Hopeless. Absolutely hopeless. Lots of important work to do, and this testing challenge steals an hour from me. Matt Heuser posted it on his blog. When James Bach and I pose testing problems like this at one another, we offer the opportunity to provide a quick, practical or deep answer. Here’s mine. It ain’t quick. It’s fairly deep, but I hope it’s also reasonably practical. To start with, I think … Read more

There’s a principle in some circles that suggest that the full suite of regression tests be run after each build, or at the end of each iteration, or before each release. Typically when people talk about stuff like that, they don’t bother to specify what they mean by “full”, or “regression tests”, or even “the” (these tests, but no others?), so it’s hard to tell whether the suggestion is reasonable … Read more

I’ve realized that I’ve got a couple of problems with blogging regularly. Maybe you can help me to do something about it. The first issue is that I don’t really like to publish unpolished material in a blog. The draft mechanism handles that, to some degree. I have less of a problem with that if there’s a strong sense of mission about the material that I’m publishing–so writing magazine articles … Read more

One thing that Michael Hunter pointed out to me after the Rapid Software Testing course, which I hereby rectify: he claimed that he couldn’t find FDSFSCURA anywhere on the Net. What is FDSFSCURA and why should you care? FDSFSCURA is the mnemonic for the nine test techniques that we identify in the course. It comes from James Bach’s Heuristic Test Strategy Model. It stands for Function TestingDomain TestingStress TestingFlow TestingScenario … Read more

I first noticed Michael Hunter‘s blog a couple of years back. Michael’s blog was the most thoughtful and valuable work I had seen on testing coming from Microsoft, and it has only got better since then. I found out that Michael would be at SD West 2005. I wasn’t able to attend the conference–I was teaching in Sunnyvale that week. However, a a large number of my pals–colleagues involved with … Read more

I was back in Bengalooru (formerly Bangalore) during the week of January 30-February 3, 2007. I was doing training for a corporate client. Outside of the training (which I enjoyed and the students did too, I believe) one really positive thing happened while I was there: Pradeep Soundararajan helped me to organize a meeting of some of the people in Bengalooru who are interested in establishing a community of skilled … Read more

I did a half-day tutorial–a Rapid Introduction to Rapid Software Testing–at the STeP-IN Summit 2007, on the morning of January 18 in Bengalooru (formerly Bangalore), India. After lunch, the choice was between a presentation on test automation strategies and building test management skills. I chose to sit in on the latter. The presenter was Jaya Raghuram (Raghu) from AppLabs Technologies. Apparently his colleagues were unable to attend the scheduled talk, … Read more

Today I found a very strange remark in an article called “Best Practices for Outsourcing Software Testing and Development“. The question from the interview is “What are some of the mistakes that companies commonly make when outsourcing software testing?” Sashi Reddi, CEO of AppLabs Technology, a Philadelphia-based company that specializes in software testing and development with an emphasis on quality assurance, says: The biggest mistake is that many times companies … Read more

Recently I went to parent-teacher night at my 10-year-old stepson’s school. Above the door to his classroom is a list of heuristics for solving problems that I think is just dandy for testers. They’re not called heuristics there, but that’s what they are. Use logical reasoning Work backwards Make a picture or diagram Use or look for a pattern Make it simpler Guess and check Use or make a table … Read more