Like software products, models change as we test them, gain experience with them, find bugs in them, realize that features are missing. We see opportunities for improving them, and revise them. A product coverage outline, in Rapid Testing parlance, is an artifact (a map, or list, or table…) that identifies the dimensions or elements of a product. It’s a kind of inventory of aspects of the product that could be … Read more
A few weeks ago, I posted a Very Short Blog Post on the bare-bones basics of testability. Today, I saw a very good post from Adam Knight talking about telling the testability story. Adam focused, as I did, on intrinsic testability—things in the product itself that it more testable. But testability isn’t just a product attribute. In Heuristics of Testability (material we developed in a session of Rapid Software Testing … Read more
presented by the EuroSTAR Software Testing Conference
Michael Bolton hosted a live Google Hangout where he will discuss his recent Masterclass entitled:
‘How to get what you want from Testing’.
(For Testers, Developers & Managers)
In this session, Michael explained the role of skilled software testers, and why you might not want to think of testing as “quality assurance”.
EuroSTAR Conferences, with the support of ISA Software Skillnet, Irish Software Innovation Network and SoftTest, were delighted to bring you a half-day software testing masterclass with Michael Bolton In this session, Michael Bolton (who has extensive experience as a tester, as a programmer, and as a project manager) explained the role of skilled software testers, and why you might not want to think of testing as “quality assurance”. He present … Read more
How do people use a software product? Some development groups model use through use cases. Typically use cases are expressed in terms of the user performing a set of step-by-step behaviours: 1, then 2, then 3, then 4, then 5. In those groups, testers may create test cases that map directly onto the use cases. Sometimes, that gets called a scenario, and the testing of it is called a scenario … Read more
Every now and then, in some forum or another, someone says something like “75% of the testing done on an Agile project is done by automation”. Whatever else might be wrong with that statement, it’s a very strange way to describe a complex, cognitive process of learning about a product through experimentation, and seeking to find problems that threaten the value of the product, the project, or the business. Perhaps … Read more
Whether you’re working in an Agile environment or not, one of the tester’s most important tasks is to ask and advocate for things that make a product more testable. Where to start? Think about visibility—in its simplest form, log files—and controllability in the form of scriptable application programming interfaces (APIs). Logs aren’t just for troubleshooting. Comprehensive log files can help to identify the data that was processed and the functions … Read more
Regression testing is focused on the risk that something that used to work in some way no longer works that way. A lot of organizations (Agile ones in particular) seem fascinated by regression testing (or checking) above all other testing activities. It’s a good idea to check for the risk of regression, but it’s also a good idea to test for it. Moreover, it’s a good idea to make sure … Read more
Once upon time, in a high-tech business park far, far away, there were four companies, each working on a development project. In Project Blue, the testers created a suite of 250 test cases, based on 50 use cases, before development started. These cases remained static throughout the project. Each week saw incremental improvement in the product, although things got a little stuck towards the end. Project Blue kept a table … Read more
In Rapid Software Testing, James Bach, our colleagues, and I advocate an approach that puts the skill set and the mindset of the individual tester—rather than some document or tool or test case or process modelY—at the centre of testing. We advocate an exploratory approach to testing so that we find not only the problems that people have anticipated, but also the problems they didn’t anticipate. We challenge the value … Read more