testingReflections.com - general software testing

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

Latest Column -- Avoid "Center of the Universe Syndrome"

Tue, 19 Aug 2008 00:03:55 -0500

My latest column cautioning testers not to think they are the center of the development team's universe http://searchsoftwarequality.techtarget.com/tip/0,289483,sid92_gci1325828,00.html.

--
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."

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."

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:

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.

Testing Lessons From Civil Engineering

Sat, 21 Jun 2008 01:13:14 -0500

Below is the paper I submitted as a prologue to an experience report, discussion, and (hopefully) additional research that I'm presenting for the first time during:

How to teach grey-box testing?

Thu, 19 Jun 2008 01:34:59 -0500

When I’m teaching new testers I use (specific chapters from) Black Box Software Testing course by Cem Kaner and James Bach. Those are great materials. However there are some topics not covered to an extent that I would like to (probably because of the specific of software we are creating in our company). For instance multi-edit heuristic and environment-specific handling tests. Maybe those topics are more in grey-box than in black-box, but for sure they are not the only topics of grey-box...

QA & Testing... aren't they the same?

Mon, 02 Jun 2008 08:21:15 -0500

The short answer is "no".

Several people have found my explanation of it useful so I'm sharing it here...

The QA metaphor in software development has come from other, arguably, more mature industries - such as medicine, manufacturing, construction and so on. It is about all the things that we do to increase the probability of building in quality - not just detecting when we've failed to build in quality as is the case with much software testing. In this regard, testing is more analogous to quality control or, QC.

In simple terms:
QC helps us answer the question 'does our product work?'
QA helps us answer the question 'does our process work?'

Unfortunately, many teams don't realise their process doesn't work until the testers find all the ways in which the product doesn't work... maybe that's why software testing has come to be known as QA.?

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."

No liquids in the cabin, no solids in the hold - the Heathrow T5 baggage shutdown

Tue, 15 Apr 2008 20:26:10 -0500

Anyone who follows the news would have heard of the opening day debacle at the new T5 terminal at Heathrow in London England that culminated in passengers only being allowed carry on baggage resulting in a pile of over 20000 bags, wryly described by one blog commenter as ‘No liquids in the cabin, no solids in the hold’. With normality seemingly restored after backlogged baggage sorting moved off to Milan, Memphis and across the UK, what can we say about what happened and could it have been avoided?

The only defect measure I would publish

Mon, 14 Apr 2008 08:58:43 -0500

Recently I’ve found my (sever years old) presentations with a lot of defect metrics and analysis. Only one slide I am proud of still – the percentage of “cancelled” bugs (drilled-down to percentage of reject reason: duplicated, not repeatable, etc.). What I like about this measure that it is direct – I’m really interested to keep the number of rejected bugs low – yes I’m interested in testers not reporting them in the first place.

Training for Performance Testers in Brighton UK, May 08.

Sun, 06 Apr 2008 22:14:39 -0500

Scott Barber has teamed up with Rosie Sherry of DrivenQA to bring PTSS Training to Brighton & Hove, UK.

Sign-up now for Performance Testing for Managers or Performance Testing for Software Systems; A Heuristic Approach.