Software Testing - a Sisyphean Task?

Survival of the Fit-Tester (3) - Making Decisions

2012-02-05T23:40:00.001Z

In my previous two posts I discussed how as testers we might work to protect ourselves from the various risks that face us in the current market, primarily those of outsourcing and developer only...

Survival of the Fit-Tester (2) - Symbiotic Relationships

2012-01-20T21:36:00.000Z

This is the second post in my series thinking about the threats that face testers in the current UK market. In my first post I looked at how getting engaged with the developers on the team helps to...

Survival of the Fit-Tester (1) - Get Engaged

2012-01-10T23:45:00.000Z

There seems to be a lot of discussion in the testing community at the moment over the future of testing. A series of recent blogs and conference keynotes have even broached the subject of the death...

Recruitment By Example

2011-11-24T22:29:00.000Z

I find it hard to recruit great testers... Really hard. Finding the appropriate candidates with an enthusiasm for the job, combined with the aptitude and skills to excel in my organisation...

The Thread of an idea - Adopting a Thread Based approach to Exploratory Testing

2011-11-24T22:19:00.001Z

In all of our testing activities my approach is very much to treat our current practices as a point in a process of evolution. Here I write about an excellent example of how we evolved our testing...

Eurostar Talk - An Evolution Into Specification By Example

2011-11-24T12:09:00.001Z

The slides for my talk at EuroSTAR on "An Evolution into Specification By Example" should be available on the EuroSTAR site. Further Reading from Me Regarding some of the points raised there is...

Birmingham STC Meetup

2011-11-18T22:02:00.002Z

On Tuesday I attended the STC Meetup in Birmingham, the highlight of which was a talk by James Bach on transitioning to Context Driven Testing from other schools. Videos of all the evenings talks,...

Sleepwalking into failure

2011-11-11T21:19:00.001Z

"I feel happier when I have come to the same conclusion as experts in my field independently by making my own mistakes" This was a statement that I posted on twitter last week, which had responses...

A Problem Halved - using a context specific cheat sheet to share product test heuristics

2011-10-25T23:45:00.000+01:00

A term that is often used when highlighting the skilled nature of the job of software testing, particularly exploratory testing, is the use of testing heuristics. Heuristics are experience based...

"You were supposed to draw him standing up" - testing preconceptions in design

2011-10-03T00:20:00.000+01:00

Last weekend whilst I was supposedly looking after my two eldest children and actually sneakily checking my email my attention was drawn by a tweet linking to a testing challenge on the Testing...

Wopping the pie stack - demonstrating the value in questioning requirements

2011-09-24T00:14:00.000+01:00

Over time in my current role we've made great strides in raising the profile of testing activities as a critical part of our successful development of the software. A key benefit of this is that the...

Mind Mapping an Evolution

2011-09-05T20:51:00.001+01:00

I've recently introduced the idea of Thread Based Exploratory Testing into my team, with the option of using spreadsheets or xmind mind maps to document exploratory threads. Mind maps are an...

Plastering over the cracks - Why fixing bugs is missing the point

2011-09-04T23:13:00.005+01:00

A few years ago I was fortunate enough to travel through China and take a tour up the Yangtze river, passing the new Hydro-electric dam that was in the process of flooding the famous "Three Gorges"....

A disappointed sheep - don't expect your user to care about your product presentation

2011-08-14T23:08:00.005+01:00

Last week I was overjoyed at the arrival of my third child, Franklin. Anyone who has experiene of attending a birth in hospital will know that, despite the obvious excitement of the occasion, there...

To a Tester Level - self imposed limits of the testing profession

2011-07-27T23:38:00.002+01:00

Recently I interviewed a reasonably experienced software tester for a contract position in my company. His CV had been forwarded to me by a recruitment agency on the basis of some key skills that...

Evolution of a Tester

2011-07-14T09:25:00.000+01:00

I've been lucky enough to be selected as a speaker at EuroSTAR in Manchester in November. My talk is entitled An Evolution into Specification by Example. A related blog post on Evolution of a Tester...

Small mercies - why we shouldn't knock "it works on my machine"

2011-06-24T22:03:00.002+01:00

I go to quite a few test events around the UK. Conferences, User groups and meetups. A thread of conversation that is a perennial favourite at such events is the ridiculing of programmers that, when...

Be the We - on doing more for the team

2011-06-21T22:08:00.003+01:00

A turn of phrase that I've heard many times working in software development teams goes like this:- "We should really be doing ..."followed by some practice or process that the speaker feels would...

Follow the lady - on not getting tricked by your OS when performance testing

2011-06-04T00:25:00.001+01:00

Recently my colleagues and I were involved in working on a story to achieve a certain level of query performance for a customer. We'd put a lot of effort into trying to generate data which would be...

Automated Tests - you on a lot of good days

2011-05-20T23:15:00.002+01:00

Automated testing is something of a contentious subject which invokes a lot of passion in the testing community and much is written on the dangers of automated testing and the risks of employing...

Under your nose - uncovering hidden treasure in the tools you already use

2011-05-14T00:40:00.001+01:00

At the recent STC meetup in Oxford Lisa Crispin performed a lightning talk on using an IDE to manage and edit your tests. Managing the files that constitute our automated test packs is not an easy...

Situation Green - The dangers of using automation to retest bugs

2011-05-03T23:22:00.000+01:00

I am a great believer in a using structure of individual responsibility in items of work done rather than monitoring individual activity with fine grained quantitative measurement and traceability...

A template for success - harnessing the power of patterns to document internal test structures

2011-04-12T23:51:00.001+01:00

During a test retrospecitve last year the subject of discussion among the team came onto the documentation of our automated tests and the visibility of the test pack structure. For a while we had...

Without stabilisers - why writing your own test harnesses really is an option

2011-03-25T23:54:00.001Z

When considering utilising test automation to assist in your testing, one of the most important decisions that will need to be made at some point is what technologies or tools to use to automate the...

Not Going it Alone - using the power of groups to implement change

2011-03-18T23:05:00.000Z

A recent discussion on twitter relating to having the right individuals in the right roles and the power of individuals working within systems prompted me to write:- "groups & groupthink powerful...