Michael Bolton In the previous post, I gave an example of the happy (and, alas, rare) circumstance in which the programmer and I share models and feelings, such that the programmer becomes aware of a problem I’ve found without my being explicit about it. That is, on this table, I can go directly from top-left, where I experience the problem, to conference in the bottom left, where awareness of that problem has … Read more
Yesterday I described the moment of recognition of a problem, which tends to happen in the upper-left corner of this table: When I perceive a problem during testing, it’s my job to let people know about what I’ve found, and to arrive at a shared set of feelings and mental models about the problem, represented by the lower left quadrant. That is, I want to move from experience—my private, internal, … Read more
In the first post in this series, I introduced some of the factors in recognizing a problem when one occurs during testing. Let’s walk through some examples of recognizing and relating problems. Imagine that I’m a tester at Adobe, a few years back, testing a version of Acrobat. As it happens, my laptop’s screen is smaller than a desktop monitor, but at 1920 by 960 pixels, the resolution is quite … Read more
In Rapid Testing (and, we believe, in all worthwhile testing) learning about the product and finding problems that matter are central to the mission. In the role of a tester, I support the business and development team by finding and describing things I believe to be important problems that might threaten the value of the product. A skilled tester should be able do that at any stage—as soon as there’s … Read more
Managers are responsible for hiring testers, for training them, and for removing any obstacles that make testing harder or slower. Managers are also responsible for hiring developers and designers, and providing appropriate training when it’s needed. If there are problems in development, managers are responsible for helping the developers to address them. Managers are also responsible for the scope of the product, the budget, the staffing, and the schedule. As … Read more
A little while ago, I took a look at what happens when a check runs red. Since then, comments and conversations with colleagues emphasized this point from the post: it’s overwhelmingly common first to doubt the red result, and then to doubt the check. A red check almost provokes a kind of panic for some testers, because it takes away a green check’s comforting—even narcotic—confirmation that Everything Is Going Just … Read more
A script, in the general sense, is something that constrains our actions in some way. In common talk about testing, there’s one fairly specific and narrow sense of the word “script”—a formal sequence of steps that are intended to specify behaviour on the part of some agent—the tester, a program, or a tool. Let’s call that “formal scripting”. In Rapid Software Testing, we also talk about scripts and scripting in … Read more
What actually happens when a check returns a “red” result? Some people might reflexively say “Easy: we get a red; we fix the bug.” Yet that statement is too simplistic, concealing a good deal of what really goes on. The other day, James Bach and I transpected on the process. Although it’s not the same in every case, we think that for responsible testers, the process actually goes something more … Read more
A junior tester relates some of the issues she’s encountering in describing her work. To the people who thinks she “just breaks stuff all day”, here’s what I might reply: It’s not that I don’t just break stuff; I don’t break stuff at all. The stuff that I’ve given to test is what it is; if it’s broken, it was broken when I got it. If I break anything, consider … Read more
This article was originally published in the February 2015 edition of Testing Trapeze, an excellent online testing magazine produced by our testing friends in New Zealand. There are small edits here from the version I submitted. Once upon a time, before I was a tester, I worked in theatre. Throughout my career, I took on many roles—but maybe not in the way you’d immediately expect. In my early days, I … Read more