Testing Challenges

A few months back I came up with the idea of Testing Dojos. Since then I spread the idea on Testing Dojos. The question I got most often when speaking about Testing Dojos is about where to get testing missions from. We have had the same problem when coming up with a mission for an upcoming Weekend Testing session regularly.

I also remember when I got back from the Software Craftsmanship 2009 conference I was inspired by Micah Martin’s coding kata, and asked for a testing challenge on one of my mailing lists. That’s how I first got in closer contact with Michael Bolton, since he followed-up on my request for a testing challenge by providing my with the Wason challenge which James Bach and he use in their Rapid Software Testing courses.

I annoyed my colleagues in the weeks after that with this particular challenge. Later I realized how hard these testing challenges are to find on the web. At some point a few weeks back I decided to register a new domain and simply put up testing challenges that I came across. Now, as of today I have put up the sessions we ran in Weekend Testing in the European chapter and some of other chapters as well. So far, this has been hard work, and with a critical eye on my schedule I would really love to crowd-source filling up the page with more testing challenges. You can find what we have so far on testing-challenges.org, and I hope this will be of great value in various circumstances in the months and years to come.

So far, I have restricted the access to the wiki for editing to users with a login, and the only way to sign up for a login is get in contact with me. That said, if you are interested in contributing, and classify and categorize the existing challenges, or improve the existing challenge with additional information like the original originator, drop me a line, and I can set an account up for you.

On another note, I also launched Testing Dojo.org at the same time. It is basically a write-up based upon my Testing Dojo article in the December’s issue of the Methods & Tools magazine, and is similar in its nature to Coding Dojo.org. Since I noticed many spam edits when taking a look at Coding Dojo.org, I also restricted editing on Testing Dojo.org to signed up users. You may need to contact me for this, but I’ll be glad to set up an account for you. Also notice that I included a list of public Testing Dojos which I hope to extend in the future. Until now it just references the Finland group meetings.

  • Print
  • Twitter
  • LinkedIn
  • Google Bookmarks

5 thoughts on “Testing Challenges”

  1. Hi, Marcus…

    I’m interested to join but I want to find out whether you retain attribution of ideas to their authors or take ownership?

    For example, the testing challenge I held in June, 2010 (“Escape”). It was widely announced on Twitter, SoftwareTestingClub, and LinkedIn. Darren McMillan in his writing put a proper reference and attribution to the original blog post on my site. Nonetheless, on WT session posting and on your testing-challenges-org web-site the challenge comes as “original”.

    You absolutely right, it is hard to come up with a good challenge; it takes a lot of time and effort. So maybe careful attribution of ideas to their sources is one of little things that can be done to motivate people contributing to the community?

    Thank you,
    Albert Gareev

    1. Thanks for the hint, I added a reference to your blog entry as well. In general I want to list challenges while trying to preserve the original ideas as well. I would love to see a better concept behind this as I have thus far. So, if you would like to help out, I can invite you to the wiki.

  2. I must commend you and your colleagues for putting these
    challenges together. I am thinking as a tester this is the greatest
    thing since sliced bread. I am looking forward to taking on some of
    these challenges and learning. Keep up the outstanding work!
    Carl

  3. I love the idea of Testing Dojos. There was a local Coding Dojo to me a few years back, I never went, but always grumbled to myself that there should be a Testing one.

    I’d be keen to help out. Lets Skype :)

  4. Hi

    The problem of testing challenges is not new, at least to me. Creating them is lot harder than solving them. Good job of creating a kind of repository for them. I’ll send you a list of the good challenges we have used, so you can add them up too.
    Befor that, You can add my latest creation :
    Boundary Testing Exercise ! Test Your Skills ! http://bit.ly/gmglSX

    Kristjan

Leave a Reply to Rosie Sherry Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *