Testers can be a critical group. They'll challenge, push back, assert, and counter-assert. If you have an idea you want sharpened, want to learn something new, or just want to explore a concept, they can be fantastic resources.
One of the best places to meet, and interact, with software testers is on Twitter.
So here we go: 31 software testers you should consider following.
The practitioners
Kristine Corbus
A tester at Diva-e: Digital Value Enterprise, Corbus is also a community organizer in Germany, where she leads both the Jena, Germany's users group, and acts as lead organizer for TestBash Germany.
Justin Rohrman
The current president of the Association for Software Testing and a senior consultant at Excelon Development, Rohrman is the editor of Stickyminds.com, a testing website. He is interested in API-level testing and tooling, along with applying social science to create meaningful testing metrics that stand up to scrutiny.
Jesse Alford
Another rugged independent who found a way to work with modern development, Alford is an explorer at Pivotal Labs. The company combines methods from extreme programming with cloud-based tools to enable rapid delivery, with Alford acting as more of a test-coach/programmer than a tester.
Patrick Prill
Another TestBash Germany organizer, Prill is a test consultant at QualityMinds Gmbh near Munich. In writing circles, Prill is best known for working behind the scenes doing thorough, diligent, and fast peer review.
Lisa Crispin
Currently a tester at Pivotal Labs, Crispin is the co-author of Agile Testing, along with Janet Gregory, and a Most Influential Agile Test Professional Person Award (MIATPP) winner. Crispin belonged to one of the first teams doing extreme programming and was the lead author of Testing Extreme Programming, back in 2002.
Michael Larsen
The show producer on The Testing Show podcast, Larsen is a tester at Socialtext, Scout Master, and Snowboarder, perhaps best know for live blogging conference talks as they occur.
Jessica Ingrasellino
Another frequent Testing Show guest, Ingrasellino has done impressive test toolsmith work at Bit.ly and RentTheRunway. Ingrasellino currently works remotely as a lead software quality engineer at Salesforce.org. Her tweet stream is a combination of messages on popular testing, education, Python, music, and politics.
Pete Walen
A former board member of the Association for Software Testing, Walen works as a remote tester for the Salesforce marketing cloud out of his home in Grand Rapids, Michigan. An early organizer of GR-Testers, Walen has presented internationally on exploratory testing and helped staff the Software Testing World Cup in 2014 and 2016.
Damian Synadinos
Perhaps the tester most closely associated with improvisational theater, Synadinos started his career at CompuServe in 1993, then spent 23 years in testing and performance engineering before launching his independent venture, ineffable solutions. Yes, that's spelled correctly.
Dan Billing
New Voice Media can be a sort of launchpad for testing experts, and Billing is no exception. After developing a reputation as a security tester, Billing recently left New Voice Media for Medidata, where he is a test architect. Warning: Billing is also a Dr. Who fan who likes atrocious puns.
David Goldstein
The creator of @twitbituaries, @shabbosstarts, and @countsefira, Goldstein frequently tweets his opinions about test, quality, and sporting events.
Claire Moss
Former tester at Oracle and VersionOne, Moss is the lead organizer of the Atlanta Tester's Meetup.
Angie Jones
A consulting automation engineer at LexisNexus, Jones is delivering a keynote address at the 2017 Software QA Denver Conference. Focused on methods to make test tooling with Selenium more repeatable and easier, Jones recently presented at the Test Automation Online Conference.
The managers
Kate Falanga
The director of test at HUGE, Inc., a digital marketing firm, Falanga is a frequent conference speaker. Look to her for insights at the intersection of digital, mobile, testing, people management, and explaining the value of testing to the nontechnical.
Perze Ababa
A manager of test engineering at Johnson & Johnson, Ababa (first name pronounced pur-zee) is a recurring guest on the Testing Show.
Erik Davis
Another former AST board member, Davis spent 14 years at Hyland Software, rising from tester to lead to manager, senior manager, manager of the practice of testing, and finally manager of test automation. Davis is currently available for new projects near Cleveland, or remotely.
Alex Schladebeck
A product manager and longtime contributor to Agile Testing Days, Schladebeck recently changed her role to become head of quality and testing at BREDEX GmbH.
Thomas Vaniotis
A longtime tester turned product manager, Vaniotis is a bit of a Renaissance man, with undergraduate work in philosophy, a fellowship in medieval studies, and a master of science in management. His interests include data visualization, data mining for product insights, and long walks on the beach. (Just kidding about that last one. I think.)
Anna Royzman
The creator of the Test Leadership Congress New York and Test Masters Academy, Royzman is a community builder with decades of test and test leadership experience. An early agile adopter, Royzman has presented at the Agile Conference and currently sits on the board of the Association for Software Testing.
The gurus
James Bach
The co-author of Lessons Learned in Software Testing and author of Secrets of a Bucaneer Scholar, Bach is the principal at Satisfice and co-creator of the Rapid Software Testing course and method. Open to strong debate and quick judgment, following Bach is not for the faint of heart—yet pressure makes diamonds, and learning opportunities abound.
Maaret Pyhäjärvi
One of the most active speakers in the world of testing and lead organizer of European Test Conference, Pyhäjärvi has expertise on mob testing, test coaching, integrating testing with continuous delivery, and DevOps. Pyhäjärvi is the 2016 winner of the Most Influential Agile Test Professional Person Award in Potsdam, Germany, at Agile Testing Days.
Noah Sussman
Rocketing to stardom after his work at Etsy, Sussman mixes the use of continuous integration (CI) tools with version control, virtualization, and automated checking—along with a little philosophy.
Jeff "Cheesy" Morgan
An amazing programmer who does public demonstrations, Morgan is a co-founder of LeanDog, one of the leading software studios in the United States. Morgan coaches teams to improve quality by writing automated checks up front, acceptance test-driven development-style (ATDD). A prolific rubyGems contributor, Morgan is not limited to one toolset, but tends to prefer Cucumber, Ruby, and Webdriver.
Janet Gregory
Where Lisa Crispin is the practitioner half of the Crispin/Gregory Partnership, Gregory is the consulting and training half. The 2015 MAITPP winner, Gregory and Crispin recently wrote More Agile Testing, a follow-up to their earlier work.
Thomas Cagley
The host of SPaMCast, the Software Process and Measurement Podcast, Cagley combines more traditional ideas, such as CMMI, with a knowledge of agile testing and modern approaches.
Antony Marcano
An early innovator in blogging, Marcano was the creator of TestingReflections.com (now defunct, but backed up), a set of invitation-only testing blogs, when the concept was new and intimidating. Marcano went on to be a leading thinker in the UK and Europe on behavior-driven development and modern approaches, and gave a keynote speech at Agile Testing Days.
Fiona Charles
A test program manager and consultant, Charles is known for her work wrangling large, complex test projects into something predictable and valuable.
Joseph Ours
The lead organizer of QAOrTheHighWay, the Midwest's largest nonprofit test conference, Ours is the test practice lead at Concentric. Follow him to keep up with free webinars, Midwest and Ohio test/quality events, and references to free and open test advice and materials.
The institutions
AST_News
Follow AST_News, the Twitter handle for the Association for Software Testing, for free webinars, conference announcements, and general relevant news for the testing world.
Agile Testing Days
Recently ranked No. 2 of all agile conferences, Agile Testing Days is the only conference with "test" or "quality" in the name in the top 50. Based in Germany, Agile Testing Days has inspired spin-off events in the Netherlands and Scandinavia.
Ministry of Testing
The main Twitter feed for SoftwareTestingClub, a once-UK- and Europe-faced social site that organizes TestBash, now turning worldwide.
Who are we missing?
A full list of relevant testers on Twitter would be exhausting, as well as exhaustive, and get outdated very quickly. Also, some test experts have tweets that are mostly personal or political, or their stream consists almost exclusively or retweets. We tried to include testers who are timely and relevant, but it's time for the community to contribute. Who did we forget? Why? Let us know in the comments below!
(Disclosure: The author has been involved with all three institutions listed in this post, including tutorials and speeches for which he was compensated.)
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