Category Archives: Testing

Software Testing

Continuous Acceptance

Over the past year I ran a couple of Scrum trainings. At first I found it sort of funny to notice that amount of misconceptions that seem to appear in these various classes. Recently I figured that it would be more helpful to clarify some of them. Among one of the larger, and probably more manifested misconceptions regarding Scrum lies in the Sprint Review meeting. Let’s examine that one today. I am quite sure that someone has written about this before. I found that it would be worth to throw in my point of view as well.

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Why should just the developers have all the fun?

Back in 2009 I attended my first coding dojo. It did not take long for me to realize that it was fun, and all the programmers in that setting learned a lot. Ever since I was convinced about what some call Deliberate Practice. It’s a practical exercise to help you learn a deeper understanding of a skill – most often accompanied with a mentor or coach that provides you feedback. Let’s take a look into various formats that are suited for testers.

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Maintainable automated tests – the architecture view

When it comes to functional test automation, most legacy application have to deal with the problem, that retro-fitting automated tests to an application that was not built with it from scratch, can be painful. In the long-run, teams may face one problem. The automated tests constrain further development on the production software. The tests are highly coupled to the software that they test. Let’s see how we can solve these problems with a clear architecture in the beginning of our automation journey.

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Software Tester – from new to good to great

Software testing has come a long way. We have more than thirty years of experience with software testing. The world turned around in that time period. Depending on who you listen to, there are various opinions on what to learn about testing. Thinking about testing and learning, I am aware that there are different learning methodologies, and preferences. Nonetheless, I think the topic of testing can be split up on three general skill-levels that have brought me value: beginners, practitioners, and journeymen. Let’s see what’s in for you on each of these.

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Surprised and shocked by traditional testing literature

Over the course of the last year, I decided to dive deeper towards the source of traditional testing wisdom. That said, I read a book on the foundation knowledge behind one of the testing methodology (I won’t name anyone to protect the guilty). In the end, I was both surprised, and shocked. Here are some of the things that stood out to me. I will not name the book or the authors, as I was able to receive them as sort of a gift. If you want to know more details, feel free to contact me privately, and I might share more on the book.

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Exploratory testing as empirical process control

Over the course of the past year, I had the opportunity to work with some great trainers. I learned a lot from them, and by delivering co-trainings together. Today, I decided it was time to reflect on some of that stuff. Blog entries work great for me to do so. Here is a first blog entry in a series of entries to come.

Stick long enough into testing, and you will face an argument pro or contra traditional test cases. Most of us have been there. Most of us know what worked for them in the past. Most of us won’t agree with each other. During a particular co-training, I became aware and reminded again about process control, and realized why I think exploratory testing is better suited in most software development shops around. Let’s see what process control consists of, and check in which of the models testing falls, and where exploratory testing can help you.

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Thanks!

As all these years, I went to the Agile Testing Days in Potsdam, Germany. On Tuesday evening I received an award for being the “Most Influential Agile Testing Professional Person” 2013. Since this is an award based upon votes on the internet, I want to say thank you for voting for me.

I had prepared a speech, but didn’t deliver it fully. Here is the full thing that I prepared.

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