The Latest
A Christmas Carol: The Software Tester's Version[presentation]
Video
Grab some hot cocoa, sit back, and watch this software tester's take on A Christmas Carol by the Grove Players. |
The Grove Players
|
|
Lessons Learned about Starting a Development Group in India, Part 1[article] Several years ago, Peter Clark's company opened an offshore software development team when offshoring was booming. Everyone was doing it, and so would Peter's company, but the results were not so great. In the first installment of a three-part series, Peter explains what happened. |
||
Addressing Challenges to Ensure Successful Tool Integrations[article] Tool integrations have been going on ever since the initial days of JCL (IBM's Job Control Language). JCL actually made things a lot simpler. But as tools have become more complex and diverse, tool integration presents many challenges. How do you integrate user interface and simplify the corresponding training? What about administration? How do you deal with varying scalability capabilities, and varying server requirements? What about multiple site operation? Successful tool integrations must effectively address these issues and must do so by starting from a process-centric view of the world. |
||
Testing is Essential to Agile SCM[article] Rather than being an afterthought for SCM, an appropriate testing strategy is what enables an SCM in an agile environment. To be more agile, you need to avoid the silo-based perspective of development, SCM, and testing being three different disciplines. Instead, think about how the processes in one part of your development ecosystem affects what you can do in the others. |
||
Communicating with Context[article] Danny Faught and Michael Bolton have observed that context-driven testers have a uniquely productive style of communication that they use amongst themselves. This context-driven culture might seem strange to outsiders or newcomers to the community. In this column, Danny and Michael highlight some of these specific traits that can help you communicate whether you consider yourself context-driven or not. |
||
Checklists – You build me up just to knock me down[article] The code review checklist is the bane of developers. Thirty-odd check-boxes await, each requiring thoughtful consideration before the liberating tick mark can be applied. Twenty source files, freshly altered, are awaiting verification. The math is simple: 20 x 30 = 600 decisions, no matter how you tackle the problem. This is going to suck. |
Jason Cohen
October 2, 2007 |
|
GMSL 1.09: A look inside the tweaks and updates[article] I've written in the past about the GNU Make Standard Library open source project. This article outlines the changes made between v1.0.2 and the current release (v1.0.9) and discusses some of the techniques used to implement the GMSL. |
||
Test Automation Grows Up[magazine] Can software test automation ever replace manual software testing? Dion Johnson says no, but he does think it’s time that test automation is recognized as a mature discipline with its own body of knowledge. This ABOK allows test-automation professionals to hone their skills and provides organizations wishing to automate a pool of able resources from which to hire. |
||
![]() |
Tending Communication Paths[magazine] Unfortunately, distrust is common in the relationship between managers and employees. But it doesn’t have to be. Taking the time to keep your communication path “weed free” by finding time for one-on-one communication, being open and honest, and listening to your team members’ input will cultivate an open, honest, and trusting culture within your team. |
|
McLuhan for Testers[magazine] If a tester is "somebody who knows that things can be different," then Marshall McLuhan was a tester par excellence. According to McLuhan, the English professor who proposed the Laws of Media, the message of a medium is not its content but rather its effects. Find out how this translates to software testing and how we evaluate requirements. |
||
Developing Your Sense of Smell[magazine] With all of the resources available these days—books, blogs, Webcasts, training,—that aid us in our design, are you one of those programmers who lacks the "olfactory gene" needed to detect refactoring odors in your code? Unit testing helps you refine your sense of smell and improve your code design. |
||
Four Tips for Technique Seeking[magazine] From an experience with a testing buddy in a large organization, Julie Gardiner had a career-shaping epiphany. She discovered that understanding and applying formal testing techniques can help you grow as a testing professional, and she has incorporated that knowledge into her management repertoire ever since. Learn four ways you can get started using formal testing techniques with your team. |
Julie Gardiner
September 26, 2007 |
|
![]() |
Transform Your Software[magazine] Bring out the best in your code. Systematic code transformations are an important tool for test-driven development. Refactoring and generalization—common code transformations in TDD—improve the code while preserving its behavior and broaden the capabilities of the software. Each technique has its place, and together they help make TDD effective. |
|
![]() |
What's on Your Dashboard?[magazine] Just because a metric is easy to capture doesn't mean it is useful. The metrics that are really needed are the ones that can help you make good decisions. Find out how to establish a project dashboard with meaningful metrics that will guide your project safely to its destination without getting bogged down in an endless pursuit of unnecessary information. |
|
![]() |
Pairwise Testing: An Easy Guide to Orthogonal Arrays & All-Pairs Combinations[magazine] One of the testing challenges we face is how to handle the large numbers of test cases we sometimes need to create and execute. We can't test everything, but pairwise testing using orthogonal arrays or an all-pairs algorithm can help generate pair combinations that reduce the number of test cases we run while still finding a large percentage of bugs. |
Lloyd Roden
September 26, 2007 |