If performance is crucial for product success, you probably need pretty advanced tools to measure various aspects of your product, to find all bottlenecks and time thiefs. For all other software, performance is just very important, and you might get by with lightweight test methods. You may, or may not have quantified performance requirements, but […]
Henrik Emilsson has convinced me that skilled software testing is based on invisible mental models that help us see what can be tested. If we can make these visible, we can sharpen our skills, and also teach testing more effectively. Here follows a simple example I used in class, that shows that by switching between […]
Status reporting of testing activities is extremely project-dependent. The needs of when and how and what will differ every time. Maybe that’s why there’s so little good writing about status communication; you have to make it up every time. Templates are out of the question, and I believe examples will mislead you as well. You’re […]
– I saw you tested “42”. How come you didn’t try “43”? – That’s obvious. It would be the same. No need to test something that would give the same result. – OK, so I guess you are familiar with equivalence partitioning? – Beg your pardon? It is quite often said that testers don’t know […]
Storytelling has been rising for quite some years and it will soon boom for software testing. The reason is simple: people like stories. And if it is used as status reporting instead of lame numbers, it is a step in the right direction, to say the least. But when testing this idea theoretically, I find […]
James Bach and Michael Bolton has a classic collection of consistency oracles; HICCUPPS(F): History, Image, Comparable Products, Claims, User Expectations, Product, Purpose, Standards and Statutes, Familiarity It is a very good collection; not only helping you find out if something is a problem or not, but also the other way round: serving as testing inspiration. […]
During my first paternity leave I learned sourdough baking. During the second I couldn’t help writing an ambitious paper, or a small book, about people-oriented test design, about things beyond test design techniques, close to the exploratory testing tradition. It can be downloaded here. It contains collections of knowledge, and generalizations of my ten years […]
How do you find out what is important, in your specific situation? I think it is the essential problem for all activities with complexity. I think it is impossible to do really good software testing without the ability to dismiss things as not important, and dig deeper for matters that are important (I believe it’s […]
I know of some testers who are pointed out by others to be Bug Magnets; people recognized for their ability to somehow draw bugs to them. Bug Magnets can be found in many workplaces and I bet that you know of someone that falls under this description. I have been appointed a Bug Magnet by […]
In testing text books you can read that compatibility testing should be performed after the functionality testing and bug fixing is completed. I guess the reason is that you don’t want to mix these categories, but hey, what a waste of resources. My suggestion is to perform the compatibility testing at the same time as […]