I’ve heard a lot of people in the software industry say that “testing is more art than science.” My opinion is that people who say this most likely know little about art and probably know even less about science.
When a professional discipline has a vocabulary for expressing the fundamental concepts on which it’s based, then you have a means for how practitioners in the discipline can make sure they’re talking about the same things. The problem with establishing … Continue reading
Capybara is one of those open source testing tools that, when you get to use it, is really nice. However, it’s new enough (or, at least, changing enough) that good documentation on it is a bit sparse when your goal … Continue reading
I recently talked about testers writing tools. That particular tool, however, was a simple script. You can definitely improve your career options by being able to write more substantive tools. As a tester I’ve recently had to start writing some … Continue reading
I really enjoyed the book Ubiquity: Why Catastrophes Happen by Mark Buchanan. This book doesn’t talk about quality assurance or testing at all, but it does talk about how things can change very quickly and how a certain context can … Continue reading
Assume you have some data that tells your scripts how to function when they run a particular set of actions. Instead of this logic being stored in a test script, common action sets are stored off in a data source. … Continue reading
I was in an environment where it was clear some of the testers were struggling with the idea if comparing Excel workbooks: either as actual Excel files or CSV files that were imported into Excel. Expensive automation tools were being … Continue reading
I like to consider a strategy and tactics distinction when you have a test team that’s striving to operate within the sphere of quality assurance. When you have that situation, then operationally considering strategy and tactics (or logistics, if you … Continue reading
I previously talked about test strategy and I made it clear that in my opinion the test strategy and the test plan are two entirely different things. I’ve had a love-hate affair with test plans over the course of time, … Continue reading
I see a lot of testers — and their managers — misuse the phrase “test strategy.” I say they misuse it not because they don’t agree with some definition I have but rather because I rarely see a good distinction … Continue reading