‘Skills’ Archive

25th anniversery of my very first testing lesson Rikard Edgren No Comments

On November 2nd 1998 I did my first working day as a tester, 25 years ago.The first thing I tested was the Swedish version of Internet Explorer 4 Service Pack 2.We had detailed step-by-step instructions to follow, so it seemed straightforward.Long-time tester Anders Olsson helped me with my first tests, and on the second test […]

Scripting Your Test Data Rikard Edgren 3 Comments

Sometimes I wonder if testers know how easy it is to script your own variations of test data. I prefer Ruby, and you can download this example that I will tell you about. I was testing healthcare data and wanted to see what the performance was for larger quantities of data. We had a mock […]

Serendipity Questions Rikard Edgren No Comments

This Tuesday I held a EuroSTAR webinar: Good Testers are Often Lucky – using serendipity in software testing (about how to increase the chances of finding valuable things we weren’t looking for) Slide notes and recording are available. I got many good questions, and wanted to answer a few of them here: How can we […]

New, new perspectives (EuroSTAR 2015 Lightning Talk) Rikard Edgren No Comments

I believe one of the most important traits of testers is that we bring new perspectives, new ideas about what is relevant. I probably believe this from my experiences from the first development team I joined, so I will tell you about the future by telling an old story. This was in Gothenburg, 15 years […]

Lots of test strategy Rikard Edgren No Comments

I have been doing lots on test strategy the last year. Some talks, a EuroSTAR tutorial, blog entries, a small book in Swedish, teaching at higher vocational studies, and of course test strategies in real projects. The definition I use is more concrete than many others. I want a strategy for a project, not for […]

Testing Examples Rikard Edgren 8 Comments

I believe we need a lot more examples of software testing. They will be key in transferring tacit knowledge (they will not be all that is required, but an important part.) They work best when done live, so you can discuss, but that doesn’t scale very well. So I have created a few examples in […]

The Notepad and Visualize Heuristics Rikard Edgren 1 Comment

I was at Nordic Testing Days and had a great time meeting new and old friends. During my presentation about serendipity I showed two heuristics I wanted to share here as well. They both concern observing from different angles, to learn something new, and increase chances of serendipity. The Notepad Heuristic Years ago I worked […]

Acting On Answers Rikard Edgren 1 Comment

Asking questions is rightly regarded as important for testers. But I seldom here anything about what we should do with the answers. Not that I believe anyone would ask the question, then not listen to the result, but I think we take for granted that we will understand the answers, and that we can use […]

Using Quality Characteristics Rikard Edgren 3 Comments

More than 3 years have passed since we published the first version of our Software Quality Characteristics. It is quite popular, and it is now translated to 8 languages by testing enthusiasts. But it’s about time to talk a bit more about how to use the list, where there are at least three typical scenarios: […]

Lateral Tester Exercise V: FizzBuzz Rikard Edgren 12 Comments

I am always at the lookout for new testing exercises, since I teach a lot. Today I found a programming exercise at http://imranontech.com/2007/01/24/using-fizzbuzz-to-find-developers-who-grok-coding/ that I thought could be turned into something for testers. Since it doesn’t fit any of my current teaching schemes, I blog about it instead of putting it in the closet. Instructions: […]