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Monthly Archives: December 2009

Thinking About Critical Thinking And Test Design

Tuesday, December 29, 2009

Did you ever notice that when you ask someone to test something the first thing they do is to start ‘testing?’
I often see this in my classes and I ask the person, “what is the purpose of your test?” Typically the response is, “I’m testing this,” or “I’m trying to find a bug.”
Unfortunately this seems [...]

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Random Test Data – Credit Card Numbers

Friday, December 18, 2009

Things are winding down for the year. The Christmas lights are up on the house, my gardens are tilled and mulched for next spring, people are disappearing from the office like there is a plague, it hasn’t snowed in a while which means the mountains are mostly ice (I dislike skiing on ice), the next [...]

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Evaluating Exploratory Testing

Thursday, December 10, 2009

This month’s issue of Testing Experience published my article that summarizes the findings of several case studies of exploratory testing both inside and outside of Microsoft. Although some people consider me to be a harsh critic of exploratory testing nothing could be further from the truth. When I started my career as a professional tester [...]

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Refactoring for Testability

Wednesday, December 2, 2009

 

One of my hobbies is shooting CMP matches and long range precision shooting. Besides lots of practice perfecting the techniques a big part of precision shooting depends on the ammunition and studying the ballistic patterns of various loads. All precision shooters custom load their ammunition and it is not as simple as simply reading a [...]

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