"Some birds aren't meant to be caged, their feathers are just too bright"- Morgan Freeman, Shawshank Redemption. This blog is from one such bird who couldn't be caged by organizations who mandate scripted software testing. Pradeep Soundararajan welcomes you to this blog and wishes you a good time here and even otherwise.

About

If you are new to this blog, you probably might want to know about Pradeep Soundararajan. If you are an old timer of this blog, you may find this page as a re-iteration to what you already know.

The question is About page for this blog or the author?  Let me help you answer both of them.

About Pradeep Soundararajan

I am Pradeep Soundararajan, author of this blog. I coach, consult, speak and write on software testing for a living. My experience is five million four hundred and thirty seven mistakes and counting. What would you know about me if you counted my experience in number of years? You might just now how old I am and probably not anything more than that.

I have consulted for organizations ranging from start up to multi million dollar / euro / pound software organizations. They have hired me to either help them with their testing efforts, strategize their test (check) automation efforts, coach testers, help the management with managing things, to speak or anything they think I could do in testing.

I have been hired under various contexts, ranging from evaluating a product, rapid testing, claims testing, assessment of a software before an acquisition, checking if they are on track to what they want to achieve, testing the testability of a product, hiring decisions, shaking up a few testers out of their comfort zone, to speak truth, for pre-sales proposal preparation, reviewing their test documents, just in time testing, to get a fresh view of their product... huh, looks like I am bragging? At one end you click on the About page and think I am bragging? ;-)

So, I have also been fired at an organization for being the worst tester they ever hired. They fired me because I found bugs that couldn't help them achieve the Six Sigma benchmark of 95% test case pass.

That probably qualified me for something amazing. I became a student of James Bach & Michael Bolton. I can't describe myself as a tester without mentioning their names. Being their student means, I use my own brain by developing it.

Every failure, every mistake, makes me strong. I practice a testing style that I call as "Brainual Testing" which is a combo of Exploratory Testing, Thinking Skills, Context Driven Approach to Testing, the small "a" agile testing, Session Based Test Management and Consulting skills inherited by reading books of Jerry Weinberg.

About this blog


Oh, my English was pathetic. I thought it was great when I started writing this blog. I thought I was an expert and so started writing a blog. This blog is a journey of how a person who thought of himself as an expert learning that he is not an expert and trying to get there.

I started writing this blog months before being fired. I wanted to set myself free. I was heavily inspired by the movie Shawshank Redemption and a quote in it "Some birds aren't meant to be caged, their feathers are just too bright". That is exactly what I think of myself. My feathers are bright enough and they are glowing brighter as days pass and I put in efforts.

Through this blog, I want to provide all help that is possible to my readers to test and think better or get help from them. This blog is an important part of my life because it has brought me people that I respect, cherish and enjoy. This blog appears to have inspired a few testers to start their own blog. Well, there are side effects of everything we do, ain't so?

Enjoy your stay here. Spend your time here only if you think its adding value to you. If you think its not adding value to you, let me know about it. Oh, BTW, anyone can email me anything on testing to pradeep.srajan@gmail.com

I have replied to almost all emails I have received. Join, Follow, Tweet, Like, Share, Digg, and do whatever you want. Do read the Copyrights section, too :)