In February of 2012, James Bach and I got together for a week of work one-on-one, face-to-face—something that happens all too rarely. We worked on a number of things, but the principal outcome was a statement of the premises on which Rapid Software Testing—our classes and our methodology—are based. In deference to Twitter-sized attention spans like mine, I’ll post the premises over the next few days. Here’s the preamble and … Read more
Speaking of oracles—the ways in which we recognize problems… I’m on the mailing list for a company whose product I purchased a while ago. The other day, I received a mailing signed by the product marketing manager for that company. The topic of the mailing is a potential use for the product, but the product doesn’t support that purpose very well at all. In fact, I’ve often wanted to use … Read more
Accompanying slides can be found here: http://lets-test.com/wp-content/uploa…
People sometimes seem to struggle with a concept that’s central to testing, the concept of “oracle”. In the three-day Rapid Software Testing class, we define an oracle as a principle or mechanism means by which we recognize a problem. Sometimes I like to emphasize that oracles are fallible and context-dependent. When that’s so, I say that an oracle is a heuristic principle or mechanism means by which we recognize a problem. (Updated … Read more
A strong, active, local testing community is a wonderful thing. Kitchener-Waterloo, a hub of software and software-related companies small and large, has such a community, and an active association in the KWSQA. Each year, the KWSQA presents the Targeting Quality conference, which I’ve had the pleasure of participating in for a few years. Alas, this year I can’t make it—but maybe you can. This year’s presenters and workshop leaders are … Read more
Here’s a classic case of poor design and user experience. Most of us have seen something like it. It happened to my wife yesterday. It will happen to you again soon, probably. You’re making an online payment for some product or service. You press a button that says something like “Submit Payment”. A web page appears that says something like “Your payment is being submitted. Please do not close this … Read more
Here is a specific, real-world example of testing where the focus doesn’t include explicit checking, and does not result in yes-or-no answers to predetermined questions. This morning, I acted on a piece of email I received several days ago, offering a free upgrade to a PDF conversion package which I’ll call “PDFThing”. I’ll walk you through what happened, and parts of my thought process as it happened. Since the email … Read more
In the spring of 2010, I was privileged to have a conversation with Simon Schaffer, who pointed me to the work of a sociologist and philosopher of science named Harry Collins. This year, I discovered and read Collins’ new book, Tacit and Explicit Knowledge, and a somewhat older book, The Shape of Actions (co-authored with Martin Kusch). My colleague James Bach and I believe that these books have great significance … Read more
What’s our job as testers? Reporting bugs, right? When I first started reading about Session-Based Test Management, I was intrigued by the session sheet. At the top, there’s a bunch of metadata about the session—the charter, the coverage areas, who did the testing, when they started, how long it took, and how much time was spent on testing versus interruptions to testing. Then there’s the meat of the session sheet, … Read more
In the spring of 2008, I was privileged to chat with Jerry Weinberg on why he was favouring CAST with his only conference appearance of that year, other than the Amplifying Your Effectiveness conference, of which he’s a co-founder and host. CAST that year saw the launch of Jerry’s book Perfect Software and Other Illusions About Testing. It’s now available as an e-book, too. Jerry will not, so far as … Read more