testingReflections.com blogs

Scrum bit my finger... and it really hurts!

Wed, 07 Jan 2009 10:34:45 -0600

This question was raised by Jeff Patton on twitter:

Are we (agile people and sw creators in general) better off with scrum as the default agile process?

This is something I've had on my "to blog about" list for some time... At STARWest in October last year, someone in the audience of one of the Agile talks (I forget which one now) mentioned that they'd adopted Scrum first and if they could do it over, they'd have gone for the XP practices first. This rang true with some of my own experiences.

Survivor’s lessons in test management

Tue, 06 Jan 2009 04:54:56 -0600

No I don’t mean TV show about people living weeks on a beach. I somehow mean show on a discovery channel. I want to tell you what I learned from a project. It was supposed for 3-4 experienced testers, but I did it all by myself. I had to sacrifice all my beliefs of test management to do so. That’s why I admit I no more understand how to manage testing (well).

I’m skeptic for the mind ability to analyze the mind

Mon, 05 Jan 2009 06:28:58 -0600

I’m not buccaneer-scholar though I recommend you to think if you are one and join the club. I recommend you to think what type of scholar you are, anyway. What follows is my own thinking of why I think I’m a skeptic-scholar and has always been. As a skeptic-scholar I welcome new ideas because I’m as skeptic about their value as I am about the established values… actually I don’t establish values at all.

Determining the size of the sample set

Fri, 02 Jan 2009 19:29:17 -0600

I have a challenge to solve that I’ve had to solve before: When I have more data to test with than there is time or is practical to test with, then what should I build for a sample data set?

This question is a long standing classic testing question that can be answered in a variety of ways – sometimes the answer is resolved through a mathematical method but quantity doesn’t resolve the entire question.

Agile Performance Testing

Thu, 25 Dec 2008 14:35:19 -0600

I have uploaded my Agile Performance Testing paper and handouts to my website. I have presented it at the CMG conference this year. The paper is about making performance testing (engineering) more agile, more flexible – not about performance testing during agile development. I also uploaded handouts for Building Responsive and Scalable Applications panel. It was pretty interesting panel, we got very good panelists.

Silent Night? Thank a tester.

Wed, 24 Dec 2008 14:43:46 -0600

Twas the night before Christmas and all through the cubes
Not a coder was patching some critical kludge.

The managers nestled all snug in their beds
Had seen the unit tests, all green, no reds.

But not just with machines was this code made pure
Our testers have brains, and they used them for sure.

These sapient lads, and lasses precise
Had trapped critical bugs, with minds like a vise.

Thoughts on Performance Testing w/o "Tools"

Sat, 20 Dec 2008 14:30:12 -0600

I was recently asked the following question via the "Ask The Expert" feature of SearchSoftwareQuality.com.

How can we conduct performance testing, stress testing, and load testing of a Web application manually without using any tools?

My commentary is reproduced below -- you'll have to click through to see my actual recommendations.

Voice-pairing or New testers brings new ideas

Mon, 15 Dec 2008 06:33:31 -0600

I’m happy for Oleg recently joined my test team. He is very fast as filling in gap between his previous company testing practices and mine. Moreover, as a new player in a team he brings new ideas. He adds his own vision, experience and context to everything I recommend And I like to be misinterpreted (unless we are running out of time and we are not yet in the project he is assigned to).
So one of his inventions is skype-pair-testing. I was first surprised to learn about it but then I recalled a very similar practice with pair-bug-hunting. You could read details here .

WOPR12 Call For Proposals(CFP)

Thu, 11 Dec 2008 19:01:55 -0600

Please see the WOPR Site for all details.

The Theme is: Resource Monitoring During Performance Testing

People involved in developing, testing, and delivering hardware, software, or internet based applications must be able to ensure those solutions meet customer and user expectation. But what are those expectations - specifically around resolving performance bottlenecks - and how do you ensure they are being met?

QA testing is black magic for developers

Tue, 09 Dec 2008 02:29:22 -0600

Just red a blog about developers having no idea of what QA team is doing. As I can’t seem to be able to add a comment to Michael Furmaniuk’s blog (which is by the way in the list of blogs I read) I decided to write a short reflection here in my blog.
Well, developers may or may not know read our test cases and learn what tools we are using. But developers know for sure what the requirements we have and what the code testers get. They know the bugs testers report. What they are most curious about (in my experience) are two things:
1) How do we manage to find all those bugs they missed.
2) Why do we sometimes find them so late.

Do you write test cases to kill time?

Mon, 08 Dec 2008 03:52:45 -0600

I wouldn’t believe myself until saw this really happening. Testers keep writing detailed test cases up-front with the primary goal to justify the time they spend early on the project. And right they are (are they?). At least they believe so. Managers see evidence that testers have red and understood all the requirements, covered them by test cases. Testers don’t have to think how to prove time spent on reviewing requirements even if they don’t find any issues there. And if developers delay a milestone we have more time to polish the test cases, do one more review or them, write more details, etc. Test lead doesn’t have to worry that on the next project testers will be added much later on the project schedule. Everything is fine but quality.

Latest Column -- The controversy surrounding the schools of software testing

Fri, 05 Dec 2008 12:57:19 -0600

My latest column...

Periodically, discussions break out in various software testing communities around the Web regarding the schools of software testing.

As I write this, there are discussions going in SQAForums, on the Software-Testing Yahoo! group, and various blogs that (at least up to the time I started writing this piece) reside on or are fed to Testing Reflections. In principle, I'm always pleased when these discussions break out. The point of identifying the schools in the first place was to increase the overall awareness of the diversity in ideologies, practices, and values (i.e. schools of thought) in our field and to stimulate discussion about the situational pros and cons of each. That said, the discussions that actually take place tend to drift off in one or more directions that end up being disappointing, unnecessarily confrontational, and generally not useful.

Lessons Learned in Close Quarters Combat

Fri, 19 Dec 2008 02:52:27 -0600

My 'Technically Speaking' column article "Lessons Learned in Close Quarters Combat" has been publushed in the December 2008 issue of Better Software Magazine. The summary reads as follows:

Few would think that Special Forces tactics bear any relation to software project teams. But Antony Marcano draws a surprising parallel between the dynamics of modern Special Forces “room-clearing” methods and the dynamics of modern software development teams.

It begins as follows...

Twittering away...

Tue, 02 Dec 2008 12:51:47 -0600

For anyone interested (not that I imagine a lot of you would be) I've been twittering away on twitter. So, if you want a hint at what I'm thinking about or just so bored any brief distraction will do, you can follow me on Twitter.

What will you find out there? Well, it's a bit like the teaser-trailer and deleted-scenes reel from my blog all rolled into one... Pointless facts are revealed like how my Expected Exceptions post came about while making a bacon sandwich or less pointless revelations like how I'm coming up with an (arguably) even better way of writing tests for exceptions and what it (almost) looks like... and you may even get a hint as to what other things interest me too.

I want to admit that I don’t know how to manage testing

Wed, 26 Nov 2008 09:07:53 -0600

I barely understand how to manage testing that I do. But for years I have failed to understand how to make my team do job as efficient and effective as I do (or at least close to it). I have a luxury to not be afraid to be marked as incompetent or dilettante: my test manager reputation in my company is strong enough.