January 2008
Campy Bear Heuristics →
Here’s a puzzle for you: I am out camping. One day I mark my spot and then walk one mile due south, at which point I turn ninety degrees to my left and walk one mile due east. I pause to admire the scenery, am startled by a bear, and run one mile due north. At this point I am back to my starting place, seem to have lost the bear, and have lunch.
Where am I camping? What color was the bear?
...
Kanban-esque scheduling →
Kanban-inspired scheduling is the most interesting idea to come along in a while. Read the links above for a fuller description, but the short version is that there’s a fixed pipe of work items, where each is larger than a traditional story. (As I’ve noted before, small stories compensate for our inability to estimate by shifting work to the product director.) The larger work items, often called...
Books I read in High School English →
Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance
I Heard the Owl Call My Name
Never Cry Wolf
I read these books because they were required for one of my high school English classes. I suspect each has many lessons for testers, or at least stuff I can put forth as what I think would be a worthwhile lesson for a tester. I’m not sure what I would do with A Tale of Two Cities, though.
The Frustrations of Modern Web Design →
I laughed when I saw this today. Each piece of the pie is so painfully true. I have
honestly gone through these phases/woes, over and over and OVER.
This is why I love JavaScript and Python, but not... →
“Exploratory programming is the fun end of programming, and we hope that will be the guiding principle of the Arc community.”
(arclanguage.org)
Amen! (And when I do have to work with code on the JVM, it’s via Rhino or Jython.) I don’t know how much I’ll use Arc in the future, but I already like it’s attitude.
All Black →
Take a look at my life, all black
Take a look at my clothes, all black
Like Johnny Cash, all black
Like the Rolling Stones wanna paint it black
As long as I could remember I dreamed in black and white
As I grew up and the sun went down I never felt more alright
My mother she use to tell me… Son you better get to church
And its a dark world and the people out there and you know its...
Taskbar Shuffle →
From Taskbar Shuffle site:
…rearrange the buttons on your Windows taskbar by dragging and dropping them. Allows you to rearrange your system tray icons by dragging and dropping as well…
I have heard about it while listening to Security Now! Episode #128.
How modern Web design is conducted →
Via the 40. (with egg) blog, a time breakdown on how Web design is conducted in our day and time. Hmmm…maybe there’s room for allocating some slice of that pie to testing, using Firebug for example.
RSpec Revisited →
I haven’t really spent a lot of time with RSpec since about the 0.5 release. I took a tutorial class with Dave Astels and got jazzed about the opportunity since they were really able to leverage Ruby to make a nice BDD framework. After using RSpec all JUnit test methods started including should. The Rails integration back then was a bit flakey and I just dropped back to Test::Unit.
Version...
Survey on Business Benefits of Unit Testing →
Artur Hildebrandt is a MBA student at the University of Liverpool and currently running a survey on the business benefits and risks of unit testing. His goal is to identify and measure benefits software development organizations can gain by actively practicing unit testing. I think it would be great to have more information available to persuade management on the benefits of unit testing so...
What kind of virus is Scrum? →
Jason Gorman compares Scrum to a virus. He uses the example of a DNA virus that destroys the cells it infects. But it could be an endogenous retrovirus that infects the DNA of germ (reproductive) cells and thereby takes over an entire species. From an interesting New Yorker article:
It takes less than two per cent of our genome to create all the proteins necessary for us to live. Eight per cent,...
Subway Chat With Richard Stallman →
I just took the Subway (the “T” here in Boston) home from work and ran into Richard
Stallman. I saw the big RMS beard flowing and I flagged him down. The
next train was running late so we got to chat for a while about GPLv3 adoption and
some other Free Software issues.
It’s pretty cool to have a conversation with somebody who has influenced my life and
ideals so very...
Do testers need programming skills? →
The debate over whether testers need to at least understand programming concepts is still raging within the discipline. To me this debate is puzzling because it seems to suggest that as a professional, I don’t have to really understand or be completely proficient in critical aspects of my trade. Even Cem Kaner noted, “I think that the next generation of testers will have to have...
Great testing stories from India (Created by Not... →
I would be presenting my workshop on Rapid Software Testing Excersises + a paper at Asia Pacific Software Testing Conference at Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia between Feb 24 to Feb 29, 2008. I wish to thank Vishal Manghani of Processworks Sdn Bhd for the invite. So, here goes the abstract for the paper I am presenting at the conference:
Great testing stories from India (Created by Not Following Any...
Technical Debt - VII →
The technical debt series took me to an different place that I expected. I have come to believe that, when it comes to Technical Debt, as an industry … we have more questions than answers. Sure, you can use the Nancy Reagan approach and say “Just Don’t Do It”, but the reality is that system factors impact behavior. The motivations to take the quick hack are immediate,...
Test-First Development Vs. Test Driven →
There’s been a interesting amount of discussion on the Software-Testing Yahoo Group recently. Personally, I have used and I enjoy Test-Driven Development, which is a software-developer process involving writing unit tests before your write code. At the same time, the ‘Agile’ community has seen a lot of buzz about … something else, involving getting tests-before-code as...
More on Standards Compliance in Internet Explorer... →
After the IE Team posted their
intent and work on compliance to standards the debates have begun. Revelations have
shown that the standards compliance is really an an option that would be invoked by
a developer with a META tag or header using the value of ‘X-UA-Compatible’.
Now, IE 8 will have 3 modes:
“Quirks mode” remains the same, and compatible with current content.
...
Continuous Integration at JaSST'08 Tokyo →
I’m sitting here in SFO waiting for my flight to Tokyo. I’ll be speaking this week at JaSST, the Japanese Symposium on Software Testing. This will be a bit different from my normal talks on CI because I’ll be focusing on the benefits of CI for testing groups rather than my normal focus on developers. And there will be translation into Japanese which makes for a very different...
Checklist automation and testing →
This is a follow-up to my previous post on writing automated tests for sysadmin-related checklists. That post seems to have struck a chord, judging by the comments it generated. Here’s the scenario I’m thinking about: you need to deploy a standardized set of packages and configurations to a bunch of servers. You put together a checklist detailing the steps you need to take on each...
The experience of scripting: a movie →
I’ve made a video showing something of what it feels like to script a Mac application using Ruby. It also explains the basics of rb-appscript, one of the two main Ruby frameworks.
I made it after a burst of frustration with how often my scripting runs into wholly unnecessary snags. What I wish I knew is how many people who would love to script iTunes or Mail or whatever won’t because app...
CASTing For Participants And Papers →
If you are looking to attend a testing conference this year, consider CAST 2008. CAST is not your typical conference. While each session does start with you sitting in rows staring at PowerPoints, each session ends with you discussing anything and everything with the presenter and other attendees, all enabled by a trained facilitator. Sessions are separated by generous buffers of time, so...
Diluting the Tester Role →
In a comment on my last post, Shrini asked:
“While hitting hard at ‘Jargon’ based software testing experts, you also appear to give the impression that ‘testing’ is ‘everyone’s job’ (as quality) and seem to dilute the importance and role of testing in software world – you might want to clarify. Don’t you think that you can hit at these jargon creators without diluting the role of testing?”
Yes,...
Planning to make use of learning - Incremental vs... →
During coffee with Agile-coach and all-round excellent guy Shane Clauson, in sympathy with yet another of my what’s-wrong-with-agile rants, he pointed me to this blog post from Jeff Patton: Don’t know what I want, but I know how to get it
While my opinions diverge on some of what he says must be true, I think the important message that he (and others - Check Alistair Cockburn’s...
This is hard to believe →
I’m pleased but surprised. I was lower than ideal on many questions. I’ve never even built a computer.
It’s even odder when you consider that the badge is wrong: I’m actually nerdier than 96% of people who took the test.
H/t Ron Jeffries, who is definitely more of a nerd than I am.
Extreme QA? →
Back in 2002, James Canter and Liz Derr wrote a paper on “Extreme QA.” While I don’t agree with everything in the article, and I think their use of the term is … questionable, I do like when people are thinking, trying new things, and writing about the process. Overall, it’s an interesting article; you can read it here. There are also numerous examples of what I would...
Zoning For The Holarctic Region →
Last week I asked you to see how many different interpretations of this sign you could devise. After an hour or so I had the following:
Cars may be parked for up to two hours unless any of the following conditions apply, in which case they may be parked for any amount of time:
If it is currently between six in the evening and seven in the morning
If today is Sunday
If today is a holiday
If...
Browser Archive →
I swear I put all my browser archive links into one blog post before, but a search
tonight proved me wrong. So here they are… These are the sites I’ve used for years
to download old browsers:
FireFox (official) http://ftp.mozilla.org/pub/mozilla.org/firefox/releases/
Netscape (official) http://http.netscape.com.edgesuite.net/pub/
Internet Explorer and MANY others...
Naked Agilist podcast is up →
Kevin Rutherford:
Clarke Ching has now published the podcast of last Saturday’s Naked Agilists conference. You can download it by following the links from www.nakedagilists.com, or get it directly from Clarke’s blog. It’s a great 90 minutes of presentations and discussions, and the Naked Agilists website has links to the slides so you can follow the presentations along with the speakers.
We had...
Stay away from the AT&T Tilt phone →
Why? Because it’s extremely fragile. I got one a couple of weeks ago (sponsored by my company, otherwise I wouldn’t have shelled out $399) and after just 2 days I found the screen cracked in 2 places. It’s true I carried it in my jacket’s pocket while driving, and it probably jammed against my leg or something, but I’ve done that with other phones and didn’t...
Joel on checklists →
Another entertaining blog post from Joel Spolsky, this time on some issues they had with servers and networking equipment hosted at a data center in Manhattan. It all comes down to a network switch which had its ports configured to automatically negotiate their speed. As a result, one port was misbehaving and brough their whole web site down. The conclusion reached by Joel and his sysadmin team:...
Software Testing 3.0: Organization and Process... →
By Rob Pirozzi Introduction
Many companies have come to realize that software testing is much more than a task that happens at the end of a software development cycle. They have come to understand that software testing is a strategic imperative and a discipline that can have a substantial impact on the success of an organization that develops software. Many of these companies are coming to...
Uncrossing the chasm →
In the Naked Agilist podcast (not posted yet), I reiterated a claim I made at the Functional Testing Tools workshop: that it’s a bad thing Agile has “crossed the chasm” and maybe a big chunk of us ought to cross back. Adrian Mowat writes sensibly about my outlandish claims on his new blog. I recommend his post, as he makes a strong case that (my interpretation) we’re failing both Moore’s...
Thoughts on becoming an professional tester →
“If a man is called to be a streetsweeper, he should sweep streets even as Michelangelo painted, or Beethoven composed music or Shakespeare wrote poetry. He should sweep streets so well that the hosts of heaven and earth will pause to say, here lived a great streetsweeper who did his job well.”- Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.
As I was growing up my parents taught me the value of working...
Offer: I’ll write a script for you →
As part of working up Ruby Scripting for Leopard, I need to write piles of scripts. If you have a script you’d like to see written, drop me a line. It needs to be a script that controls applications in either /Applications or /System/Library/CoreServices. The application should be one that’s pre-installed or one that most everyone should install anyway (e.g., Quicksilver). You have to be running...
InCIsif.net and Cassini →
Cassini is the web server that come with Visual Studio 2005 and ASP.NET 2.0. We just created a class to automatically start and stop Cassini from an InCisif.net test application. The class can be downloaded from InCisif.net.Extensions.Cassini.cs. Here it is:
Good design: driven, but not constrained, by... →
From a set of notes by Chris Heathcote on Donald Norman’s new The Design of Future Things:
We’ve been taught to design systems for a purpose – preferably one purpose – collected through use cases and designed against them. Use case collection never really includes crazy ideas or tries to foretell unexpected and unplanned uses. Good design, in my mind, is designing enablers or tools that include...
CALL FOR PAPERS: Conference of the Association for... →
CALL FOR PAPERS 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 Presentation by Gerald M. Weinberg The Association for Software Testing is pleased to announce its third annual conference (CAST 2008), to be held July 14-16. The meeting will...
What Makes a Good Test Case →
Technorati Tags: testing,qa,software,engineering,quality assurance I recently answered this question on the MSDN testing forum and thought it’d be something good to post on. Here’s my answer; read the conversation at http://forums.microsoft.com/MSDN/ShowPost.aspx?PostID=2597561&SiteID=1&mode=1 There are probably two ‘paths’ to answering that - the first path...
How Can I Become a Better Tester? Part IV: Mentors →
Technorati Tags: testing,qa,quality assurance,software,engineering A major step for career growth, in any role, is to find a mentor. Mentoring relationships come in many forms, the most common of which are: Working for someone Working with someone Having a formal mentoring relationship Having an information mentoring relationship Reading and participating in specific test
How Can I Become a Better Tester? Part III: Going... →
So you’ve spent some tme becoming more aware of quality and what quality means. You’ve been looking at the differences between a Mercedes and a Hyundai. You’ve also started reading up on quality and on engineering. Great start! What’s next? Well, the next step is to realize you need to look beyond the stated requirements and dig deeper. In my opinion, functional or business...
Fail Fast →
I just made this post to the SW-IMPROVE discussion list - Tom Walton Wrote: I have had people tell me that it impossible to produce any design documentation until after the code is developed for just that reason. They were developing by trial and error. If one thing didn’t work quite as expected, then they tried again. Tom has just described the engineering strategy used by the Wright...
You and the Internet are "The End of the... →
Way
back in the day we only knew people from personal recognition after seeing that person.
There was a time when an event could only be experienced by witnessing it. If
you missed the event you were left with little to go by.
There once was a generation that spread knowledge and commodities by foot.
Those days are long gone, time has passed and we have evolved:
Seeing a person, turned...
Tester Advocacy Part 1 →
I used to think that as a software tester, ‘if you’re doing your job well, then no one notices’. This sort of thinking was something I was perpetuating by misunderstanding my role as (merely) someone who performs test execution. I could see the benefit of the work I was doing and assumed that because no one else seemed really interested, they didn’t care.
From my experience, there is a tendency...
Controlling iTunes with Ruby (alternate take) →
Here’s a different version of the same playlist-generating script. This one uses rb-appscript rather than the built-in Scripting Bridge. (Raw source here.)
#!/usr/bin/env ruby # Run to create a playlist named "today’s tunes". The playlist is
# populated with tracks selected because the first character of their
# names begins with a randomly selected letter or digit. For example,
# my list...
The challenges of becoming test-infected →
I’m developing a suite of subsystem-level tests for a client. I was delighted to receive this message from a developer on the project:
I seem to be more motivated by seeing tests pass than by closing things on my bug list :-)
We talked about the how the tests seem to function as positive reinforcement, while bug reports are more like negative reinforcement. This is probably an important part of...
Controlling iTunes with Ruby →
In working on Ruby Scripting Leopard, I’ve been helped by searching for AppleScript examples, such as those at Doug’s AppleScripts for iTunes. To pay it forward, I offer an example to some future searcher after the jump. Since WordPress (or something) is turning quotes into “smart” quotes, follow this link if you want plain text.
This should work on stock Leopard.
I run it via launchd, the...
Making user stories work (by writing use cases... →
I’ve had a few common rants on most of the agile projects I have worked on. Developers bogged down in the detail of stories, while the critical goals of the system wound up ignored, or realising at the last minute that all of the stories built would do nothing useful.
The ideas I came to as a result of the problems I observed were -
- Compensating by starting with extremely high-level...
Bloglines Beta Debuts Photo Widget →
We have another treat for you Blogliners who have been patiently awaiting our
redesign. Today’s special surprise is the Photo Widget View available within
Bloglines Beta.We’ve been experimenting
with different views in the Bloglines Start Page. In this case, we display
photos from Flickr inside a Photo Widget. Sure beats a text description. We
currently only do this for Flickr, but in...
Rapid testing, risk catalogues and checklists -... →
Many moons ago, when I was a young tester, I worked on the first third party game for Microsoft (Please don’t look for it, it’s terrible). But there was some good to come out of the experience. Windows ‘95 was new shiny, and fraught with danger. To help address some of this, I began collecting test ideas and describing the expected behaviour of ‘good’ Windows...
Is excellent design "too Eastern" for us? →
I have spent the last two days with Mary and Tom Poppendieck at one of their Practitioners Courses, and I find myself inspired. Among the interesting moments for me was a point at which I reached an unsettling notion: are we “too Western” to design software well? I came to this question while watching course attendees talk about the problems in their organization. As they explored the flow of...