In the interview with the Coding QA guys that was the subject of my last post, James Bach refers exploratory testing as parallel learning test design, test execution and learning, and said that exploratory approaches are epitomized by loops. Where do loops happen in exploratory testing? In fact, exploratory testing includes both looping and branching. When we’re testing in an exploratory way, we may branch away from the current path … Read more
Several months back, James Bach did an interview with the CodingQA guys, Matthew Osborn and Federico Silva Armas. In the interview, James talks about the skills of exploratory testing, sex education (now do I have your attention?) and how to use session-based test management with minimal overhead and maximum credibility. I’m surprised at how few people have heard about the podcast, so I’m drawing attention to it here. It runs … Read more
Phil came into my office, and flopped down into the comfortable chair across from my desk. He looked depressed and worried. “Hey, Phil,” I asked him tentatively. “You look like something’s bothering you. What’s up?” His brow furrowed. “I don’t know. I just don’t know. Sometimes I feel like people think of me as nothing more than a literary device.” I usually don’t like fiction writing in the form of … Read more
For the last few weeks, I’ve been updating my blog and my Web site. This was inspired largely by Blogger’s decision to drop support for blog publishing via FTP. That would mean moving the blog to a .blogspot.com site, or to a custom domain that wouldn’t be developsense.com or a subdomain of it (later: not a subdomain, but a subfolder of http://www.developsense.com). Ugh. Many of my colleagues have taken to … Read more
It’s a busy season in Europe for Rapid Testing this spring. I’m going to be at the Norwegian Computer Society’s FreeTest, a conference on free testing tools in Trondheim, Norway, where I’ll be giving a keynote talk on testing vs. checking on March 26. That’s preceded by a three-day public session of Rapid Software Testing, from March 23-25. Register here. After that I’m off to Germany for a three-day public … Read more
Dave Nicollette responds to my post on the Ellis Island bug. I appreciate his continuing the conversation that started in the comments to my post. Dave says, “In describing a ‘new’ category of software defect he calls Ellis Island bugs…”. I want to make it clear: there is nothing new about Ellis Island bugs, except the name. They’ve been with us forever, since before there were computers, even. He goes … Read more
A couple of years ago, I developed a version of a well-known reasoning exercise. It’s a simple exercise, and I implemented it as a really simple computer program. I described it to James Bach, and suggested that we put it in our Rapid Software Testing class. James was skeptical. He didn’t figure from my description that the exercise would be interesting enough. I put in a couple of little traps, … Read more
Rikard Edgren, Henrik Emilsson and Martin Jansson collaborate on blog called thoughts from the test eye. In a satirical post from this past summer called “Scripted vs Exploratory Testing from a Managerial Perspective“, Martin proposes that “From a managerial perspective without knowing too much about testing, your sole experience comes from the scripted test environment…” But I think that from a managerial perspective, there is another place you could look … Read more
In this blog post, my colleague James Bach talks about logging and its importance in support of exploratory testing. Logging takes care of one part of the accountability angle, and in an approach like session-based test management (developed by James and his brother Jon), the test notes and the debrief take care of another part of it. Logging records what happened from the perspective of the test system. Good logging … Read more
In our Rapid Testing class, James Bach and I like to talk about an underappreciated tester resource: disposable time. Disposable time is the time that you can afford to waste without getting into trouble. Now, we want to be careful about what we mean by “waste”, here. It’s not that you want to waste the time. You probably want to spend it wisely. It’s just that you won’t suffer harm … Read more