Posted by Albert Gareev on Dec 02, 2016
Earlier this month, Ministry of Testing released an article named “The One Page Test Plan“. Presented, was rather a one page template for a test plan yet the article is good and thought provoking. Coincidentally, a similar question came up on Quora: “How would you define a test plan for this app?“. So I went […] ...
Posted by Albert Gareev on Nov 07, 2016
Another good question on Quora. Answering: What is domain testing? ***** All terms originate somewhere else, by analogy. Here’s the origin for “domain”. Image source: Domain of a function Domain is all possible inputs to the function Range is all possible outputs of the function ***** At the fundamental level, everything is data in computers. […] ...
Posted by Albert Gareev on Aug 17, 2016
These are the points I captured while reading 2nd part of “Organizing Our Homes” chapter of the book “The Organized Mind: Thinking Straight in the Age of Information Overload” by Dr. Daniel J. Levitin. Despite of the name of the chapter, many of these points apply to organization in general, be that at home , […] ...
Posted by Albert Gareev on Jul 05, 2016
These are the points I captured while reading 1st part of “Organizing our homes” chapter of the book “The Organized Mind: Thinking Straight in the Age of Information Overload” by Dr. Daniel J. Levitin. Many of these points apply to organization both at home and at work. See also my comments and examples below. Working […] ...
Posted by Albert Gareev on Apr 20, 2016
This article was published on StickyMinds – “Hidden Parts of the Performance Equation”, April, 2016. The Performance Equation Many teams decide to put together a “test bed” of servers and network infrastructure, develop some scripts simulating user requests, run the whole thing against the application, and see if they can satisfy the business requirements. And […] ...
Posted by Albert Gareev on Mar 07, 2016
“I don’t have birthdays, I level up.” If only it worked that way… No, no. In order to “level up” a skill we must spend time sweating it out. It’s also never a binary ladder. No. It’s actually very messy. Skill levels depend on the context, both external conditions and internal conditions of the bearer […] ...
Posted by Albert Gareev on Feb 10, 2016
Preface I’m exploring ways to better communicate impact of severity issues. Even the developers working on accessibility seem to look at it from “mechanical” or purely functional perspective. The challenge is heightened because it’s hard, likely impossible, to make valid assumptions on kinds of special needs, skills and experience of the users with assistive technologies, […] ...
Posted by Albert Gareev on Jan 06, 2016
These are the points I captured while reading 2nd part of “The first things to get straight” chapter of the book “The Organized Mind: Thinking Straight in the Age of Information Overload” by Dr. Daniel J. Levitin. “Daydreaming” or “Mind-Wandering” mode The flow of connections among disparate ideas and thoughts, and a relative lack of […] ...
Posted by Albert Gareev on Dec 11, 2015
HUMBLE acronym, Humanize-Unlearn-Model-Build-Learn-Experiment, was born when Michael Larsen and I shared our accessibility testing experiences. This year we talked a lot about the subject. CAST 2015, KWSQA 2015, Agile TD 2015, to name a few. We also got a mind map! :) Click on the image to download full mindmap in PDF. Textual description below. […] ...
Posted by Albert Gareev on Nov 27, 2015
Didn’t I say I’m going to take it seriously? Stay tuned for examples in the experience report! Tactical Tips for Business Strategic Testing Most of the testing is done by following functions and features.. But Business wants to know whether the product helps the users to achieve their goals. Business DOES NOT want to know […] ...
Posted by Albert Gareev on Nov 23, 2015
Leaders in testing practice are constantly and actively looking for ways to test faster, more efficiently, and more creatively. They also look for ways to find the most relevant bugs, and to tell the relevant story. Personas seemed to be very promising idea, and in the past few years I saw it mentioned here and […] ...
Posted by Albert Gareev on Nov 17, 2015
We held a joint Weekend Testing Americas / Weekend Testing Toronto event last Saturday. Great session, high attendance, intense engagement! Our theme was guided structured product exploration. We used SFDIPOT set of heuristics in the context of a free web based game. What is “SFDIPOT” or “San-Francisco Depot”? It’s a mnemonic standing for Structure-Functions-Data-Interfaces-Platform-Operations-Time; developed ...
Posted by Albert Gareev on Nov 10, 2015
These are the points I captured while reading 1st part of “The first things to get straight” chapter of the book “The Organized Mind: Thinking Straight in the Age of Information Overload” by Dr. Daniel J. Levitin. We live in a world of illusions || These illusions are not external but internal – our perception […] ...
Posted by Albert Gareev on Oct 20, 2015
These are the points I captured while reading 2nd part of “Too much information, too many decisions” chapter of the book “The Organized Mind: Thinking Straight in the Age of Information Overload” by Dr. Daniel J. Levitin. I put my points and cross-references next to them. Attention Filter mechanics Change detector Subconscious. Always “on” Registers […] ...
Posted by Albert Gareev on Oct 19, 2015
These are the points I captured while reading 1st part of “Too much information, too many decisions” chapter of the book “The Organized Mind: Thinking Straight in the Age of Information Overload” by Dr. Daniel J. Levitin. I put my points and cross-references next to them. Every day, we are confronted with dozens of decisions, […] ...
Posted by Albert Gareev on Oct 14, 2015
“How can I learn about critical thinking? What are the examples? How to apply it in testing?” If you’re asking such questions for yourself or for coaching of your team I can help you with a perfect source. Skeptoid is a podcast, public research projects, quality learning material, and source of excellent examples of critical […] ...
Posted by Albert Gareev on Oct 09, 2015
Today I’m going to present a talk on Web Accessibility and Accessibility Testing Heuristics at the conference of Kitchener Waterloo Software Quality Association. Maybe I’m driving at this moment while you’re reading this.. While my talk is less than 2 hours long I foresee some great challenges as a trainer. You see, I want to […] ...
Posted by Albert Gareev on Oct 07, 2015
This time I’m telling about my workshop experiences, including a session of Avalon gameplay with testers at CAST. TDD Workshop by Robert Sabourin I really enjoyed the workshop. Though the most interesting part for me was not about TDD. Self-organizing team. Maybe not by intent the workshop has perfectly demonstrated this challenge of Agile. The […] ...
Posted by Albert Gareev on Oct 05, 2015
Dialectical materialism is a philosophy of science and nature, based on the writings of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels. Wikipedia Dialectic (also dialectics and the dialectical method), from Ancient Greek διαλεκτική, is a method of argument for resolving disagreement that has been central to European and Indian philosophy since antiquity. The word dialectic originated in […] ...
Posted by Albert Gareev on May 14, 2015
Preface As I blogged in the past, a bug is an issue, but an issue is not necessarily a bug.. Customer support needs to respond to all incidents, but not all of them will be software defects. So what testers find reasonable to expect from Support when opening an issue? I suggest using a derivative […] ...
Posted by Albert Gareev on Mar 03, 2015
Any bug is a problem statement, illustrated with an example provided. Yet the example is just a symptom. Has the problem really been gone? Let’s ask questions. Let’s make bug fixing a truly collaborative work between programmers and testers. Is it code change or configuration change? Code change – any fix, update, improvement, etc. in […] ...
Posted by Albert Gareev on Feb 04, 2015
It’s been a while since I took Rapid Software Testing course. Since then, applying Structure-Functions-Data-Platform-Operations-Time heuristics is my favorite way of systematically learning about the product. And mind map is my favorite medium to capture and represent that information. References Heuristic Test Strategy Model – Satisfice, Inc. – Designed by James Bach Michael Bolton, DevelopSense: Testers […] ...
Posted by Albert Gareev on Jul 19, 2013
As I presented in my last post, a lot of test coverage is either data-specific or triggered by data combinations. This is an easy kind of tests to automate assuming well-known and explicit inputs and outputs. Below I enlist most common patterns and test ideas. General Patterns All major business requirements (the ones that are […] ...
Posted by Albert Gareev on Jun 24, 2013
In my test lead role, on each project I need to assess existing test coverage, or implement test coverage, or both. What I found helpful is a systematic approach: model, categorize and classify, analyze. My initial model is largely based on Rapid Testing Heuristics. Then, based on the product/project context, traceability matrix unfolds to something […] ...
Posted by Albert Gareev on Jul 05, 2011
I created this mindmap quite a while ago, as a follow-up to Data Container Boundaries and Complex Data Boundaries blog posts. Due to poor visualization capabilities of Freemind, I used previously, (before going with XMind), I decided to draw the mindmap manually, in MS Paint. That took me loooong time but I liked the result. Although, now I would write the […] ...
Posted by Albert Gareev on Apr 19, 2011
While getting ready for the Rapid Software Testing course I dedicated some time for the “homework” – studying of publicly available exploratory testing documents. And here’s my ideas on Functionality Testing. References Heuristic Test Strategy Model – Satisfice, Inc. – Designed by James Bach Michael Bolton, DevelopSense: Testers Know That Things Can Be Different ...
Posted by Albert Gareev on Apr 18, 2011
While getting ready for the Rapid Software Testing course I dedicated some time for the “homework” – studying of publicly available exploratory testing documents. And here’s my ideas on Claims Testing. References Heuristic Test Strategy Model – Satisfice, Inc. – Designed by James Bach Michael Bolton, DevelopSense: Testers Know That Things Can Be Different ...
Posted by Albert Gareev on Oct 13, 2010
How to find bugs quickly? How to pick just right test scenarios without losing your time trying thousands of possible combinations? These questions worth years of research. In my post I’m going to cover just one simple approach I practice quite successfully, and give a few examples you might be able to reproduce. Let’s start from […] ...
Posted by Albert Gareev on Jul 22, 2010
You must unlearn what you have learned. Master Yoda to Luke Skywalker Although Unlearning is not a testing heuristic itself, I found it very helpful in many activities – from testing and test automation to problem solving and management. That is why I wrote about Unlearning on quicktestingtips.com. Yet I wanted to share even more […] ...
Posted by Albert Gareev on Jun 17, 2010
Blink testing, as described by James Bach and explained by Michael Bolton, is an oracle heuristic based on “snap judgment” effect. Try catching “bug” (an odd character) in patterns below. I arranged them by difficulty I had. Feel free to put your experience in comments. In full-screen view all characters are 10pt capitals, as in standard […] ...
