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

Own Your Career

Owning your career means being accountable for your actions, both current and future. This is critical in today's dynamic environment. Gone are the days when companies employ people for a lifetime and employees stay in the same spot. Read up on some of today's software testing industry dynamics.

Transitioning from a Traditional Tester to an Agile Tester

Shifting from being a tester in a traditional lifecycle model to in an agile methodology is not easy. There is a spectrum of differences, ranging from redefining the testing role and responsibilities completely to making only minor changes in context and accountability. Read on for some key changes.

Maintaining Tester Independence in an Agile World

As organizations adopt agile methodologies, one of the key challenges is reinventing traditional roles. The entire agile team is now accountable for quality—carrying the quality flag is not the sole responsibility of the tester. But we also want to ensure that we maintain tester role independence.

Be Big, Bold, and Brave in Your Testing Efforts

Our organizations, management, teams, and customers desperately need each of us to step up and lead. Regardless of whether you have an official title as a leader or you are an individual contributor, you must exercise leadership in your role. Are you taking the initiative in your testing projects?

Tools—Some Assembly Required

A tool architecture is simply a picture of all your development, testing, and deployment tools and how they fit together. Creating a "current state" diagram and then looking forward and creating a "future state" diagram helps you understand where tool integrations would be beneficial.

My Love/Hate Relationship with Dev and Test Tools

After you make investment decisions for homegrown, open source, or commercial tools that yield little or even negative return, those "learning experiences" reinforce the old saying—"A fool with a tool is still a fool." Here are some things to keep in mind as you reach for that next cool tool.

Five Predictions: What the Future Holds for Test Professionals

No one has a crystal ball, but it's critical for test professionals to seriously ponder what the future holds as they plan their career journeys. Where is technology headed? What testing roles will be in most demand? Where will a tester spend the most time? Here are some predictions.

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