It is very difficult to describe the process of synthesizing test ideas. It involves a multitude of information sources, a sense of what’s important, and a dose of creativity to come up with ingenious test ideas, and effective ways to execute them. The easiest way is to take the requirements document, re-phrase each item, and […]
It is a natural instinct for a tester to break down product information to elements that can be used in testing. It can be elaborations on a requirement, or insights from talking to a customer, or feature slogans from a web site et.al. Michael Bolton (and James Bach) calls this factoring – “Factoring is the […]
I’m re-reading deBono’s excellent Lateral Thinking. Here is a Generate Alternatives exercise for software testers; try to think of as many different alternatives as possible. There is no right answer, the focus is to train yourself in re-structuring information. And at the same time come up with many different ideas that might generate fruitful thoughts. […]
When testing software, the very best inspiration and reality check comes from the software itself. It helps you test beyond requirements, and investigate what the software really is capable, and incapable, of. These are my best practices for exploratory testing. 1. understand what’s important – we can’t test everything, and we can’t find all bugs. […]
Some years ago I read about Soap Opera testing too hastily, and started using it at work being convinced that it meant the following: A soap opera test involves normal operations, but a large amount of them, for a long time. As in the TV shows, they go on, and on, and on, and on, […]
I think quality criteria/factors/attributes/characteristics are extremely powerful. It helps you think in different ways, and makes it easy to get a broader coverage of your test ideas. See Software Quality Models and Philosophies for McCall, Boehm, FURPS, Dromey, ISO 9126 models, or CRUSSPIC STMPL for a version without focus on measurability. The granularity of this […]
Last week, me and Martin won the competition “The EuroSTAR Test Lab Apprentices”! Read more at: http://www.eurostarconferences.com/delegates/the-test-lab-apprentice.aspx See you in the Test Lab in Copenhagen! Cheers, Henrik & Martin
There are many good articles and reviews on how Session-based test management (SBTM) is used out in the field, see some of the references below. I’m going to try to analyse what I’ve experienced so far with Session-based test management. If you are new to these concepts please see reference [1] and [2] below to […]
When I meet testers I often ask what test design techniques they use on a regular basis. I am really curious which of the techniques that I know of that they use and I am always looking for new material. I have taught test design classes to maybe a thousand people over the years and […]
Usability is an important part of any product (if it’s too difficult to use, it doesn’t matter how great the functionality is) and thereby an important characteristic for the testing team. But when reading about usability testing, it often involves an outside person trying to use a feature for the first time. Now this is […]