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Wednesday, July 02, 2008 9:31 AM

Test Automation: Programmatic Platform Profiling

Occasionally, the execution or outcome of a test depends on the operating system version on which the test is executed. Platform profiling is important because subtle differences in operating system platforms can affect how certain tasks are carried out,
Posted by I.M.Testy | 2 Comments
Tuesday, March 11, 2008 7:57 AM

Do testers do code reviews?

This weekend on the flight from Seattle to Ireland I finally got to catch up on some reading. One of the books I grabbed off the shelf that I hadn't gotten around to reading yet was Best Kept Secrets of Peer Code Review by Jason Cohen. The book is 160
Posted by I.M.Testy | 1 Comments
Wednesday, February 13, 2008 8:56 AM

Contextual blindness: or How to take things completely out of context

Many testers are familiar with the concept of inattentional blindness (or at least should be in my opinion). Basically inattentional blindness occurs when we are so visually focused on a task or object that we completely fail to see something out of the
Posted by I.M.Testy | 19 Comments
Monday, January 28, 2008 8:50 PM

Do testers need programming skills?

The debate over whether testers need to at least understand programming concepts is still raging within the discipline. To me this debate is puzzling because it seems to suggest that as a professional, I don't have to really understand or be completely
Posted by I.M.Testy | 11 Comments
Monday, January 21, 2008 8:27 PM

Thoughts on becoming a professional tester

" If a man is called to be a streetsweeper, he should sweep streets even as Michelangelo painted, or Beethoven composed music or Shakespeare wrote poetry. He should sweep streets so well that the hosts of heaven and earth will pause to say, here lived
Posted by I.M.Testy | 2 Comments
Monday, January 14, 2008 4:49 AM

UTF What?

Years ago life was pretty simple with regard to data input. Most computer programs were limited to ASCII characters and a set of character glyphs mapped into the code points between 0x80 and 0xFF (high or extended ASCII) depending on the language. The
Posted by I.M.Testy | 1 Comments
Sunday, January 06, 2008 3:59 AM

Automation Foibles Unveiled: Coding Guidelines Part 1 - Basic Layout

It has been awhile since I have written about test automation, so I thought I would start the new year off with a post about test automation. More specifically, I wanted to start talking about coding guidelines. Just as many development teams have adopted
Posted by I.M.Testy | 3 Comments
Friday, December 28, 2007 3:55 AM

How Professional Testers Think: Why Microsoft primarily hires testers with a Computer Science, Math or Engineering background?

The easiest thing to criticize is that which one does not fully comprehend. There has been a lot of discussion lately about Jerome Groopman's book How Doctor's Think and a correlation between doctors in the medical profession and software testers. The
Posted by I.M.Testy | 2 Comments
Sunday, December 09, 2007 6:17 AM

Exploratory testing vs. Scripted testing; Is it really only either or?

I just left Stockholm after spending a week there. That was my second visit to Stockholm and it is truly a remarkable city. I spoke at EuroStar which is the largest software testing conference in Europe, and had the opportunity to meet some old friends
Posted by I.M.Testy | 3 Comments
Thursday, November 29, 2007 5:35 AM

Equivalence Class Partitioning Part 3 - The tests

In the last post we decomposed the set of characters in the ANSI character set into valid and invalid class subsets for use in a base filename component on the Windows Xp operating system. The second part of the testing technique of equivalence class
Posted by I.M.Testy | 6 Comments
Thursday, November 15, 2007 5:43 AM

Equivalence class partitioning - Part 2: Character/String data decomposition

Again, I am remiss in my postings...too many irons in the fire these days. Two weeks ago, I posted a challenge to decompose a set of character data (The ANSI Latin 1 Character Set) into valid and invalid equivalence class subsets in order to test the
Posted by I.M.Testy | 7 Comments
Wednesday, October 31, 2007 6:52 AM

Equivalence class partitioning - Part 1

Wow...where does the time go? I was remiss last week in posting, and it has been a month since I posted about equivalence class partitioning. So, let's get back to it shall we? Equivalence class partitioning (ECP) is a functional testing technique useful
Posted by I.M.Testy | 6 Comments
Monday, October 08, 2007 7:55 PM

Boundary testing - hidden loops and the Deja Vu Heuristic

I previously discussed various types of defects exposed via application of the boundary value analysis testing technique including a repaint problem , a casting problem , and a wrapping problem . While the minimum and maximum physical linear boundaries
Posted by I.M.Testy | 1 Comments
Sunday, September 30, 2007 1:16 PM

Equivalence class partitioning

I have been teaching formal testing techniques for several years at Microsoft and University of Washington Extension. Techniques are systematic procedures to help solve a complex problem. A technique does not find all types problems; techniques are generally
Posted by I.M.Testy | 10 Comments
Friday, September 14, 2007 7:34 AM

Boundary testing and wrapping; or 1,073,741,824 * 1,073,741,824 = 0

I have never been really good at math. Sure I understand basic formulas, but I rely on a calculator when I run out of fingers and toes. I am envious of people who can look at a hexadecimal or octal value and convert it to an integer value in their heads
Posted by I.M.Testy | 0 Comments
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