Archive for January, 2011

fast and frugal tree for test triage Rikard Edgren 7 Comments

There are situations when you have to choose to run a test or not. Some organizations quantifies properties like time, risk and get a prioritized list. Most probably just use their intuition, but if that’s not enough, or you want to explain and share the reasoning, you can try using a fast and frugal tree […]

Roleplaying your test scenarios Martin Jansson No Comments

Many of you have played roleplaying games/storytelling games or at least heard of them. In those games you have a gamemaster/storyteller, who arranges scenes or scenarios that the players act in. He does not control what each player does nor how he/she should interact with others. Each player usually plays a role/character that has a […]

Lateral Tester Exercise II – Everyday Analogies Rikard Edgren 12 Comments

Analogies are powerful when they help us understand something (they shouldn’t be used to argue.) And virtually any analogy can be good, you don’t know until after you have tried. So this exercise is to use an analogy from your daily life, compare it to testing in general, or to your current area of concern. […]

Developers, let the testers assist with the technical debt Martin Jansson 4 Comments

Shipping first time code is like going into debt. A little debt speeds development so long as it is paid back promptly with a rewrite. Objects make the cost of this transaction tolerable. The danger occurs when the debt is not repaid. Every minute spent on not-quite-right code counts as interest on that debt. Entire […]

Testing Clichés Part V: Testing needs a test coverage model Rikard Edgren 16 Comments

I believe there is too much focus on test coverage , there is even an axiom about the need of it. My reason is that no coverage model captures what is important. Cem Kaner lists 101 possible coverage models (Software Negligence and Testing Coverage), and none of them are super-good to me (my favorite is […]

Tester’s Pedal Rikard Edgren 2 Comments

The tool you’ve been waiting for! Function: When you push the pedal a random input will be sent to the machine, and thereby your application. By default, a sample of error-prone inputs are available (e.g. ASCII 30, double-click, Unicode, beep) The nifty thing is to be able to do this rapidly, On-Demand, in unexpected situations, […]