Grading On A Curve

re: Grading On A Curve

The Braidy Tester — Wed, 23 Feb 2005 19:16:00 GMT

It would indeed be great to have an easy way to annotate test cases with this kind of information, and then use that metadata as part of the queries used to decide which test cases are included in a run. Visual Studio Team System, are you listening? <g/>

re: Grading On A Curve

Neilson Eney — Wed, 23 Feb 2005 18:50:00 GMT

Long time reader, first time commenter...

This post reminds me a lot of how I use iTunes. I have songs that I really like, I have songs that I hate but are useful to keep around for some special occation, and there are other songs that were bad rips that I need to delete, but maybe I want to re-encode them before I delete them.

It occured to me as I read this post that wouldn't it be sweet to have a test case management tool that had some of the same features as iTunes, or other music players? I already rate my test cases by frequency. Some test cases are BVT's and are run often, if not nightly. It all comes down to how "deep" I want the tests to go and how much time I have to execute a given test pass.

You say you'd like to know which tests to keep and which to turn off? Well, what about something less binary? How about a test you want to run during a test cycle and another test that you'll let run, but you might want to flag is as a potential problem child that needs revisiting after the product ships. Often it's during the middle of a test cycle that I realize old tests that we thought were good at the outset, actually need some redesign.

I already put some limited metadata into my test cases such as the frequency that I run them. Why not go ahead and add additional metadata that includes the type of "grading" information you're discussing here? The more knowledge I can capture as I think about test cases, the better since I can then go back and use tools to organize that knowledge to help me make my test cases better.

Importance of testers who code.

notgartner.com: Mitch Denny's Blog — Wed, 23 Feb 2005 13:07:00 GMT

re: Grading On A Curve

Bruce McLeod — Sat, 19 Feb 2005 12:53:00 GMT

Micahel,
Yet another great post, keep them coming !

Your comment about the iceberg principle, really struck a cord with me and I blogged about it briefly here: http://www.teknologika.com/blog/General/Testing/TheIcebergPrinciple.html

Regards,

Bruce
bruce at teknologika dot com

New Team System Stuff - 2005-02-17

Rob Caron's Blog — Fri, 18 Feb 2005 09:26:00 GMT