DevelopsenseLogo

Tester’s Mindset

It’s Not A Factory

One model for a software development project is the assembly line on the factory floor, where we’re making a buhzillion copies of the same thing. And it’s a lousy model. Software is developed in an architectural studio with people in it. There are drafting tables, drawing instruments, good lighting, pens and pencils and paper. And erasers, and garbage cans that get full of coffee cups and crumpled drawings. Good ideas … Read more

On Green

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

On Scripting

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

On Red

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

On a Role

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

Oracles Are About Problems, Not Correctness

As James Bach and I have have been refining our ideas of testing, we’ve been refining our ideas about oracles. In a recent post, I referred to this passage: Program testing involves the execution of a program over sample test data followed by analysis of the output. Different kinds of test output can be generated. It may consist of final values of program output variables or of intermediate traces of … Read more

Very Short Blog Posts (26): You Don’t Need Acceptance Criteria to Test

You do not need acceptance criteria to test. Reporters do not need acceptance criteria to investigate and report stories; scientists do not need acceptance criteria to study and learn about things; and you do not need acceptance criteria to explore something, to experiment with it, to learn about it, or to provide a description of it. You could use explicit acceptance criteria as a focusing heuristic, to help direct your … Read more

Very Short Blog Posts (24): You Are Not a Bureaucrat

Here’s a pattern I see fairly often at the end of bug reports: Expected: “Total” field should update and display correct result. Actual: “Total” field updates and displays incorrect result. Come on. When you write a report like that, can you blame people for thinking you’re a little slow? Or that you’re a bureaucrat, and that testing work is mindless paperwork and form-filling? Or perhaps that you’re being condescending? It … Read more