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: […]
* Take any product, or a part of it. * Choose one category of the quality characteristics. * Go through each sub-category and consider if it is relevant. * For these, write a quality objective anchored in the product, that is useful to many roles. * Design and execute tests that challenge these objectives. * […]
You can learn a lot by testing something very different from your normal job. I’d love to professionally test a suggested law, or a chainsaw. For now, I give you an opportunity to test a bread recipe, in English or Swedish. FAVORITE SOURDOUGH BREAD FAVORITBRÖDET It should be possible to bake from it if you […]
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 […]
Analogies are powerful when they help us understand something (they shouldn’t be used to argue.) And virtually any analogy can be good, you don’t know until after you have tried. So this exercise is to use an analogy from your daily life, compare it to testing in general, or to your current area of concern. […]
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. […]