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For the Interviewers: Evaluating Testing Skill

A prototype of this post originally appeared on LinkedIn. Today I was using Microsoft Word, and for the first time I took a look at a feature that’s probably been there for a long while. Also today, there’s at least one more LinkedIn poll with an interview question — apparently aimed at testers — on a fairly trivial aspect of Java programming. Questions of that nature might reasonable if the … Read more

“Should Sound Like” vs. “Should Be”

Yet another post plucked and adapted from the walled garden of LinkedIn “What the large language models are good at is saying what an answer should sound like, which is different from what an answer should be.” —Rodney Brooks, https://spectrum.ieee.org/gpt-4-calm-down Note for testers and their clients: the problem that Rodney Brooks identifies with large language models applies to lots of test procedures and test results as well. People often have … Read more

Testing is Socially Challenging

This post has been brewing for a while, but a LinkedIn conversation today reminded me to put it in the bottle and ship it. Testing is socially challenging. There’s a double meaning there. One meaning is that testing involves challenging the product and our beliefs about it, in a social context. The other meaning is that probing the product and people’s beliefs about it can sometimes be uncomfortable for everyone … Read more

Lessons Learned in Grating Cheese

“Lessons Learned in Grating Cheese” by Michael Bolton | TestFlix 2020

0:44 / 8:06 #TestFlix#Testing#SoftwareTesting

About this Talk: “Lessons Learned in Grating Cheese” by Michael Bolton This is a video recording of a conversation between Michael Bolton and Ajay Balamurugadas, after Michael’s first attempt to produce a Testflix video. It’s about how things can miss the mark when you’re too close to them — and how a tester’s critical eye might be able to help.

Top Takeaways: The takeaways are yours to decide!

Speaker Bio: Michael Bolton is a consulting software tester and testing teacher who helps people to solve testing problems that they didn’t realize they could solve. In 2006, he became co-author (with James Bach) of Rapid Software Testing (RST), a methodology and mindset for testing software expertly and credibly in uncertain conditions and under extreme time pressure. Since then, he has flown over a million miles to teach RST in 35 countries on six continents.

Michael has over 30 years of experience testing, developing, managing, and writing about software. For over 20 years, he has led DevelopSense, a Toronto-based testing and development consultancy. Prior to that, he was with Quarterdeck Corporation for eight years, during which he managed the company’s flagship products and directed project and testing teams both in-house and around the world.

Contact Michael at michael@developsense.com, on Twitter @michaelbolton, or through his Web site, http://www.developsense.com.
Twitter – https://twitter.com/michaelbolton
LinkedIn – https://www.linkedin.com/in/michael-b…

This video is of one of the Atomic Talks presented at #TestFlix– Global Software #Testing Binge, 2020. TestFlix 2020 had: -107 Speakers from 44 Countries -5200 Registrations from 91 Countries -Over 2100 attendees on the Event Day

TestFlix 2020 Proud Sponsors:
TestProject – https://testproject.io
AI Appstore – https://www.aiappstore.com
Trigent Software – https://www.trigent.com/services/qa-t…
Sauce Labs – https://saucelabs.com
Testsigma – https://testsigma.com
Testvox – https://testvox.com
Mozark – https://mozark.ai
Moolya Testing – https://moolya.com

#SoftwareTesting #Automation #SoftwareQuality #SoftwareDevelopment

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