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Tester’s Mindset

EuroSTAR’s Test Lab: Bravo!

One of the coolest things about EuroSTAR 2009 was the test lab set up by James Lyndsay and Bart Knaack. James and Bart (who self-identified as Test Lab Rats) provided testers with the opportunity to have a go at two applications, FreeMind (an open-source mind-mapping program) and OpenEMR (an open-source product for tracking medical records). The Lab Rats did a splendid job of setting things up and providing the services … Read more

Two Futures of Software Testing (STAR Tester Interview, post EuroSTAR 2009)

At the EuroSTAR 2008 conference, I gave a talk entitled, “Two Futures of Software Testing” which was rated as the highest-scoring track session at the conference. Conference attendees also chose the talk as the winning entry for the CapGemini Award for Innovation. Here I provide a number of answers to questions that people have asked since the presentation. Q: How can we predict the future of software testing?A: Well, we … Read more

A Letter To The Programmer

This is a letter that I would not show to a programmer in a real-life situation. I’ve often thought of bits of it at a time, and those bits come up in conversation occasionally, but not all at once. This is based on an observation of the chat window in Skype 4.0.0.226. Dear Programmer, I discovered a bug today. I’ll tell you how I found it. It’s pretty easy to … Read more

How Can A Trainee Improve His (Her) Skills

A blogger on TestRepublic asks “How can a trainee improve his/her skill sets in testing?” This is what I do. I recommend it to all trainees (or “freshers”, as they say in India). Find something that interests you, or something that would be useful to you or to a client, or something that you must do, or a problem that you need to solve, or something that you think might … Read more