I think it’s important to define “Agile” when I talk about “Agile Testing.” Agile is one of those capitalized umbrella terms, like Quality, that means many things to many people. And given that Agile Testing involves testing in an Agile context, it’s hard to talk about it if we have not established a shared understanding [...]

Robert Small wrote me with a question (which he kindly gave me permission to post here, along with my answer):My GUI developers are driving me nuts! They want to “fully automate” all testing for the GUI. I tried to explain that you cannot automate ease of use (usability) or look and feel and [...]

I am so excited! Thanks to the efforts of my assistant Melinda, who did an awesome job laying out the design, and our friends at CafePress who do the manufacturing and shipping, we now offer a mug with heuristics from the wildly popular Test Heurististics Cheatsheet.Order one for yourself and for your favorite test obsessed [...]

A colleague recently described the requirements process in his (non-Agile) organization to me. In their process, the business people talk to the business analysts who talk to the systems analysts who give requirements to the programmers.As he was explaining all this, I couldn’t help but reflect on all the possible points of failure.I’ve seen conversations [...]

I recently had the opportunity to visit AboutUs in Portland, OR. In case you’re not familiar with AboutUs, they’ve created a community-driven wikified guide to websites. (So how appropriate that I’m blogging this on the 14th birthday of the Wiki, as Ward Cunningham reminded us over Twitter, another catalytic technology.) Anyway, AboutUs is doing very [...]

Certification of software professionals has been a hot topic for quite a while. At least 15 years. Maybe longer.I keep hoping that the whole thing will blow over.But it hasn’t. And it’s not going to. Too many people have too much of a financial stake in the success of certifications. Certification customers, including individuals and [...]

I was honored to be included on the lunch and learn panel at the Software Quality Association of Denver (SQuAD) conference this week. One of the questions that came up had to do with triaging bugs in an Agile context. Here’s my answer, in a bit more detail than I could give at the panel.The [...]

Shameless plug alert!Dale Emery and I are offering the 3-day Agile Testing Series of classes in Pleasanton, CA on April 22 - 24, 2009, and in Portland, OR on April 28 - 30, 2009.We’ve structured the three days as a la carte offerings. You can take one, two, or all three days.Day 1 is “Adapting [...]