testingReflections.com - books

When information degrades to data

Mon, 10 Nov 2008 16:25:14 -0600

Lawrence Winkler has two libraries. One is a traditional one, a library of information with new books and some more than 100 years old. The other library is now just a library of data, which was 3 books he had paid $100 for. What happened? Technological upgrades have degraded his books into unintelligible digital goobledegook. Now he is trying to highlight the dangers of storing information only in a digital form. In May, he had the 69th comment on a post about ebooks and copyright. In October, he had the 10th comment on a post about Amazon pushing their e-book device.

Qualities of Quality PMs

Thu, 01 May 2008 07:15:52 -0500

I’m enjoying being technoratified . I have more than 50 blogs as favorites. I noticed a note on one announcing a reissue of a project management book, with the opportunity to win a copy. The book is “Making things happen”, by Scott Berkun. You had to post on the qualities of a quality project manager. I was one of 50 posters while the competition ran, and was lucky enough to win one of the 10 books. I’ll reserve my opinion on the book till I read it, but it will have to be excellent to outdo Johanna Rothman’s Manage It which won a 2008 Jolt award. If you follow the link you'll find a podcast from Johanna to listen to, then search further and you'll also find a video interview as well.

The PM qualities list makes interesting reading, and there is even a synthesized audio track of the original blog post (but sadly not the comments). You can also read an Q&A interview with Scott on PM from the book’s original release.

Guerilla Approach

Thu, 04 Oct 2007 14:06:44 -0500

Mark Friedman reviewed Neil J. Gunther's new book "Guerilla Capacity Planning: A Tactical Approach to Planning for Highly Scalable Applications and Services"
in MeasureIT (free registration may be needed - I hate registrations, but this one is worth efforts if you care about performance: it is a very good newsletter).

Performance Testing Guidance for Web Applications

Thu, 30 Aug 2007 15:01:11 -0500

We released the final version of our patterns & practices Performance Testing Guidance for Web Applications. This guide provides an end-to-end approach for implementing performance testing. Whether you're new to performance testing or looking for ways to improve your current performance-testing approach, you will gain insights that you can tailor to your specific scenarios. The main purpose of the guide is to be a relatively stable backdrop to capture, consolidate and share a methodology for performance testing. Even though the topics addressed apply to other types of applications, we focused on explaining from a Web application perspective to maintain consistency and to be relevant to the majority of our anticipated readers.

Download the guide

Read the guide online

Stay tuned for a link to purchase the print version due to be available in early Oct.

Alter Ego

Mon, 06 Aug 2007 08:53:23 -0500

Alter Ego written by Dave Christiansen has just been published. I was one of the reviewers for the book and I think it's an excellent read. It has (almost) nothing to do with testing, but it's a great read for geeks who like fiction with a technology twist. And it is twisted!

Read it. You won't regret it. (You can even preview the first six pages online...)

Consider: Lessons Learned in performance testing.

Fri, 29 Dec 2006 05:12:51 -0600

I had an intention to blog few (~10) "lessons learned in performance testing", copying style of a book Lessons Learned in Software Testing. A context-driven approach Hoping that community could extend this with more of them. I’ve been postponing this so many times that I gave up eventually. I hope by this blog to inspirit someone (probably with wider experience in performance testing than me) to take it over.

Happy About Global Software Test Automation

Sun, 05 Aug 2007 16:37:05 -0500

I just posted this review for Hung Nguyen's new book on Amazon. All you testers and test managers out there, slip this book under your boss's door when they aren't looking and watch how quickly the company starts embracing and respecting software testing!

***

Happy About Global Software Test Automation: A Discussion of Software Testing for Executives is an absolute must read for any executive in a company that develops, customizes or implements software.

More on experts

Thu, 26 Oct 2006 09:59:58 -0500

[textile]
To build on the idea of effortful study, I found the following in this month's FastCompany in the article The Expert on Experts: An expert guide to expertise by Christopher Percy Collier.

Conned Again, Watson!

Fri, 26 May 2006 06:44:08 -0500

[textile]
Whenever I attend a WOPR, testing guru Ross Collard always mentions how central math is to what performance testers do. I agree. Math is central to performance testing and testing. The problem is, I can never seem to remember any of it!

James Bach turned me on to a handy little pocket reference that I keep in my backpack, but while it's good for a reference, it doesn't do much to get me thinking like a mathematician. I found a great book that does just that. It's about math, and it's fun to read: Conned Again, Watson! Cautionary Tales of Logic, Math, and Probability by Colin Bruce

The book covers mathematical fallacy, logic, and lots of probability and statistics. It's a collection of Sherlock Holmes stories where Holmes and Watson solve math problems (one of the problems is a problem James Bach once gave me to solve). It's well written, fun to read, and you learn something that's useful at work. I highly recommend it for those who can't remember their college course of statistics (if you can you are a better learner then me...).

Books on Exploratory Testing

Sat, 22 Apr 2006 08:07:54 -0500

[textile] This last week I attended the first Exploratory Testing Research Summit held in Melbourne Florida. The summit was attended by:

James Bach
Jonathan Bach
Scott Barber
Michael Bolton
Elisabeth Hendrickson
Cem Kaner
Michael Kelly
Jonathan Kohl
James Lyndsay
Robert Sabourin

Early on in the summit, we were asked to list the books that had influenced how we do our exploratory testing. The following is that list of books (translated from a huge stack of post-it notes -- so forgive any mistakes).

Book Review: Linux Debugging and Performance Tuning

Tue, 28 Mar 2006 10:32:42 -0600

I guess someone appreciated the book review the other month (http://www.testingreflections.com/node/view/2974), because very shortly after the column was published, I received a request to review another book. This time the book was "Linux Performance Tuning, Open Source" (http://safari.phptr.com/0131492470). I'm sure you're shocked to learn that I said yes, accepted delivery of another free new book a few days later, and read the book during my seemingly endless hours on airplanes these days. My assessment is that, in short, this is another good book that is very much worth a look. This time it took until about three-quarters of the way through before the concepts got too abstract and/or technical for my rather limited Linux background, but once again I put the book down wondering where it was in 2001 when I was trying to configure Linux servers on my own instead of bribing my office-buddy with more beer to do it for me.

Book Review: Performance Tuning for Linux Servers

Tue, 28 Mar 2006 10:34:28 -0600

The other month I wrote a column for Software Test and Performance magazine where I discussed Linux Performance Tuning. Shortly thereafter I received a request to review a new book titled "Performance Tuning for Linux Servers" (http://www.phptr.com/bookstore/product.asp?isbn=013144753x&rl=1). After reading it, I offer the following as a summary:

"This book is "must have" for a novice to mid *nix tuner/administrator in terms of technical content and information and a "nice to have" reference book for more senior folks. It has the highest density of information that is directly applicable to tuning Linux servers for optimal multi-user application performance of any that I have come across that present material in ways that a non-expert can directly apply. Another positive but not-so-common thing this book does is provide the author's reference material at the end of each chapter, making it quite easy for the readers who want to know more to get the next level of detail.

Making progress visible

Sun, 16 Oct 2005 15:42:49 -0500

[textile]
Last week I finished reading Behind Closed Doors: Secrets of Great Management by Johanna Rothman and Esther Derby. The book is well written and is told in an interesting way. As a person who reads more management books then anyone really should (I'm working towards an MBA) I know what a well written management book looks like (there are too few of them out there).

The following is one of many examples of how I have already applied this book...

Technical Writing

Thu, 07 Jul 2005 08:48:00 -0500

[textile] Over the weekend I read the book Spring Into Technical Writing for Engineers and Scientists by Barry Rosenberg. It's lead me to a couple of realizations:

I don't write as well as I'd like to.
I don't speak as well as I'd like to (I really already knew this - this book just confirmed it).
I don't spend enough time focusing on my writing and speaking.

The following is a quick overview of the book. The short version is that I would recommend this book to anyone in this field. If you are a tester or developer, pick up a copy.

[Free eBook]FIT for Developing Software: Framework for Integrated Tests

Mon, 11 Apr 2005 00:21:30 -0500

The FIT for Developing Software: Framework for Integrated Tests (2.4 MB) free eBook by Rick Mugridge and Ward Cunningham is available for download.

"This book is about using Fit tables for two major, interconnected tasks:

Helping to think about and communicate what is needed in a software applicationthrough concrete examples.
Automatically testing that the application is doing what is expected, from abusiness perspective, and that the application continues to do so as it growsin functionality.

These two tasks are essential to the value and quality of a software application.But they are often carried out poorly, leading to breakdowns in each step along theway from business need to a running application."