Let’s imagine, for a second, that you had a political problem at work. Your CEO has promised his wife that their feckless son Ambrose, having flunked his university entrance exams, will be given a job at your firm this fall. Company policy is strict: in order to prevent charges of nepotism, anyone holding a job must be qualified for it. You know, from having met him at last year’s Christmas … Read more
A colleague wrote to me recently and asked about a problem that he’s had in hiring. He says… The kind of test engineers we’re looking for are ones that can think their way around a system and look for all the ways that things can go wrong (pretty standard, so far), and then code up a tool or system that can automatically verify that those things haven’t gone wrong (a … Read more
Eric Jacobson has a problem, which he thoughtfully relates on his thoughtful blog in a post called “How Can I Tell Users What Testers Did?”. In this post, I’ll try to answer his question, so you might want to read his original post for context. I see something interesting here: Eric tells a clear story to relate to his readers some problem that he’s having with explaining his work to … Read more
In response to my previous blog post “Another Silly Quantitative Model”, Greg writes: In my current project, the product owner has assumed the risk of any financial losses stemming from bugs in our software. He wants to release the product to customers, but he is of course nervous. How do you propose he should best go about deciding when to release? How should he reason about the risks, short of … Read more
John D. Cook recently issued a blog post, How many errors are left to find?, in which he introduces yet another silly quantitative model for estimating the number of bugs left in a program. The Lincoln Index, as Mr. Cook refers to it here, was used as a model for evaluating typographical errors, and was based on a method for estimating the population of a given species of animal. There … Read more
In a recent blog post, James Bach discusses the essence of heuristics. A heuristic is a fallible method for solving a problem or making a decision. When used as an adjective, “heuristic” means fallible and conducive to learning. James ends the post by introducing a number of questions in order to test whether someone is teaching you a heuristic effectively. Meeta Prakash, in the comments, remarks “Your questions sound so … Read more
In response to my post, Testers: Get Out of the Quality Assurance Business, my colleague Adam White writes, I want ask for your experience when you’ve your first 3 points for managers: Provide them with the information they need to make informed decisions, and then let them make the decisions. Remain fully aware that they’re making business decisions, not just technical ones. Know that the product doesn’t necessarily have to … Read more
The other day on Twitter, Cory Foy tweeted a challenge: “Having a QA department is a sign of incompetency in your Development department. Discuss.” Here’s what I think: I’m a tester, and it’s time for our craft to grow up. Whatever the organizational structure of our development shops, it’s time for us testers to get out of the Quality Assurance business. In the fall of 2008, I was at the … Read more
Here’s Part 2 of my notes on the CodingQA podcast, in which Matthew Osborn and Federico Silva Armas chat with James Bach about the exploratory testing and session-based test management. Skills of Exploratory Testing If you want to develop a list of testing skills, you might find it helpful to start with the Exploratory Skills and Dynamics sheet, by James Bach, Jon Bach, and Michael Bolton. One of the core … Read more
Several months back, James Bach did an interview with the CodingQA guys, Matthew Osborn and Federico Silva Armas. In the interview, James talks about the skills of exploratory testing, sex education (now do I have your attention?) and how to use session-based test management with minimal overhead and maximum credibility. I’m surprised at how few people have heard about the podcast, so I’m drawing attention to it here. It runs … Read more