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Tester’s Mindset

Lessons Learned from a Little Bug

Almost 10 years ago, I wrote a series of blog posts on project estimation and black swans. And, almost 10 years after that, Chris NeJame reported an observation about the following passage towards the end of Part 4 of the series: As Jerry (Weinberg) has frequently pointed out, plenty of organizations fall victim to back luck, but much of the time, it’s not the bad luck that does them in; … Read more

Expected Results

Klára Jánová is a dedicated tester who studies and practices and advocates Rapid Software Testing. Recently, on LinkedIn, she said: I might EXPECT something to happen. But that doesn’t necessarily mean that I WANT IT/DESIRE for IT to happen. I even may want it to happen, but it not happening doesn’t have to automatically mean that there’s a problem. The point of this post: no more “expected results” in the … Read more

The Secret Life of Automation

The Web is abuzz with talk about “automated testing” and “test automation”. Automation comes with a tasty and digestible story: eliminate “manual testing”, and replace messy, complex humanity with reliable, fast, efficient robots! Yet there are many secrets hidden between the lines of the story.

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Breaking the Test Case Addiction (Part 6)

In the last installment, we ended by asking “Once the tester has learned something about the product, how can you focus a tester’s work without over-focusing it? I provided some examples in Part 4 of this series. Here’s another: scenario testing. The examples I’ll provide here are based on work done by James Bach and Geordie Keitt several years ago. (I’ve helped several other organizations apply this approach much more … Read more

Breaking the Test Case Addiction (Part 5)

In our coaching session (which started here), Frieda was still playing the part of a manager who was fixated on test cases—and doing it very well. She played a typical management card: “What about learning about the product? Aren’t test cases a good way to do that?” In Rapid Software Testing, we say that testing is evaluating a product by learning about it through exploration and experimentation, which includes questioning, … Read more

Breaking the Test Case Addiction (Part 4)

Note: this post is long from the perspective of the kitten-like attention spans that modern social media tends to encourage. Fear not. Reading it could help you to recognize how you might save you hours, weeks, months of excess and unnecessary work, especially if you’re working as a tester or manager in a regulated environment. Testers frequently face problems associated with excessive emphasis on formal, procedurally scripted testing. Politics, bureaucracy, … Read more

Breaking the Test Case Addiction (Part 3)

In the previous post, “Frieda”, my coaching client, asked about producing test cases for auditors or regulators. In Rapid Software Testing (RST), we find it helpful to frame that in terms of formal testing. Testing is formal to the degree that it must be done in a specific way, or to verify specific facts. Formal testing typically has the goal of confirming or demonstrating something in particular about the product. There’s a continuum to … Read more

Breaking the Test Case Addiction (Part 2)

Last time out, I was responding to a coaching client, a tester who was working in an organization fixated on test cases. Here, I’ll call her Frieda. She had some more questions about how to respond to her managers. What if they want another tester to do your tests if you are not available? “‘Your tests’, or ‘your testing’?”, I asked. From what I’ve heard, your tests. I don’t agree … Read more