quality assurance

Articles

New Skills for Software Testers and Software QA Engineers: 2013 … and Beyond!
Let's take a look into the future—all the way to the year 2013! As a software tester or software quality engineer, are you planning to learn a new skill in the new year. If you are, make sure you approach it in a way that will make that skill stick.
Five Ways to Make Test Automation Fail
Test automation promises much, but it can deliver disastrous results if implemented poorly. Laura Salazar takes a look at five common practices that can cause automation projects to fail.
How to Squeeze the Most Out of Your Automated Testing
Jonathan Lindo describes examples of automated test infrastructure utilizing both open source and traditional, independent-software-vendor-sourced software. In addition, he discusses new techniques for extending the value of automated testing by transforming the process from defect finding to defect resolution by reducing the effort required to document, reproduce, and troubleshoot the defects generated from automated tests.
A Practical Way to do Agile in an Enterprise ALM Environment
While some falsely accuse agile of not being scalable at the enterprise level, large development teams are beginning to see the benefits that agile can bring larger environments. As more business leaders, and CTO's become familiar with agile methodologies, the trend will only continue to rise.

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Better Software Magazine

Selling To Your Buyer

No matter how well you've built it, no users will benefit from your product unless you can convince the buyers to purchase it. Selling to buyers is different than satisfying users—and you have to do both well to succeed. Consider the needs of the buyer as stakeholder. When you have no buyers, you have no users.

Working Together—Not Just Working Together
People collaborate—and don't—in a variety of ways. Johanna Rothman examines what happens when collaboration isn't working, and how to make it work. Watch for several barriers to collaboration including those imposed on people by the organization itself.
QA Is Not Evil

A software tester re-examines the role of software testers in quality assurance work, helping implement software development processes. If testers are knowledgeable, helpful, and supportive, they may be in the best possible position to help the team improve its software development process.

Issues about Metrics about Bugs

Managers often use metrics to help make decisions about the state of the product or the quality of the work done by the test group. Yet, measurements derived from bug counts can be highly misleading because a "bug" isn't a tangible, countable thing; it's a label for some aspect of some relationship between some person and some product, and it's influenced by when and how we count ... and who is doing the counting.

Do You Know Why You Are Doing That?

It's easy to get caught up in the inertia of a project and forget to ask exactly what we are developing, who our customers are, and what their goals with our software might be. Few software projects have the time and budget to figure out what their project is through trial and error. Getting clarity on project focus not only helps productivity, working to create software that people actually need increases our chances for success.

The TSA and Software Quality

As evidenced by news stories relating blatant failures on the part of the Transportation Security Administration, many organizations fail to learn much from the information testing provides. What can we do to improve the quality of our measurements so we can learn valuable lessons from the results?

Keep Non-developers in the Loop

Keeping QA members up to date on changes as they happen–through meetings, wikis, and email–can reduce the number of unnecessary bug reports and save you time and frustration.

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Interviews

Traceability's Priceless Role in Agile: An Interview with William Gens
William Gens sits down with Noel Wurst to describe "the art and science of traceability" ahead of his STAREAST session of the same name. Learn what makes traceability meaningful and such a valuable asset to projects, no matter how bad the requirements may seem to be.
Enterprise Agility vs. Lean Delivery: An Interview with Mik Kersten
Mik Kersten recently sat down with us to discuss the challenges, and the benefits that adopting lean's principles brings to projects of all sizes. While challenges will vary due to the size of the enterprises lean is being applies to, the goals, and hopefully the outcomes, remain the same.

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TechWell Stories
To Estimate or Not to Estimate—That Is the Question
Removing Waste in Software Projects
Create a Vendor Contract While Keeping Agile
How Agile Teams Use DevOps for Deployment
Build a List of Things—But Don't Call It Agile

Recommended Web Seminars

May 23 Key Principles to Mobile Performance Testing
May 29 How to Integrate Performance Testing into Agile and Hybrid Environments
Jun 11 Test Infrastructure Changes as Easy as Pressing Play
Jun 18 Adopting Agile and Moving into the Future
On Demand 7 Habits of Highly Effective Agile Teams

Featured Resources

» Skytap Automation Pack for Microsoft VS Team Foundation Server | Skytap
» An Innovative Approach to Integration Testing | IBM Rational
» Improve Quality and Decrease Time to Market with Requirements Management | PTC
» Cloud-Enabled Software Development and Testing | Skytap
» Perfection Just Became Mobile: An Easy-to-Use Solution for Mobile App Testing | Micro Focus

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