Articles

Continuous Integration and Testing

Lisa Crispin explains in this article how CI has become an absolute necessity for any software development team in this day and age. For those who have yet to fully embrace CI, this article gives you some great reasons you should, along with some helpful resources to get you started.

Lisa Crispin's picture Lisa Crispin
Unit vs. System Testing-It's OK to be Different

There are two distinct roles in many software projects that are involved with testing: developers and testers. Should they take the same approach to testing, or are there some principles that apply to only one of the roles? What should they do to coordinate their work? Danny Faught went through an exercise to compare and contrast and found that the questions he couldn't answer were as interesting as the questions he could answers.

Danny R. Faught's picture Danny R. Faught
Agile Testing as if People Mattered

As a test professional in waterfall, I was used to getting the code much later and buggier than I expected and being under tremendous pressure to finish my testing before the go-live date hit. Then one day, I found out that there was a better way. Testers could be involved much earlier in the lifecycle, they could participate in requirements and design decisions as they happened, and the code could actually be unit tested before I received it! Heaven? Nope, agile.

Daryl  Kulak's picture Daryl Kulak
Does Exploratory Testing Have a Place on Agile Teams?

Exploratory testing—questioning and learning about the product as you design and execute tests rather than slavishly following predefined scripts—makes sense for many projects. But does it make sense for agile projects? In this column, Johanna Rothman examines how exploratory testing might work on an agile project.

Johanna Rothman's picture Johanna Rothman
An Uncomfortable Truth about Agile Testing

One characteristic of agile development is continuous involvement from testers throughout the process. Testers have a hard and busy job. Jeff has finally starting to understand why testing in agile development is fundamentally different.

Jeff Patton's picture Jeff Patton
How Much Building Is Too Much?

Staged integration versus continuous integration—which does your team prefer? Can't decide if one is better than the other? In this column, Johanna Rothman explains that you can create the perfect blend of the two. Developers and testers benefit from frequent builds, but be careful with how much you build. Build too much or too little and a project could topple.

Johanna Rothman's picture Johanna Rothman
Detecting Great Testers before the In-Person Interview

Resumes only tell a portion of a candidate's story just like caller ID doesn't always reveal the caller's complete identity. Screening candidates over the phone can help extract more of the person's story if you ask the right questions. In this column, Johanna Rothman shares phone-screening techniques she uses to detect great potential testers. This process of elimination saves her valuable time and ensures only qualified candidates make it to the in-person interview.

Johanna Rothman's picture Johanna Rothman
test automation Not Your Father's Test Automation

If you think that test automation is mostly about executing tests, then you're missing out on a big opportunity. Or rather, you're missing a lot of small opportunities adding up to a big one. Consider this: stop thinking about test automation as merely executing automated tests, stop thinking about test automation as something you need expensive tools for, and start discovering automation you can implement in a couple of days and usually with extremely inexpensive tools or tools you already have available. In this week's column, Danny Faught and James Bach suggest taking a more Agile approach to test automation.

James Bach's picture James Bach Danny R. Faught
Keeping Secrets

Test data has long been a challenge for testing; privacy legislation, identify theft, and the continued trend towards outsourcing has made it even worse. Just establishing and maintaining a comprehensive test environment can take half or more of all testing time and effort. In this column, Linda Hayes adds in the new and expanding privacy laws that inevitably limit your testing options. Yet from the quagmire of laws and company standards, better testing can emerge.

Linda Hayes's picture Linda Hayes
Bumper Stickers for Testers

Why is software testing perceived as dull? How many other jobs can list "crash," "hang," and "death march" in their daily vocabularies? In this week's column, Harry Robinson encourages testers to embrace a little pride and excitement in what they do, and Harry has just the mottos for bumper stickers that announce Tester Pride. Author's note: Feel free to add your own favorite slogan in the comment section at the end!

Harry Robinson's picture Harry Robinson

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