifting tests closer to the code for greater reliability and maintainability.

Georgios Romanas earned an MoT Advanced Certificate in Test Automation. Bug congrats! ??

Observing DOM Mutation Events with Selenium WebDriver BiDi Protocol with Lana Begunova .

Regular expressions can help you to do more with your automated tests by Mike Harris CITP FBCS .

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User stories

Ben G. shares tips on how to write user stories.

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Strategy

Having a process doesn’t mean you get good or consistent results.

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Test planning

What does modern test planning look like?

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Accessibility

This event was an accessibility empathy lab. The idea wasn't to make people feel disabled but to give people some level of insight into the difficulties that users face when they live with impairments and try to complete some of the most basic functions on the World Wide Web. Good write-up,? Connor Irvine .

EAA vs. ADA: What you need to know.

Upcoming Webinar: Contrast Checker.

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AI

Colin Eberhardt reflects on the UK’s AI opportunities action plan – it's somewhat quiet on risks.

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Workplace

Is your current role remote, hybrid or in office?

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Just for fun

My face when the PO asks if testing will delay the release. ??

?TestBash UK 2023

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????Events

New events are always added, so keep checking the events page for up-to-date info.

• Episode Eight: Exploring Quality Engineering?Wed 29 Jan ??
• Auckland Meetup?Thu 30 Jan ????
• London Meetup?Thu 30 Jan ????
• Leeds Meetup?Thu 30 Jan ?????
• This Week in Testing Fri 31 Jan ???
• Sheffield Meetup?Thu 6 Feb ????
• Coventry Meetup?Thu 13?Feb ????
• Episode Nine: Exploring Systems Thinking?Thu 27 Feb ??
• Episode Ten: Exploring Quality Coaching?Thu 27 Mar ??
• TestBash Brighton 2025?Wed 1–Thu 2 Oct ??

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?? Continuous Call?for Contributions

Be rewarded —?contribute to the MoTaverse!?Share?your knowledge and support?everyone's career growth.???

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Poll of the Week