Test Guide

Many tests don’t care exactly what data they are executed against. Our Data Manager uses techniques similar to those used with Execution Behaviors to manage Data Providers that generate test data. This solves with a single stroke the dual problems of...

Apoorva suggests, "[H]ow about linking to any other test/dev blogs/sites/resources that you frequent, or feel would do good for beginners/seasoned testers as a read." I'll do this in three parts: books permanently on my bookshelf, key blogs I track...

When we testers find yet another "Did you even run this?" bug, it's easy to believe developers purposely inject bugs just to taunt us. I have worked with a lot of developers over the years, and I've found that they generally do try to test their code...

I've talked with several people recently about how they can increase their chances of making it through their upcoming interviews at Microsoft. After noticing definite patterns in their questions, and in my answers, I decided to record them here where...

Hmmm...I start a build and all eight of my cores gets busy - what's up with that? <g/>

Elfriede Dustin sent me a review copy of Implementing Automated Software Testing (IAST), which she and her colleagues Thom Garrett and Bernie Gauf recently published. I am familiar with some of Elfriede's work on test automation, so I was looking forward...

What are you favorite testing games? I learned Headline News from Elisabeth Hendrickson many years ago, and it has since become one of my favorite games. The idea is to dream up headlines involving your application or feature which you really do not...

It's been a loooong wait, and it's not all available yet, but this is what my perfect computer would look like: A slate Tablet PC with a screen about the size of a paperback book (about 4" x 6"). This is big enough to use but small enough I would...

The execution section of a test case is itself composed of three subsections: setup, execution, and teardown. Execution is often thought to be the most important part of a test case (after all, a test case that doesn’t verify anything is rather pointless...

Finally I can say! The super-secret app I've been working on all this time is the long-rumored Sparkle! Simply put, Sparkle Interactive Designer is the Windows Presentation Foundation designer everyone doing WPF work have been clamoring for. For the full...

I've mostly avoided linking to bloggers on my team for fear of inadvertently giving away what we are doing. Now that we are public that's no longer a worry. So: here is every blog-by-a-Sparkle-person I know about. I'll update this list as people tell...

Stuart responded to my post "Show Me" saying that, basically, he's in the same boat as (based on my personal experiences) most people producing software: what I call programming by accident. Specs are few and far between. He does actually have a tester...

[The following is a true story. The feature has been changed to protect the unannounced, but the code and test progression is a near verbatim account of a coding session I had recently.] Say you are testing a timeline. Specifically, you are testing...

Today is my birthday -- #33. That means I've been programming for some sixty percent of my life -- no big deal I suppose to kids these days who likely were programming before they entered day care, but I was on the bleeding edge growing up. That tech...

When I close my email program if often doesn't really close. The UI disappears, but Task Manager shows the process to still be present. It's either doing some very extensive processing or stuck in an endless loop; I let it run for multiple hours once...

Mark asks: So how *do* you find tester-developers? Certainly a job description that says "QA" seems to be an invitation for lots of resumes from script-followers. I want people who think repetetive tasks are what computers are for, not people, and that...

A topic I've been pondering of late is grading test cases. If I have two test cases that appear to do exactly the same thing, how do I decide which one to keep and which one to turn off? If I am wading though a large number of failing or unstable test...

Recently I read Edward Hutchins's Cognition In The Wild . Edward researches human cognition. Rather than setting individuals to a purpose-built task in a research lab he observed navigation teams on U.S. Navy ships. He was interested in how groups think...

When you don't have a specification, everything's a bug . But in fact you always have a spec. Sometimes it's an honest-to-goodness document recording what your feature team decides the feature should be. Other times your spec is somewhat camouflaged....

People often ask me why my blog URL is "micahel" rather than "michael". Here's why: Years ago I had a manager who - no matter how hard she tried - always mistyped my name as "Micahel". To tweak her a bit I took "micahel" on as the name I used in Half...

A few weeks ago I read a suggestion by somebody somewhere to stop saying the word "but". Much of the time, they said, "and" works instead. This seemed interesting, so I decided to give it a Thirty Day Trial . Now I have mostly removed "but" from my vocabulary...

I learned/had remembered to me several interesting things by posting that street sign . (Yes, Warren, I snapped that in Toronto.) What seems complex, complicated, or confusing to one person may seem simple, clear, and obvious to another. Context...

Reader Jim writes: I wanted to ask if you have any advice on how to deal with developers when reporting/verifying bugs. You betcha I do! I go to great lengths to show my developers that I am their ally, not their adversary. As I've said before...

Sometimes I miss a meeting. This is rarer than it used to be. Each time I miss a meeting I identify the reason I missed it and then find or invent or develop a process or method or technique to ensure I don't miss a meeting for that reason again. I also...

No real post today, as I'm attempting forty miles on my Trikke : I'm starting (#0) just south of Volunteer Park in Capitol Hill (Seattle, Washington). I head down to Lake Washington and trek along its shoreline until I hit Seward Park (1), around...