General Software Testing

How do You Measure Test Coverage?

The reason, of course, why people focus on coverage numbers is because they want to know if they are testing enough. Certainly low coverage numbers, say below half, are a sign of trouble. But high numbers don’t necessarily mean much, and lead to ignorance-promoting dashboards. Sufficiency of testing is much more complicated attribute than coverage [...]

How to Build a Good Automated Test Suite

A good automated test suite runs fast, provides a safety net for refactoring, documents the intent of the code, and alerts the team to regressions. It doesn’t prevent bugs on its own, but if bugs are escaping the team, that’s a sign that there’s a flaw in the team’s development approach–which includes the team’s approach [...]

Predictive Testing

A common observation in any SDLC process is that the output (Final Product) varies despite well defined resources, references and Guidelines. The output varies because of intangible factors – Tester and Developer. In any Software, one tester can find crucial issues while other cannot. One developer can resolve an issue without impacting other areas while [...]

What Exploratory Testing Is Not (Part 2): After-Everything-Else Testing

Exploratory testing is not “after-everything-else-is-done” testing. Exploratory testing can (and does) take place at any stage of testing or development. Indeed, TDD (test-driven development) is a form of exploratory development. TDD happens in loops, in which the programmer develops a check, then develops the code to make the check pass (along with all of the [...]

What Exploratory Testing Is Not (Part 1): Touring

Touring is one way of structuring exploratory testing, but exploratory testing is not necessarily touring, and touring is not necessarily exploratory. At one extreme, a tourist might parachute into a territory for which there is no detailed knowledge of the landscape, flora and fauna, or human culture, with the goal of identifying what’s there to [...]

GTAC 2011: Secrets of World Class Software Organizations

Among these organizations, a few stand out as being truly world class. They are exceptional in their ability to meet their software development goals and exceptional in the contribution they make to their companies’ overall business success. Do world class software organizations operate differently than average organizations?

How Google Tests Software

Google is a company that releases complex software rapidly to millions of users worldwide. Have you ever wondered how Google does testing? During this IBM sponsored webcast, James Whittaker unveils the secret sauce of Google test practices. From developer-oriented unit testing, to the mystical role of the Software Engineer in Test, and to the role [...]

How to Test Without a Formal Test Plan

For a range of reasons — both good and bad — many software and web development projects don’t budget enough time for complete and comprehensive testing. A quality test team must be able to test a product or system quickly and constructively in order to provide some value to the project. This essay describes how [...]

What do you do when a ShowStopper escapes into production?

You are the QA manager of a company developing an enterprise application. Last week, your team released a product version, including features requested by new customers. But, it included a showstopper that already has affected about a third of customer installations. What would you and your team do in this situation? All of a sudden [...]

How Do We Know What We Know?

One of the central questions—if not the central question—of software testing is “What do we know about this piece of software?” When we know enough about the software under test, we can stop testing it. But, how do we acquire knowledge? Given that our perceptions are sometimes unreliable, can we actually be certain of learning [...]

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