“No user would ever do that!”“No user would ever try that!”“No user would ever need that feature!”“That’s a cool idea, but no user would ever want it.” When developers say, “No user would ever do that,” what they really mean is “No user that I’ve thought of, and that I like, would do that on purpose. In the Rapid Software Testing course, James and I have been encouraging testers to … Read more

A discussion started recently in comp.software.testing about industry best practice: When creating a complicated web based application from scratch, how many testers per developer would be considered a best practice? I have heard 1.5 testers for every developer. What are your thoughts on this? My (lightly-edited for this blog) response was… If you want to find all the bugs, 100 testers per programmer would be much better than 1.5 testers … Read more

There’s a perception (mine) that one of the biggest questions in testing is “did this test pass or fail?” However, that big question pales in significance to a much more important question, in my view: Is there a problem here? And that is what this lovely little conversation between James Bach and Mike Kelly is all about.

Again, in the unlikely event that you read my blog before you read James‘ blog. One of James’ correspondents, who sometimes goes by the name “Ben Simo”, is a very sharp fellow, as evinced by some of his posts on the software-testing mailing list. In response to our conversation about scripted test procedures, Ben asked a question that I think is important. How do we teach script writers to lock … Read more

James scooped me! In the unlikely event that you read my blog before you read his, I’m proud to present this conversation (http://www.developsense.com/audio/whatdoscriptstellus.mp3) between him and me, which about the nature of scripted test procedures and some of the dangerous assumptions that people make about them. The chat is about one hour long. It’s only slightly marred by a phone line with a little echo. As James suggests, before you … Read more

This was written in reply to a suggestion on comp.software.testing that we can’t decide when we’ve done enough ad hoc or exploratory testing. The original poster asked: Can you predict how much time such testing stage will take? What are grounding your estimates on? When do you have a chance to adjust your estimates? Is not it too late? And what are you doing in case it is? How do … Read more

I revisited this passage recently. I’ve added the emphasis. [quote] I am going to describe my personal views about managing large software developments. I have had various assignments during the past nine years, mostly concerned with the development of software packages for spacecraft mission planning, commanding, and post-flight analysis. In these assignments I have experienced different degrees of success with respect to arriving at an operational state, on-time, and within … Read more

Mark Federman is the author (with Derrick deKerckhove) of McLuhan for Managers, a wonderfully accessible book on McLuhan’s principles applied to more recent ideas about technological innovation. Mark was the first person to point me to this (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LRBIVRwvUeE), which I anticipate will shortly be all over the Web. Although I can see his comments in my aggregator, I can’t see them on his blog yet. To sum them up: the … Read more