Michael Sowers

Mike Sowers has more than twenty-five years of practical experience as a global quality and test leader of internationally distributed test teams across multiple industries. Mike is a Training Line of Business Leader and a Senior Consultant, skilled in working with both large and small organizations to improve their software development, testing, and delivery approaches. He has worked with companies—including Fidelity Investments, PepsiCo, FedEx, Southwest Airlines, Wells Fargo, ADP, and Lockheed—to improve software quality, reduce time to market, and decrease costs. With his passion for helping teams deliver software faster, better, and cheaper, Mike has mentored and coached senior software leaders, small teams, and direct contributors worldwide.

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All Stories by Michael Sowers

Where Are All the Great Software Testers?

It can be difficult to find great software testers for senior roles; often, the people you want to hire are the ones who are already gainfully employed. Michael Sowers gives his suggestions for identifying qualified and experienced software engineers who can deliver on senior testing role accountabilities.

Software Testing: A Social Responsibility

As businesses and consumers embrace big data and analytics, mobile, cloud, the IoT, and other rapidly emerging technologies, the expectation that software "just works" is rising exponentially. Equipping our technical workforce with the best education and training, tools, and approaches is critical.

"What Is Code?" How I Explain What I Do

As software engineering professionals, we each have a role in educating everyone in our circle of influence about just what software is and how critical it is to our everyday lives. Mike Sowers explains how you can answer the question "What is code?" without making your listeners sorry they asked!

Testing Nonfunctional Requirements in an Agile Lifecycle

As organizations embrace agile, requirements become a challenge because they must be considered and validated in each (short) sprint. Ideally, nonfunctional requirements should be a continuous focus throughout the project. Here are some ways to better address NFRs in an agile development lifecycle.

An Agile Approach to Managing Your Software Testing Career

Testers are very much still needed. However, with so many new technologies and roles becoming available, some testers may want to explore options for their career paths. Michael Sowers offers an agile approach to determining your career direction, evaluating the alternatives, and developing a plan.

More Slack Time, Please!

As we seek and achieve efficiency, we eliminate "slack"—purposeful time to allow our brains individually and our organizations collectively to create, think, reflect, analyze, contemplate, plan, learn, grow, and change. This story gives some ideas for building more slack time into your routines.

The Value of Checklists in Our Software Testing Work

Some may see checklists as unnecessary, but consider the growing complexity of many of our software development and testing tasks. Ignoring the use of a tool such as checklists (when appropriate) can increase the risk in our already risky world of software testing. Sometimes, simpler is better.

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