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DRE

Posted Tuesday, February 27, 2007 5:26 PM by alanpa
I know I'm overdue for a post when Bj starts lapping me on posts. This week, I've been finishing up my presentations for STAR and PSQT (for those who haven't presented at a conference before, presenters are expected to have their presentation complete Read More...
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Exploring Exploratory Testing

Posted Friday, December 29, 2006 5:09 PM by alanpa
Exploratory testing seems to be the “it” word of software testing these days. Everyone from high profile consultants to newbie testers are talking about exploratory testing. My nature (similar to that of many testers) is to be a bit of a naysayer, and Read More...
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SDETs at Microsoft

Posted Wednesday, December 13, 2006 3:49 PM by alanpa
Some time ago, MS began hiring primarily people with a programming background (industry or educational background) for test positions. As far as I know, there was no press announcement, but the idea seems to have worked its way into the overall global Read More...
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The happy path should always pass

Posted Thursday, November 30, 2006 11:14 PM by alanpa
I was in a discussion with some other test architects at work today. We were talking about challenges in testing, and at one point in our discussion someone mentioned his frustration in finding bugs in the basic functionality of an application or interface. Read More...
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About Certifications

Posted Tuesday, November 21, 2006 8:18 AM by alanpa
I was listening to talk radio on the way home from work last night, and the topic of discussion was the recent crane accident a few miles from Microsoft in Bellevue. The focus of the discussion was on the capability of the crane operator, and one of the Read More...
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Thoughts from the week

Posted Sunday, November 12, 2006 12:30 PM by alanpa
I'll post this tomorrow, but currently I'm somewhere over the northern US or southern Canada returning from a week in the Boston area. I spent the last week talking to testers from Groove and Softricity. Technically, I was delivering training, but all Read More...
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Where do they get this stuff?

Posted Sunday, November 12, 2006 12:30 PM by alanpa
In the "if it's on the internet, it must be true?" category is this article and quote from it-director.com ( Malik Arjun originally brought the article to my attention) The ratio of testers to programmers is now 3:1 . This has given Microsoft another Read More...
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Building better software with the NM model

Posted Monday, October 09, 2006 7:24 AM by alanpa
In the course I teach for senior testers, we spend a few hours talking about different approaches to software development (waterfall, agile, v, w, rup, etc.). At the end of the discussion I, of course, tell them which approach is best. Of course, I'm Read More...
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Testing for correctness?

Posted Wednesday, October 04, 2006 1:01 PM by alanpa
This morning I watched a short video where the presenters looked at a UI element and asked questions on determining if it was "correct". It's a short (six minute) video, so please take a minute to view it for context. The overall theme is that rather Read More...
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Debugging 100

Posted Monday, October 02, 2006 1:35 PM by alanpa
Universities typically title their introductory courses XYZ 101: Introduction to XYZ. Often, the 101 courses require that students have some basis of knowledge in the area (e.g. pre-algebra for a math 101 course, or some level of writing skills for an Read More...
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Kaner's five year plan

Posted Thursday, September 21, 2006 10:14 AM by alanpa
I usually don't write commentary about other peoples blogs, but Cem Kaner had an interesting post a few weeks ago that I wanted to talk about. The first thing that jumped out at me was this quote: I think there are a lot of good, diligent, motivated black-box Read More...
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The pitfalls of multitasking

Posted Thursday, September 14, 2006 5:05 PM by alanpa
Short story is that computers do it (relatively) well, and people don't. Last year, there was a bit of controversy raised when a King's College psychiatric study showed that multitasking caused a larger drop in IQ than getting stoned (one article mentioning Read More...
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Functional testing on a budget?

Posted Thursday, August 31, 2006 10:01 AM by alanpa
Most everyone knows that these days, most Microsoft testers can write code. Let me rephrase that (for clarity - not because my backspace key is broken). Most software testers at MS write code at least as well as their development counterparts. I could Read More...
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Another test pattern template

Posted Thursday, August 17, 2006 11:27 AM by alanpa
I’ve been toying with the idea of a simpler pattern for test case design. My goal in this thought process is to find a way for good testers to formalize the techniques they use as test patterns in a manner that allows them to quickly document a pattern Read More...
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Patterns for Test

Posted Monday, August 14, 2006 1:01 PM by alanpa
I want to get back to my thoughts on patterns as a test design technique. There’s a lot to be learned conceptually from the design pattern world. The design pattern template as defined by “the gang of four” in Design Patterns includes the following criteria: Read More...
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