testingReflections.com blogs

Trends, Papers, and SOA

Wed, 06 Aug 2008 09:56:53 -0500

I quickly found that my capacity of what I can do in addition to regular work is pretty limited: while I was writing a paper for the upcoming CMG conference and then helping a little with the conference organization as CPE (Computer Performance Evaluation) Subject Area Chair (CMG is a volunteer organization), I wasn't able to blog or update my site (probably more energy than time). Now this is mainly over: the CMG preliminary agenda was just published. It is time to summarize and move forward.

A test is "an example of the rule in practice", but...

Wed, 06 Aug 2008 17:23:49 -0500

In Jason Gorman's post called Tests Are Instances Of Rules he says:

In test-driven development, we use tests as executable specifications of what is required of the software we create.

For this to work effectively, our tests have to convey the underlying intent. And this requires us to ponder the relationship between a test and a specification.

5 Questions with Scott Barber by a Braidy Tester

Wed, 06 Aug 2008 01:29:44 -0500

I recently had the honor of being interviewed by Michael Hunter, a Braidy Tester, for Dr. Dobbs Portal. Check it out: 5 Questions with Scott Barber.

--
Scott Barber
President & Chief Technologist, PerfTestPlus, Inc.
Executive Director, Association for Software Testing
Co-Author, Performance Testing Guidance for Web Applications

"If you can see it in your mind...
you will find it in your life."

How nice it is to see...

Sun, 03 Aug 2008 07:02:54 -0500

I can't tell you how satisfying it is to see the fruits of my labours! I had a particularly proud moment when I read 32 Burndowns by Rob Hardy on the BBCi Labs blog... The rich collection of example burn-downs tell 32 different stories... and Rob's summary of how these projects work is dramatically different to the one he might have told only 2 years ago... but for me the gratifying aspect of this is seeing the ongoing growth in their development and understanding of what they do, how they do it and why they do it that way...

How To

Sat, 02 Aug 2008 11:01:41 -0500

In recent weeks I’ve had the good fortune to return to do some work on a product I worked on a couple of years ago. I’m working with a product that I have deep history and knowledge of and I’m happy to be working with again.

A tester on the team who’s fairly new to the team needed some help. When I heard what she needed I had to think about it for a bit. This would have been information I would have had to have learned as well. So I did something that I often do and realized it might be worthwhile to blog about and share. I turned to a folder I create for every project and trolled through a stack of my notepad files. My how-to’s files.

QA/Testing (Again)

Sat, 26 Jul 2008 13:21:55 -0500

Software is about the only industry that lumps testing and QA under one banner. It's one of those things where common misuse of a term results in the community changing it's meaning... this happens in mainstream language all the time.

Testing something is actually more analogous to quality control or, QC. QA is more concerned with the process - collecting information about the performance of the process in order to determine if we are 'assuring' (or more realistically increasing the probability of) quality. Statistical information about problems found in the product (during quality control) is just one of many pieces of info useful to someone concerned with QA (which really should be the whole project team)

Cookies & the hosts file on Vista

Thu, 24 Jul 2008 10:25:03 -0500

I haven’t tested a cookie in a long time, so long I realized I didn’t know where cookies are stored on Vista. Finding cookies on Vista is more of a headache than I can recall in any other Windows versions. There are two directories:

C:\Users\[username]\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Windows\Cookies\
C:\Users\[username]\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Windows\Cookies\Low\

Even though I had the path, I still couldn’t find the cookies. I finally learned what I needed to do was to remove a protection setting. (Even though I’m an administrator on the Vista laptop I was using and I have the annoying user control protection turned off, I still had to turn this file protection setting off as well.) I found two pieces of information especially helpful:

CAST: a conference about conferring

Sat, 19 Jul 2008 13:34:41 -0500

The third annual Conference for the Association of Software Testing took place this week in Toronto. I’ve spent the last couple of days in conversations with people from multiple countries talking about testing from many perspectives.

What’s cool about the conference is how much conferring takes place. Spontaneous conversations among people who’ve never met before bubble up when one person makes a comment and like-minded people find each other. And sometimes when people who aren’t like-minded find each other.

The Next BBST Foundations Class Starts Soon!

Thu, 10 Jul 2008 08:48:05 -0500

The next Black Box Software Testing (BBST) Foundations class will begin July 20th, right on the heels of the CAST Conference , so we expect demand to be high. Scott Barber will be lead instructor with Elaine Conway and myself as co-instructors.

Latest Column -- Inspired by taking AST's Bug Advocacy Class

Wed, 06 Aug 2008 01:18:53 -0500

Software testing is improved by good bug reporting

I recently completed (successfully, I might add) the second of the Association for Software Testing's all online, free to members Black Box Software Testing course. Each of these courses is four weeks in length. I've been involved with this program since years before it became a program, and I am an instructor for the first course in the series, called Foundations. For this course, called Bug Advocacy, I was a student.

I made CNBC.com (in a CAST press release)

Wed, 06 Aug 2008 01:19:42 -0500

High Demand Causes Three-Day Software Testing Conference to Add Fourth Day

Ok, so I know that this is all about CAST, and all about AST being true to it's word to adapt the conference on the fly to follow the energy and interests of the participants (in fact, that's why we refer to folks who come to the conference as participants, not attendees or delegates), and all about the fact that even during one of the worst economic years I can remember, CAST is so cool that we had to extend it!

I'm proud of whatever part I've played in making that happen as AST's Executive Director, and I'm extremely grateful to all of the volunteers who have worked hard to make this conference happen. In fact, if you're not already planning to be there, you should. It is the testing conference you won't want to miss, you know.

Ok, you guessed it, I came up with that tagline, but it is the one testing conference each year that I refuse to miss. Not because I'm AST's Executive Director, but because of the participation, conferring, facilitation, and challenging topics. So seriously, if you're still on the fence, (or your boss is still on the fence) take a look at the CNBC.com article http://www.cnbc.com/id/25091786/ (or take it to your boss), and then decide to come out and join us.

Grey-box techniques for excluding tests

Mon, 30 Jun 2008 07:33:18 -0500

Don’t test the reused code tested previously – you will have more time to test new code. This heuristic for a black-box tester is basically all the idea of this blog – one I was creating for a week … I started this as blog about techniques, but wanted to be clear about grey box. A research on the term ended quite a long story below. If you don’t care about it – scroll down to the last chapter describing the techniques.

Hitting the nail on the head...

Wed, 25 Jun 2008 05:06:20 -0500

For a while, I've been trying to describe how I work... how I coach teams... Or at least how I have been for a while now anyway. I've said things like "I focus on values not practices" or "I help people understand what they want to achieve then help them find ways to achieve it"... or "I help teams ask questions of themselves that, with the benefit of hindsight, I would have asked myself". However, after reading Jason Gorman's post I realised that, completely by accident, I was doing much the same thing. Jason says:

Instead, I finally admitted that my real job is to persuade people that they want to learn. And not in any bulls**t manipulative way. I've focused the largest part of my effort on being a catalyst to help recharge people's interest and passion for what they're doing.

Linguistic heuristics

Sun, 22 Jun 2008 06:18:35 -0500

Searching. I’m currently testing a product that has a search feature. I’ve tested search functionality before but not a multilingual search engine that utilizes two different search engines based on the language selected. Nor have I previously worked with a search engine that uses stemming and stop words.

I almost didn’t want to write about this – figured I would wait until I resolved my challenges before writing about it – but it occurred to me why? It’s not as though in software testing I haven’t learned that first understanding the complexities of a problem is an essential starting point.

Returning

Sat, 21 Jun 2008 23:55:19 -0500

Well this begins sounding like a confession … I haven’t blogged in two months and in my last post, I wrote about my thoughts during a difficult family crisis. So now what?

In practical terms, my mom’s condition has stabilized although remains difficult. Another family member has become ill. More issues have come along putting my family in one of the most difficult times I have ever seen. Heartfelt and honest, this is where I have been. Consumed.