Why podcasts?

We live in a very busy world, no doubt about it. If you work in Software Development, you should keep yourself up to date with the latest trends, upcoming conferences, announcements, etc. It takes time to keep up with whatever is going on in the testing world! So why not to multi task, and listen to the latest news while you’re on your way to work, or even shopping at the supermarket. Podcasts are great a solution to this problem, so let me introduce you to some of the best QA podcasts.



1) Test talks by Joe Colantonio

Let me start the introduction to the QA podcast world with one of my favorite podcast, which always inspires me and gives me more than enough motivation towards the everyday fight for quality. If you’re trying to stay up to date in the QA world, you’ve most probably already heard about him. He’s the Man who

made hundreds of interviews with members from the global QA world,

who covers interesting topics and best practices in each of his episodes,

he’s the one, who’s responsible for the awesome Automation Guild and Performance Guild conferences,

he’s the creator of the “Automation Awesomeness” motto

and actually he’s the reason why I started to listen to QA podcasts.

Ladies and gentlemen, let me introduce you to Joe Colantonio. If there’s someone, who’s so passionate about quality that his mission is to help you succeed in test automation awesomeness, then it’s Joe. His regular catch-up emails get the listeners very engaged, so I highly suggest you subscribe to his podcasts.

2) Lets Talk About Tests, Baby

Originally this was a weekly podcast, not just about testing, but about “Scrum, and all other sorts of techy geeky goodness” by Gem Hill. The podcasts are great, she brought lots of interesting topics and fresh perspectives. She always had real-life scenarios to solve and best practices to learn from, so it was very inspiring for all of us. The latest episode is from April 2018, but I really hope she’ll get back to podcasting again. Till then, here’s the latest episode about the OpenSpace edition:



3) Screen Testing by Neil and Dan

Screen testing is not about the Software testing only. It’s “A fortnightly podcast where the worlds of film, TV and software testing collide. Presented adequately by @neilstudd and @TheTestDoctor”. Since after a few episodes these podcasts focused mostly on films and tv series, Neil continued his QA topics in another podcast – tester’s island.



4) Tester’s island – by Neil Studd

The idea behind tester’s island is just brilliant! In each episode, Neil interviews one of the members of the global QA community who has to select 5 songs and one book to take with them to tester’s island. As you might have guessed, the interviews are not just about the person and his/her professional career but about the book and the selected songs as well. It’s very easy to listen and lot to learn from these podcasts, and bring a totally new structure to the common QA podcasts.



5) Ministry of Testing by Ministry of Testing

It’s the official podcast (collection of podcasts) from Ministry of testing. If you’re a beginner in the QA industry or even an experienced member, you’ll still find something new and very useful for yourself, because the variety of the episodes is incredible vast. Apart from the “tester’s island”, it includes the series from “Super Testing Brothers” as well, so as some updates from the QA conferences, interviews or general topics from the Software testing world. Definitely recommend to listen each episode!

Others, worth to mention podcasts

Quality Remarks by Keith Klain

Unfortunately, this podcast is currently not active, the last episode was released on November 2017. Keith interviewed quite a few QA influencers, who have big reputation in our QA industry (like Michael Bolton, Jeff Perkins, etc.) and this small podcast is actually a nice collection of those interviews. On average they’re 70 minutes long, so they’re ideal if you’re commuting to work/home.



You can find his podcast on Spreaker or on iTunes as well.



Testcast By Bruce McLeod & Trish Khoo

One of the older, already obsolete podcasts. Bruce and Trish didn’t really have a strictly defined structure for their podcasts. Their frequent guest was James Bach and used to chat about his Exploratory testing strategy, about the tools he uses for testing, best practices, etc. Sometimes they had more general topics about the importance of proper test data, timezones or they made a short teaser for an upcoming testing conference. Although the podcasts are quite old now (some of them are 8 years old!), it’s worth to listen to them, ‘cause the basic principles rarely change 😉

What’s your favourite podcast?

Although the second part of our podcast post is not released yet, you can still share and recommend some good podcasts to us and to our readers. How do you keep your knowledge up-to-date? What’s your favourite podcast? Don’t be shy and share it with us, sharing is caring! 😉