thoughts from the test eye

Over the years, one has read quite some text about software testing. Some things have (from various sources and experiences) become clear for me, and I’m surprised when seeing articles/presentations that don’t acknowledge these insights. These “truths” are now and then implicitly disregarded: * Requirements don’t include all important information * Testing includes more than […]

Monday Henrik started his journey by car from Karlstad and went down to Gothenburg to join with Martin. Both of us were going to take the train down to Copenhagen. Not surprisingly there were delays and the train was cancelled… Instead we headed back to Martin’s house and loaded Henrik’s car and took off. After […]

EuroSTAR 2010 took place during the coldest Copenhagen November in 140 years. Being a program committee member it was a bit different, but not a lot; I met a lot of interesting people, spent too little time in the test lab, and listened to thought-worthy presentations (+ 11 Danish Alliance Lightning Talks.) The theme was […]

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 […]

I have had some problems with the notion of Risk-Based Testing. I mean, aren’t all testing based on risk in some sense, making the term redundant? When using risk techniques, you come up with a list of areas to investigate first or most. But what about those items that are extremely rare, but with very […]

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. […]

Social psychologists and police officers tend to agree that if a window in a building is broken and is left unrepaired, all the rest of the windows will soon be broken. This is as true in nice neighborhoods as in run-down ones. Window-breaking does not necessarily occur on a large scale because some areas are […]

With all due respect, this is the announcement of the perhaps most powerful public two-page document in the history of software testing. It is an extended re-write of James Bach’s Quality Criteria Categories, and has been developed to 12 categories (CRUCSPIC STMP) and 93 sub-categories for software quality characteristics/attributes/factors/dimensions/properties/criteria/aspects. This list is not objectively true, […]

That applications have focus on the right place is essential to a good user experience. You have to trust that pressing Del on keyboard will have the intended effect. Problems with this is very common, at least on Windows, and especially in applications with dialogs and panels and stuff of different types. Addressing symptoms agressively […]