Functional testing
The short and the long of IT: two videotaped presentations
Submitted by Erik Petersen on Tue, 14/10/2008 - 11:40. context-driven testing | design & development | development methodology | functional testing | test automationSince the middle of the year, I’ve presented and facilitated about 12 hours of sessions at 2 traditional and 3 open space conferences, plus a Googleplex visit. Two presentations are now on video, both filmed on the other side of the world from my usual location of Melbourne, Australia.
A lightning talk (at the functional tools workshop held before Agile 08 in Toronto, Canada) called Shades of Green discusses how the “green” passing tests of functional automation may not be as green as they seem. Note the static pose to stay within camera range, compensated for by the wildly waving arm. And yes, the audience was not limited to a leg and a foot.
An order of magnitude longer at around 50 minutes, a Google Tech Talk (filmed at the San Francisco Googleplex) called 80:20 Rules! Building Software Smarter looks at formal and informal ways to get significant improvements in creating software, including various puzzles and questions for viewers. I had looked at some tech talks by other people I know, and they had been watched around 1000 times over a year or so. It looks like I may hit that mark only a few days after the video was posted which is great. I hope my talk inspires people to build their software smarter. Can I turn “shades of green” into a similar talk? Probably not!
Latest Column -- Software Testers are not helpless
Submitted by sbarber on Sun, 05/10/2008 - 06:20. context-driven testing | functional testing | metaphors | people issues | perspectivesMy latest column...
During a coffee break at a class the other week, I overheard the following comment from one student to another:
Tester: "This stinks! All of my automated test scripts are broken and I can't seem to get the tool to work now that the developers have enabled Secure Sockets Layer. I'm going to have to work through the weekend."
I know that it's generally considered rude to eavesdrop, and ruder still to comment on a conversation you weren't invited to, but I figured that since I was teaching the class I'd be forgiven. Besides, I simply couldn't help myself.
Read the rest of the column.
- --
- 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
Submitted by sbarber on Fri, 04/07/2008 - 05:54. bug tracking/incident management | context-driven testing | functional testing | heuristics | other online resources | perspectives | project management | test managementSoftware 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.
Testing Lessons From Civil Engineering
Submitted by sbarber on Sat, 21/06/2008 - 07:13. context-driven testing | development methodology | events | functional testing | general software testing | heuristics | patterns | perspectives | test analysisBelow 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:
Registration for CAST 2008 now open!
Submitted by sbarber on Fri, 16/05/2008 - 04:48. context-driven testing | events | functional testing | general software testing | industry recognition | other online resources | perspectives | test management
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.
Multi-User Functional Testing
Submitted by Alexander Podelko on Sun, 02/03/2008 - 22:11. functional test patterns | functional testing | non-functional testing | performance testingIn the February issue of Software Test & Performance read Karen Johnson's article about multi-user testing (pp. 20-23). Karen writes about a very rare subject – functional multi-user testing. Should admit that I started to read with a thought "one more article about performance testing" – but soon realized that it is about quite different subject. And yes, indeed, without functional multi-user testing, most of errors mentioned in article will slip through (won't re-tell the article – it is available on-line, you can read it yourself). Some may be found during performance testing (probably the most severe like deadlocks – if they are in the typical scenarios you included in performance testing) – and you will need to trace them down to the source, and probably it will be much later down the cycle.
The LM DPS DE GCC test, + 40:00 years
Submitted by Erik Petersen on Tue, 22/01/2008 - 12:44. functional testing | perspectivesToday is the 40th anniversary of the first firing of a throttleable rocket in space. The Apollo 5 flight (aka 1968-007A, aka AS-204, aka 03106) had a mission patch but no astronauts to wear it. The flight was an unmanned test of the systems that would land man on the moon. In a high altitude test simulating a moon landing, the LM (Lunar Module) DPS (Descent Propulsion System) DE (Descent Engine) GCC (Guidance Control Computer) was supposedly programmed to fire the rocket for 39 seconds. It started then stopped after 4. Realizing this was a bug (not the obvious order of magnitude one confusing 4 secs for 40, it was actually related to slower than expected fuel tank pressurization), MC (Mission Control) took over and the burn and 4 followups were done by humans.
PR rounding: 1.94 to ..... two ....point five?
Submitted by Erik Petersen on Sun, 20/01/2008 - 08:20. functional testing | perspectivesRounding errors appear regularly in calculations in my experience and are sometimes unfixable, especially percentages not adding up to 100 . In fact, I had a percentage bug last week. I was contributing a defect status snapshot for a report. As well as bug counts for each status, there was also a percentage. I just presumed that they added to 100, but someone else pointed out they didn’t. As I was using a standard report in the bug tracker, I decided to use it as it was, even thought the total was only 97%.
I have never seen a rounding error in a press release, until now! If you were rounding 1.94 centimetres what would you round it to? Obviously the answer is 2 cm. In this case, it was rounded to 2.5. Huh? You’ll find the explanation here in an Australian business news column, a place where you don’t usually find articles about quality issues either!