thoughts from the test eye

Last week I took the Rapid Test Management (RTM) class in Gothenburg with James Bach. As always, he is such an inspiration and really makes you engage and think. Thanks for that James! In one part of the class we were factoring an application: Factoring: Dimensions of Interest Factoring is the process of analyzing an […]

I spent two days in Malmö attending a developer conference with a fantastic test track (put together by Sigge Birgisson.) I did a presentation on Curing Our Binary Disease (slides, abstract), which was much better received than I hoped for (I thought it was a binary love/hate talk) Good questions and talk about being inside […]

A year has passed since we released version 1.0 of our quality model without metrics. It is time for a new version, with additions and corrections we have learned over the year (and a Swedish translation!) 1.1 English 1.1 Swedish 1.0 English Feedback is always welcome! /Rikard, Henrik, Martin

As an exercise, try these generic test ideas on any product, for instance a recent upload to sourceforge.net. Then come up with a better test idea, and write as a comment. Also suggest one to remove; I have decided they must be seventeen (a Tranströmer homage) * Try to do what it is supposed to […]

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 […]

As a tester you find lots of things that bugs you when exploring a system. In some cases these issues only nudge you slightly at first, but after passing over the same issue many times it really starts to drive you crazy. This, at first small issue, has now become something that affect you more […]

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. […]

This Wednesday I held a presentation at DevCon 2011 entitled Exploratory Test Design (slides) I like this terminology a lot, because it encompasses the two things I want to see in software testing * looking at a lot more information sources than requirements * vary execution and look for many things It was also a […]

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 […]