An engineering approach to Software Testing and Test Automation

I continue with the first part of a mission from Weekend Testing Americas session #5. This was an educational exercise. What we had?   A simplistic environment It’s a square. It has finite size. Objects, contained in it, are static – they never change their behavior. 5 commands to use 5 simple, non-abstract commands. Go [...] ...

Last Saturday I joined Weekend Testing Americas session #5 as a “special guest” tester, introducing testing challenge I prepared under Michael Larsen‘s revision to fit WT environment and conditions. For those, who have not heard of Weekend Testing: it’s an online event, where testers gather up and practice their craft in collaboration. As it’s time [...] ...

“Explore the context of the test project, your givens, and your mission” Context-Free Questions for Testing, Michael Bolton, DevelopSense Weekend Testing Americas (WTA) session #3 was planned and facilitated by Michael Larsen. This time we got something special. The objective Produce either a list or a mind map of the features of Rapid Reporter with [...] ...

Quality is value to some person. Gerald Weinberg The story began when I received a new chequebook. Every bank, especially any of top 5 banks [in Canada], has a lot of claims about how much quality matters to them, and how much they care about their customers. Since I was not satisfied by a quality [...] ...

What, you didn't know that printer does not support mark-up characters? ...

“Testing is a process of exploration, discovery, investigation, learning, and analysis with the goal of gathering information about risks, vulnerabilities, and threats to the value of the product.”  Michael Bolton, DevelopSense What this is about? Read about Weekend Testing November, 2010: Weekend Testing is coming to the Western Hemisphere November, 13, 2010: Let’s Dance!   [...] ...

With this post I continue my examples on Bounded Awareness in software testing. But, again, first I ask you to read the following article: “Multi-tasking makes you stupid”. If you didn’t, here’s the summary. A growing body of scientific research shows one of the jugglers’ favorite time-saving techniques, multitasking, can actually make you less efficient [...] ...

Last week I asked QuickTestingTips readers to share examples of Bounded Awareness they observed in their work, and here I’m with my stories. Let’s start with this video. You see two teams of people playing basketball. While you watch the video, count number of passes made by the each team. ..Now, after you’re done, list what [...] ...

I’m very glad that the testing challenge I set went to a second round. I prompt my readers now to read through the post in Darren McMillan’s blog. Please pay special attention to Results and Debriefing sections. I think those are great examples of facilitation to learn from. I also would like to share what I [...] ...

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 [...] ...

If I would have to choose to keep only one of my answers on StackOverflow, I’d choose this one.  Probably, not necessary explanation On a technical side, what is the greatest test automation challenge? It’s not programming, and not even learning about tool’s object model or application’s API. But it’s two-fold. 1. Automated test design [...] ...

Software Engineering Explained Software Development Waist Line ...

Proverbs and quotes Remember the difference between a boss and a leader; a boss says “Go!” – a leader says “Let’s go!” E.M. Kelly I have always thought the actions of men the best interpreters of their thoughts. John Locke A promise is a cloud; fulfillment is rain. Arabian Proverb A good manager is a [...] ...

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 [...] ...

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 [...] ...

Participation Based on stats I have, over 70 people navigated to Escapa game page directly from my blog. I hope everyone is enjoyed, and I thank those who took a challenge of testing, found stuff, and posted their findings. I tracked on Software Testing Club and Twitter, in addition to my blog. If I missed [...] ...

Now Closed – Proceed to Results A short intro I wholeheartedly support Matthew Heusser‘s (update: this blog is now only available under paid STP membership but you can access another Matthew’s blog) call to practice craft of testing, anywhere and anytime, above and beyond work responsibilities. Exploring, experimenting, and learning is always fun. To make [...] ...

Testing Evolution (mindmapped) After reading A Transpection Session: Inputs and Expected Results by Michael Bolton and James Bach ...

Beware of checking tools! (Inspired by Andy Glover)   (click on the image to see it full-size) ...

A few facts to now Most of cell phones now come with a built-in GPS receiver hardware unit and GPS tracking software module. Basically, you can assume that any smart phone whether it’s Blackberry, iPhone, or Nokia, (or whatever) model has it, and it’s turned ON by default. A GPS tracking equipped cell phone can precisely [...] ...