About Poking The Machine
Hi, I’m Terry Davis — a Senior Test Manager and Quality Specialist with over 25 years of experience in testing software for a living.
I started my testing career just as the internet was taking off. Back then, there was little tooling, few frameworks, and almost no guidance on what “good” looked like. I learned by doing — by trial and error, by self-teaching, and by figuring things out the hard way.
That struggle shaped me as a tester. But it shouldn’t have to shape you.
Over the years I’ve worked across an enormous range of industries and technologies — from major government programmes and global retail to digital media and financial services. I’m ISEB and Agile certified, and I’ve spent my career designing test strategies, building QA frameworks, and coaching teams — helping organisations understand that quality isn’t a last-minute checkbox, it’s a discipline.
Poking The Machine exists to give junior testers a head start. The resources, guides, and hard-won lessons I wish had existed when I started — collected in one place, written plainly, and free to use.
You’ll still need to poke the machine yourself. But you won’t have to do it blind.