Month: February 2012

Published inBDDTDL

Tests as Specifications

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In Testing’s Brave New World, I ended up talking about BDD and the concepts that testing, acting as a design activity, has to work within. That was a post fairly heavy on nomenclature concerns. I sort of skirted around the issue that it’s the tools we use in our BDD type activities that are often forcing us to consider this terminology. Even if you are not using a specific tool, but rather a technique like spec workshops — which is a “BDD activity” — you are still wrestling with these terms.

So let’s put this in some context.

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Published inQuality AssuranceTesting

Test Writers Step in Early

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In my last post about what tests are for I talked a bit about the ability of test writers to be nimble in terms of getting quality-focused information — usually as a result collaborative discussions — encoded into readable tests that focus on intent rather than implementation. All of that’s easy to say but test writers sometimes have a hard time figuring out how to exactly do it in the context of the collaboration possibilities in their environment. Here I want to talk a little about the core ideas, backing them up with an example.

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Published inTesting

What Are Your Tests For?

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A key question to ask is what you want to get out of your tests. I’ve already talked about how I think the purpose of testing is to find information and then communicate that information. That’s great and all … but … what do you actually want to get out of the tests themselves? The way you answer that question will shape your testing function to a large extent, particularly when it comes to picking supporting tools, such as for test management or test automation.

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Published inThinking

Test Teams Need Inventors: Balancing Creativity

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In a previous post I talked about inventors as people who see and think differently. I also brought the idea of inventors having to institute cultural change in some cases. What I didn’t do is how an inventor utilizes their skill-set and mind-set to get that change going. So let’s talk about that. Hopefully I won’t make too much of a fool of myself.

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