Test Types and Techniques

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 [...]

To Load Test or Not to Load Test: That is not the question

You don’t know how to do realistic load tests? You think load testing tools are too expensive and it takes too much effort to create and maintain scripts? You don’t know what to do with the test results and therefore skip testing at all? Let me give you some easy tips on how to do [...]

Exploratory Testing in an Agile Context

“Exploratory Testing” is a style of testing in which we learn about the behavior of a system by designing a small test, executing it immediately, using the information gleaned from the last test to inform the next. We continue that rapid cycle of design a test, execute it, observe until we’ve characterized the capabilities and [...]

Are State Transition Diagrams a Good Software Testing Technique

I have been looking at different testing techniques and wondered if anyone had some “real world” examples of using state transition diagrams rather than the bog standard clock and light switch ones that are always used. I was also wondering if when using a wizard does each page of the wizard count as a separate

Creating a Load Test Report

One of the most common questions in load testing is how to create a good test report that you would be able to present to your manager or customer. This big question actually consists of many smaller ones. What to start with? How to create the right test? What load parameters should be applied? How [...]

Code coverage metrics and Functional Test Coverage

Code coverage can be a very useful metric. However you need to know how, and when, to use it. The link between code coverage and test quality is tenuous at best – in short, high code coverage is, in itself, no guarantee of well tested code. And increasing code coverage for the sake of code [...]

Lean-Agile Acceptance Test-Driven Development: An Introductory Acceptance Test

An example of an acceptance test is presented, along with four ways that you can execute an acceptance test. A Sample Business Rule Here is an example from a previous project where Debbie and Tom created tests in collaboration with the customer. The business representative, Betty, presented the two of them with a business rule [...]

Testing Techniques for Applications With Zero Tests

Agile techniques recommend having adequate unit and acceptance tests to build a robust test harness around the application. However, in the real world, not all applications are fortunate enough to have a test harness. In an interesting discussion on the Agile Testing group, members suggested ways to test applications which do not have any automated [...]

Why Not Run All Your Tests All The Time? A Study of Continuous Integration Systems

There are an increasing number of continuous integration (CI) systems available for use by Pythonistas, but no clear guide to how to choose a CI system for your project. I will examine the architecture choices made by buildbot, bitten, Hudson, continuum, CruiseControl, DART, and pony-build, and discuss the configuration and customization of several of these [...]

Lean Agile Acceptance Test Driven Development

How does testing fit into an agile organization? Can you have both? And what does that look like? Matt Heusser interviewed Ken Pugh, author of Lean Agile Acceptance Test Driven Development, to find out. There are a handful of books coming out on Acceptance Test Driven Development (ATDD). Yet the topic is so new, and [...]

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