Thursday, January 21, 2010
When I was growing up I would sometimes go down into my grandfather’s basement. He had amassed a variety of tools during his lifetime and he was an excellent wood craftsman. I wasn’t allowed to touch any of the power tools, because his rule was, “if you don’t know how to use a tool properly [...]
Thursday, January 14, 2010
This past weekend I was working on a new test tool library for generating random email addresses; specifically the local address segment of an email address. I know, there are already a lot of email address generators available and this could be construed as reinventing the wheel. But I wanted to give my students in [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]
Wednesday, November 25, 2009
Tonight on my way to teach a test automation course at the University of Washington I had some free time to catch up on my reading. My manager asked me if I had read this month’s copy of one of the several testing magazines we get and I replied that I had downloaded it but [...]
Wednesday, November 18, 2009
Published Tuesday, October 20, 2009
I love autumn! Yes, I am definitely a boy of summer and very much prefer warmer weather; however, there is something special about autumn. This past weekend my daughter, and my 2 friends Dongyi and her husband Yuning and I participated in the Rum Run sailboat fun race with [...]
Wednesday, November 18, 2009
Originally Published Thursday, July 16, 2009
It seems it is about this time of year that I need to detach a bit from the world to reflect back on the past year and reevaluate my personal and professional goals moving forward. Perhaps I am just getting older or perhaps just a bit wiser (that is synonymous [...]
Wednesday, November 18, 2009
Originally Published Wednesday, May 20, 2009
When we report a bug our hope is that bug is fixed. But, of course we know that isn’t always the case which is why there are usually several alternative resolutions developers, project managers, or managers may choose for resolving a bug such as postponed, won’t fix, and by [...]
Wednesday, November 18, 2009
Originally Published Friday, March 20, 2009
Much of the information about exploratory testing focuses on testing from an end-user perspective. Pundits of exploratory testing claim the approach is also useful from a white box test design approach, but I have yet to see any practical discussion or examples. But, professional testers use exploratory testing approaches all [...]
Wednesday, November 18, 2009
Originally Published Friday, March 06, 2009
In the book How We Test Software at Microsoft I discuss structural testing techniques. Structural testing techniques are systematic procedures designed to analyze and evaluate control flow through a program. These are classic white box test design techniques, although my friend and respected colleague Alan Richardson states in his [...]