Better Software Magazine Articles

Seven Ways to Make Testing Irrelevant on Your Team

Testers and developers can be friends. In fact, on teams working at a breakneck pace to deliver software, they must be friendly enough to rely on each other. However, there are a few sure-fire ways to ruin that relationship before it begins—and potentially make testing both irrelevant and unwelcome. Marlena Compton lists seven such ways here, along with suggestions for avoiding disaster.

Marlena Compton's picture Marlena Compton
Goodhart’s Law

Charles Goodhart stated: "Any observed statistical regularity will tend to collapse once pressure is placed upon it for control purposes." In other words, "When a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure."

Lee Copeland's picture Lee Copeland
The Three Amigos: All for One and One for All

Analysts determine what needs to be created. Programmers create it. Testers find the holes in the work of both. That's one way to do it, but all three can collaborate to do these things better, and more easily, too.

George Dinwiddie's picture George Dinwiddie
Raising The Bar For Configuration Management

Configuration management (CM) has matured into a "must-have" discipline. But, many CM experts have failed to keep up with what's required to implement CM best practices. Find out what needs to be done to raise the bar for CM.

Bob Aiello's picture Bob Aiello
Imaginary Friends: Creating Software with Personas

We all want to satisfy our users, but tailoring software to customers is easier said than done. Personas—a method to synthesize your primary users into abstract entities—facilitates understanding of goals and experiences.

Shmuel Gershon
Testing Under Pressure

A cast-in-concrete delivery date looms on your project’s horizon. You have precious little time remaining, and the development team keeps delivering incomplete builds of unstable code. Is this a "death march" project, or can the testing team actually do something useful, or perhaps even save the day?

Robert Sabourin's picture Robert Sabourin
Works as Designed

How many times have you heard the phrase "works as designed" used to describe software that is flawed and in some cases not fit for use? While "works as designed" has become an acceptable response for some, for real professionals, it's not.

Lee Copeland's picture Lee Copeland
Documenting Exploratory Testing

Exploratory testing projects can have documentation requirements, just like any other project. Jonathan describes various ways we can create documentation on our exploratory testing projects, including guidance documents, test-coverage reports, and video software to help create lightweight, powerful documentation.

Jonathan Kohl's picture Jonathan Kohl
How Do You Write Good User Stories?

Expert answers to frequently asked questions. In this issue, David Hussman explains how to write good user stories.

David Hussman's picture David Hussman
FAQ: What are good sources of less common agile test ideas?

In this installment of FAQ, SQE Trainer Rob Sabourin answers one of the questions students ask him most often.

Robert Sabourin's picture Robert Sabourin

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