JW on Test

Now that the testers are once again gainfully employed, what shall we do with them? Do we point them toward writing test automation or ask them to do manual testing? First, let’s tackle the pros and cons of test automation. Automated testing carries...

God Save the Queen! (A curious statement … from my American point of view. But given what history has recorded of certain of England’s Kings I’ll grant the gender bias. Anyway, Save Her all the same as she presides over a country of such glorious breweries...

I had the extreme privilege to speak to a crowd of test practitioners based in the UK last week. The event was hosted by Transition Consulting (TCL) and boasted some of the UK’s top consumers of testing services. A list of those companies is posted here...

Ok, re-hire the testers. Perhaps you’ve noticed but the whole prevention thing isn’t working so well. Failures in software are running rampant. Before I talk about where we should invest our resources to reverse this trend, I want to talk about why...

Developer testing, which I call prevention because the more bugs devs find the fewer I have to deal with is often compared to tester testing ( J ) which I call detection . Detection is much like a cure, the patient has gotten sick and we need to diagnose...

Does anyone out there know who was the origin of the insight that the software industry and the illegal drug trade both call their customers users ? Brian Marick was the person I stole it from but as far as I know he doesn’t claim it. Anyway, it’s...

Yeah, I know … scary subject. But as it is review time here at the empire, this is a subject that has been front and center for both testers and the managers they report to so I’ve been asked about it a lot. I always give the same advice to test managers...

Anyone who has read chapter 6 of How to Break Software knows my fondness of mixing testing with pubs. Many of the training and challenge events I designed for my students actually took place in a pub. Somehow the pub atmosphere tore down walls and inhibitions...

Ok here it is. I submit. I’ve been bugged about blogging for years. “Where’s JW’s blog?” “Why doesn’t JW blog?” …and so forth and et cetera. Well, the blog is here and why I haven’t been blogging up to now is no longer relevant so I won’t bore you...