12. About the authors

I’m Ash Winter, a consulting tester and conference speaker, working as an independent consultant providing testing, performance engineering, and automation of both build and test. I have been a team member delivering mobile apps and web services for start-ups and a leader of teams and change for testing consultancies and their clients. I spend most of my time helping teams think about testing problems, asking questions and coaching when invited. I am most proud of being a co-organizer for the Leeds Testing Atelier, a free full-day community testing workshop. Its mission is to give those involved in testing a platform to share their stories, particularly those who haven’t been heard before.

I’m Rob Meaney. I came to work in the software industry soon after finishing college (where I gained a degree in electrical & electronic engineering) and began working as a tester without even knowing what testing was. I learned my trade testing desktop applications for the manufacturing safety automation industry. Soon I got bored of manually checking the same thing over and over to I decided to try automating some of my tests. Since then, I have worked in start-ups, gaming, data storage, medical, fraud detection and communication companies building test and automation frameworks. I’ve worked as a manual tester, automation architect and test manager. I love testing and read and learn about testing and development continuously.