The Social Tester
For testers who want to be more than good at finding bugs.
103 short essays on the craft, the career and the people side of testing, from ten years of The Social Tester. Read one on the train; take one into your next stand-up.
The Software Testing Origin Story
The Social Tester blog ran for the best part of a decade and more than 500 articles. This book gathers the best of them – the pieces testers kept coming back to most – into 103 short chapters you can read one at a time, or lose an afternoon to.
It isn't a manual and it isn't a certification syllabus. It's a decade of thinking out loud about the working life of a tester.
Free ebook · PDF · 103 chapters
Be the tester teams ask for by name.
Ten years of essays on exploratory testing, careers, teams and the skills behind good judgement. Short chapters, any order, written from inside the work.
For people who test software
Not a manual. A decade of thinking out loud.
The craft of testing
Exploratory testing, note-taking, mind mapping and what it means to be more than "good at finding bugs".
A career, not a job
How to stay relevant, become less interchangeable, and build a career in testing you actually want.
Testing in a team
Where testing sits in agile teams, working with product and dev, and why quality belongs to the whole team.
The subtle skills
Listening, writing, noticing and judgement — the underlying skills that often elevate great testers.
By the numbers
Ten years, gathered in one place.
A page from the index
Twelve chapters, to give you the flavour.
Every chapter stands on its own — dip in wherever a title catches your eye.
…and 91 more chapters inside the book.
About the author: Rob Lambert
I wrote The Social Tester for the best part of a decade – more than 500 articles on software testing, teams, and the working life of a tester. Written between about 2007 and 2017.
Over my career I moved from testing in a waterfall process to leading agile teams – as a Test Manager and then an Engineering Manager. That arc runs right through these essays. After this I moved sideways to Vice President of HR, then onwards to Vice President of Software Engineering, followed by a fruitful career as a consultant, speaker and trainer. My current focus is now Cultivated.
I started as a test engineer, became a test manager, then head of software engineering, growing the engineering team from six people to more than two hundred and taking releases from once every fourteen months to weekly. Along the way I was Creative Director of the Software Testing Club, now the Ministry of Testing.
This book is the closing of the door on the blog – and an open invitation to everyone still testing software for a living.
Before you download
Is the book really free?
Yes. Join Meeting Notes, my free Sunday letter, and the download is yours, along with everything else in the members' library. Leave any time.
What format is it, and how long?
A PDF ebook of around 71,000 words across 103 short chapters. Most take just a few minutes, so it works cover-to-cover or a chapter at a time on a commute.
Who is it for?
Software testers at any stage – from people new to testing to seasoned test engineers thinking about their craft and career, and the leads and managers who hire and grow them.
Do I need to read it in order?
Not at all. It's a collection of stand-alone essays, so you can start anywhere and jump around by whatever topic interests you.
Is it out of date?
Written between 2007 and 2017. Some tools and job titles have moved on. Listening, writing, noticing and judgement haven't, and those are what the book is about.
A decade of writing, gathered in one place and free to keep. If it helps you see your own testing a little differently, it's done its job.
Testing isn't a phase you run at the end. It's a way of paying attention. And those skills are in high demand.
Free ebook · PDF · 103 chapters
Be the tester teams ask for by name.
Ten years of essays on exploratory testing, careers, teams and the skills behind good judgement. Short chapters, any order, written from inside the work.
Where testers go next