testingReflections.com - other online resources

June Issue of AST Update Now Available

Fri, 22 Aug 2008 12:55:01 -0500

June 2008 Issue of the Association for Software Testing Magazine and Newsletter Now Available

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.

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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."

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.

AST Instructors’ Tutorial at CAST in Toronto

Fri, 30 May 2008 16:26:00 -0500

This post is largely copied from Cem Kaner's blog because I saw no need to re-write the same information :)

You’ve read about the Association for Software Testing’s free software testing courses. Now find out how you can get involved in teaching these for AST, for your company, or independently. This workshop will use presentations, lectures, and hands-on exercises to address the challenges of teaching online: Becky Fiedler, Scott Barber and I will host the Live! AST Instructors’ Orientation Course Jumpstart Tutorial On July 17, 2008, in conjunction with this year’s Conference of the AST (CAST).

Scott Barber and AST now on Twitter

Mon, 19 May 2008 09:06:24 -0500

Recently I succumbed to peer pressure and tried Twitter. Twitter is a "micro-blogging" site. It took me a while to figure out what that meant and what value it has, but after trying it, I get it now. It's a great way to share little bits of information worth sharing, but that doesn't (or often doesn't *yet*) justify a whole blog post. I find that I like it. It's a quick and easy way to keep folks up to date on what I'm doing and/or thinking about, like giving conference talks, or trying to flesh out some half-baked performance testing ideas.

Registration for CAST 2008 now open!

Thu, 15 May 2008 22:48:30 -0500

The 3rd Annual Conference of the Association of Software Testing (CAST) 2008

Toronto, Ontario, Canada, July 14-16, 2008

Beyond the Boundaries: Interdisciplinary Approaches to Software Testing

Keynote Presentations by Gerald M. Weinberg,

Cem Kaner, Robert Sabourin, and Brian Fisher

Tutorials by Gerald M. Weinberg, Scott Barber, Hung Nguyen, and Julian Harty

The Association for Software Testing is pleased to announce its third annual conference (CAST 2008), to be held July 14-16. The meeting will be held in Toronto, Canada, a city which features enormous diversity in culture, businesses, educational institutions, and the arts. Toronto is the perfect location for a conference on this year’s theme: "Beyond the Boundaries: Interdisciplinary Approaches to Software Testing".

You can view the most recent brochure here, and you can see the conference program here.

Identity crisis or delusions of grandeur?

Thu, 15 May 2008 14:33:57 -0500

In this month's installment of "Peak Performance" I discuss the frequently erroneous and often grandiose titles software testers have on their business cards or in their e-mail SIGs. Identity crisis or delusions of grandeur?

--
Scott Barber
President & Chief Technologist, PerfTestPlus, Inc.
Vice President & Executive Director, Association for Software Testing
www.perftestplus.com
www.associationforsoftwaretesting.org
"If you can see it in your mind...
you will find it in your life."

AST Update: Smart Stuff for Career Software Testers

Fri, 22 Aug 2008 12:44:02 -0500

December Issue of the Association for Software Testing Newsletter Now Available

(Supposed) All time top 10 (non-fatal) IT disasters

Thu, 06 Dec 2007 06:50:56 -0600

This link packed post is based on a project failures blog post based on a list of IT failures (with even more links to more detail). It has some well known failures, some obscure ones, and some which don’t really qualify at all (exploding batteries?, Y2K ?). For some reason they chose to exclude failures that lead to human fatalities, so it is a very clean list (Ever hear of Therac 25?).

Brian Marick talks about the importance of examples in building software. Examples help people understand more clearly. If you are training/mentoring people on testing or software quality, this list has some great examples. For the classic “1 line code fix does not need testing”, look at the AT&T Network collapse. For the newer “component reuse leads to greater reliability”, look at Ariane 5 . The Mars lander is a classic example of integration bugs that even the most simple design review should have found. The LA Airport failure is a great example of how important risk planning is. The Airbus failure highlights the importance of configuration management. And the Russian missile defence snafu makes it clear why humans should be in control of computers and not the other way around. Let us give thanks that the world has some intelligent users like Lt Col Stanislav Petrov!

From The Web: "Noncertified IT pros earn more..."

Tue, 23 Oct 2007 09:48:40 -0500

Stop the presses! Can it be true? The industry wants effective, qualified, multi-dimensional people who are capable of understanding business drivers & risk mitigation and applying that in a sapient way to their job as opposed to folks who paid someone to teach them how to pass a multiple-choice exam?!? Amazing!

Noncertified IT pros earn more than certified counterparts: survey

Scott Barber Interviewed by Empirix QA Zone

Sun, 14 Oct 2007 23:17:08 -0500

About 6 months after Marina Gil Santamaria approached me about being interviewed for Empirix’s QA website, our schedules finally matched up well enough to get it done. You can read the interview at Empirix QAZone.

--
Scott Barber
President & Chief Technologist, PerfTestPlus, Inc.
Vice President & Executive Director, Association for Software Testing
www.perftestplus.com
www.associationforsoftwaretesting.org

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

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.

Software Testing Lessons from my Children

Thu, 09 Aug 2007 08:53:17 -0500

My most recent column has just been posted on TechTarget in which I discuss some of the lessons I‘ve learned from my children about software testing.

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I had planned an entirely different topic for this month, but I‘m sitting down to write this on Father‘s Day while my sons (Nicholas, age 8, and Taylor, age 4) are napping, and realizing that I‘ve never written about what I have learned about testing from my boys.

Performance Testing Guide Beta 1 is Available

Sun, 05 Aug 2007 16:20:03 -0500

Some of you have been wondering what I've been working on recently... well, here's the answer. I've been working with a crack MS team to create tool, process, vendor, religion, diet and gender agnostic guidance around the most common activities and challenges related to performance testing web applications in commercially driven environments. We've finally achieved a version that we believe is "good/done enough" to let all you testers out there shred it and provide your feedback. Beta 1 means what you think it does. There are known issues, unknown issues, and all that other stuff. That said, the other members of the team and I all, personally and collectively, stand behind the concepts in the guide (though in some places we are still trying to figure out the best way to express those concepts).

The bottom line is this. If you do, might do, have ever done, or might be interested in Performance Testing, we'd love to have your thoughts/feedback. We're working on short revision cycles, so don't wait a month to send feedback... it might be too late by then! The "official" announcement is below:

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Today we released our Beta 1 of Performance Testing Guidance for Web Applications Guide. It shows you an end-to-end approach for implementing performance testing, based on lessons learned from applied use in customer scenarios. Whether you're new to performance testing or looking for ways to improve your current approach, you'll find insights you can use.

Performance Testing Core Principles: CCD IS EARI

Sat, 25 Aug 2007 17:44:30 -0500

This is the first installment of a currently unknown number of posts about heuristics and mnemonics I find valuable when teaching and conducting performance testing.

Other posts about performance testing heuristics and mnemonics are:


There is not a "one-size-fits-most" approach to performance testing, but I have become rather convinced that there are nine principles that are (almost always) applied (or at least actively considered) in successful performance testing projects. I remember those principles by remembering:

CCD IS EARI