Better Software Magazine Articles

Action Based Testing

For many organizations, automation is a burden--even with good tools. Keywords are popular but don't suffice on their own. Action based testing places a high emphasis on modularized test design, not only making tests lean and mean but also allowing for very stable and maintainable automation.

Hans Buwalda's picture Hans Buwalda
Measure the Measurable: Improving Software Quality Through Telemetry

Observing customers in a usability lab can be invaluable for improving product design. But, once your software leaves the lab, do you know what your customers are actually doing and whether or not your software meets their expectations? Learn how engineers on the Microsoft Office team apply a variety of software telemetry techniques to understand real-world usage, how the results drive product improvements, and how you can apply similar techniques.

Jamie Campbell's picture Jamie Campbell
Enterprise Agile and the Business Analyst

Agile is making its way into the enterprise as a project methodology for industrial-strength projects. Why the popularity? The answer lies in the requirements paradox: “We want requirements to be stable, but requirements are never stable.” Discover some key agile concepts as they affect business analysts.

John C. Goodpasture's picture John C. Goodpasture
Busted: 5 Myths of Testing Regulated Software

Testing regulated software is often seen as a tedious job that generates stacks of documentation and is subject to crippling rules. See five of these assumptions exposed as mere myths, and learn how regulated testers can use the same approaches, techniques, and tools at any other tester's disposal while still passing a process audit.

John McConda
Simplify Your Combinatorial Testing

Combinatorial testing is effective for testing multiple, non-sequential inputs that affect a common output in complex software. But, it's easy to misapply it or become a slave to the output. Learn to overcome limitations and benefit fully from this technique.

Bj Rollison's picture Bj Rollison
Four Paths To Predictable, Repeatable, Reusable Test Data

Modern applications operate in highly integrated environments, and critical systems rely on massive amounts of data that likely contain sensitive information. Discover useful strategies for preparing your baseline, handling interfaces, designing input data, and planning for output results.

Linda Hayes's picture Linda Hayes
Believe the Territory

Test plans are seldom followed as written, project plans hardly ever fit the actual progress, and process models are rarely followed to the letter. Markus Gaertner examines why most of our documents become obsolete and gives advice about whether or not to continue to write and maintain them.
 

Markus Gärtner's picture Markus Gärtner
The Weekend Testers

This is the true story of freedom from the monotonous work of checking. It is the story of what happened when a few passionate testers took responsibility for their own education and fun in testing. Explore how they test, learn, and contribute to the open source.

A Release Without a Tester

In this article inspired by an unfortunate video store rental, Lee Copeland invites software organizations that think testing is expensive to try the alternative.

Lee Copeland's picture Lee Copeland
Demystifying Exploratory Testing

Exploratory testing is a popular approach, but many testers secretly worry they might be doing it wrong. Jonathan Kohl addresses those concerns by explaining exploratory testing in ways that testers identify with.

Jonathan Kohl's picture Jonathan Kohl

Pages

AgileConnection is a TechWell community.

Through conferences, training, consulting, and online resources, TechWell helps you develop and deliver great software every day.