Better Software Articles

Tom McGreal warns you of problems that may be lurking in your deployment environment.

Much has been written about how agile processes change the developer and tester roles, but what effect do they have on the manager? Learn about three “extreme” concepts and what they mean to the software manager.

Practical Career Advancement

A word from the Technical Editor

Logical Capture/Replay

Wouldn’t it be great if test scripts were written in terms of what they were trying to accomplish instead of in terms of which button to click? It would certainly make them a lot less fragile, and much easier to understand. Find out how capture/replay at the business and control logic level can help you accomplish this goal.

Let SQA Be Your Guide

Pinocchio had Jiminy Cricket; your company has Software Quality Assurance. Both are intended not to enforce good practices, but to encourage them. Find out how SQA can effectively serve an organization.

Go with the Bug Flow

How do you know when your software is done? How do you determine which bugs need to be fixed and which can be tabled for "someday"? Robert Sabourin defines a seven-step process for establishing an effective bug triage system.

Inside the Mind of an Exploratory Tester

Among the hardest things to explain is something that everyone already knows. We all know how to listen, how to read, how to think, and how to tell anecdotes about the events in our lives. As adults, we do these things every day. Yet the level possessed by the average person of any of these skills may not be adequate for certain special situations.Exploratory tester James Bach describes eight key skills that expert explorers possess, and how you can develop them too.

A Look at Tinderbox 2

Ken Estes reviews Tinderbox 2 in depth.

A Real Go-Getter

A word from the editor.

Manager to Manager

Dorothy Graham says test managers should learn to speak in terms that a project manager can relate to.