Questions – Answers

When writing manual test cases and scripts, how much detail is too much detail when documenting the steps?

One of the things that I try to balance when writing out test scripts for manual testing is trusting that the person executing the test (which may not always be me) is reasonably competent to know how to do certain tasks versus assuming that the person executing the test needs instruction in how to do [...]

How do You Tell a Programmer They’re Not Testing Their Own Code Enough?

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Suppose you’re working with bright programmer, but every time you test the code you find a serious, obvious bugs. Things the programmer could have noticed if they did their own testing before checking in. Great testers are meant to do great work, and finding obvious bugs is both a waste of QA expertise and a [...]

Should Programmers Run Automated Tests Written by QA?

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Perhaps programmers have their own unit tests, perhaps as the result of doing Test-Driven Development. They run these tests very often; perhaps every few minutes, but at least a few times each day.

How Does a Tester’s Perspective Toward Software Differs From a Developer’s?

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Just as there are developers who are orders of magnitude more productive and creative than other developers, so are there testers who are similarly outstanding. We all have our opinions about what constitutes an outstanding tester. I believe one contributing factor is a matter of perspective, that a great tester approaches software in a different [...]

Should QA be Able to Code Tests?

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Having a development background, I am convinced that record and replay testing tools have their drawbacks, especially by making tests brittle. See Automated Testing != Record-Playback Tool for a good summary: Record-playback scripts are more expensive to maintain because the code they generate is long, complicated, not object oriented and must be further manipulated to [...]

How do I Satisfy External Auditors That Automated Tests Are at Least as Effective as Manual Tests?

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My company is not an anti-automation place. In fact, one of the reasons they hired me was to bring in some expertise in test automation. The problem is that the current processes and procedures in place in the company do not currently have anything built in to allow for automation work.

Selenium Keyword Driven Testing

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Is keyword driven testing something that could be implemented using Selenium? If so, how exactly and where can I learn more about it? A simple example might help me get started Thanks! This question originated from Stackoverflow.com was asked by Ame Answers Yes. But keyword driven testing is not something particular to Selenium. Selenium is [...]