Test Management Summit - Presenter Materials are now ONLINE

Posted Thu, 04/02/2010 - 23:06 by Paul Gerrard

Thanks to all the people who sponsored, facilitated, attended and supported the Workshops and the Summit last week.

We've posted the presenter materials on the TMF website here: http://uktmf.com/index.php?q=node/239

NB: you must be a logged-in registered user to see the links to the downloads. If you aren't registered already, you will need to do so here: http://uktmf.com/index.php?q=user/register

Thanks and best regards,
Paul.

Innovative Testing Practices

What are the emerging testing practices that have most promise? What have you tried and works for you? Importantly, what did not work?

Paul considers what "innovative" really means and looks at three emerging approaches: "virtualisation and the cloud", "behaviour-driven development" and "crowdsourced testing".

This session attempts to separate the hype from the reality and provide some pointers for the future.

This talk was presented at the Fourth Test Management Summit in London on 27 January 2010.

Advancing Testing Using Axioms

Posted Fri, 29/01/2010 - 12:45 by Paul Gerrard

Last week I presented a talk called "Advancing Testing Using Axioms" at the First IIR Testing Forum in Helsinki, Finland.

Test Axioms have been formulated as a context-neutral set of rules for testing systems. Because they represent the critical thinking processes required to test any system, there are clear opportunities to advance the practice of testing using them.

The talk introduces "The First Equation of Testing" and discusses opportunities to use the Axioms to support test strategy development, test assessment and improvement and suggests that a tester skills framework could be an interesting by-product of the Axioms. Finally, "The Quantum Theory of Testing" is introduced.

Go to the web page for this talk.

Is Testing Last in Line?

Posted Wed, 09/12/2009 - 23:16 by Paul Gerrard

A post on the Software Testing Club, Is Testing Last in Line? seems oh so familiar to complaints (if that that is they are) heard for as long as I've been in software (and I'm in my 29th year).

I think all of the responses to the blog are reasonable - but the underlying assumption in all (most) of them is that the tester is responsible for getting:

a) involved early
b) involved heavily

Is anyone researching HOW to choose a test model?

Posted Tue, 08/12/2009 - 19:33 by Paul Gerrard

The Project Euler site presents a collection of 'maths-related' problems to be solved by computer - 250+ of them and the site allows you to check your answers etc. You don't need to be a mathematician for all of them really, but you do need to be a good algorithm designer/programmer.

But it also reminded me of a recurring thought about something else. Could the problems be used as 'testing' problems too? The neat thing about some of them is that testing them isn't easy. Some problems have only one answer – they aren't very useful for testers - there is only one test case (or you need simply to write/reuse a parallel program to act as oracle). But others like problem 22 for example provide input files to process http://projecteuler.net/index.php?section=problems&id=22

What is the best ratio of testers to developers in an agile team?

Posted Thu, 03/12/2009 - 16:09 by Paul Gerrard

You may or may not find this response useful. :-)

"It depends".

The "it depends" response is an old joke. I think I was advised by David Gelperin in the early 90s that if someone says "it depends" your response should be "ahh, you must be a consultant!"

But it does depend. It always has and will do. The context-driven guys provide a little more information - "it depends on context". But this doesn't answer the question of course – we still get asked by people who really do need an answer – i.e. project managers who need to plan and to resource teams.

The new website

Welcome to the new site!

We're using Drupal, a very popular Content Management system, MySQL and PHP to manage the new site. This is a complete change of direction from the old technology which was based around Microsoft Active Server Pages, VBScript and an Access database.

Test Axioms as Thinking Tools

Is it possible to define a set of axioms that provide a framework for software testing that all the variations of test approach currently being advocated align with or obey? In this respect, an axiom would be an uncontested principle; something self-evidently and so obviously true and not requiring proof. What would such test axioms look like?

The Tester's Pocketbook - Published at last

Posted Wed, 21/10/2009 - 11:04 by Paul Gerrard

I'm relieved, excited and delighted to tell you that The Tester's Pocketbook has been published and is available. (It is a pocketbook, with 104 pages and c. 19k words).

The book summarises the thinking on Test Axioms and the axiom definitions are hosted (and will be maintained in future) on the Test Axioms website.

Thanks to all my reviewers and people who supported me.

Other Stuff

Security | Legal | Privacy

Syndicate content