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Wednesday, May 27, 2009 5:03 PM

Five Books To Read If You Want My Job

This came out of a conversation I had today with a few other test leads.  the question was, “What are the top 5 books you should read if you want my job?”  My job in this case being that of a test development lead.  At Microsoft that means
Posted by SteveRowe | 4 Comments
Friday, February 13, 2009 8:24 AM

Why We Conduct Bug Bashes

My team recently finished what we call a “ bug bash .”  That is, a period of time where we tell all of the test developers to put down their compilers and simply play with the product.  Usually a bug bash lasts a few days.  This particular
Posted by SteveRowe | 5 Comments
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Friday, January 09, 2009 8:27 AM

James Whittaker Netcast

James Whittaker is the author of books like How To Break Software.  He ran one of the few university-level testing programs at Florida Tech.  He's now as Microsoft and helping Visual Studio become better at testing.  The guys at .Net Rocks
Posted by SteveRowe | 3 Comments
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Friday, October 17, 2008 8:09 AM

The Five Why's and Testing Software

Toyota was able to eclipse the makers of American cars in part due to its production and development systems.  The system has been popularized under the rubric of "Lean" techniques.  Among the tenets of the Lean advocates is asking
Posted by SteveRowe | 5 Comments
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Thursday, October 02, 2008 9:23 AM

James Whittaker on Why MS Software "Sucks" Despite Our Testing

A friend turned me on to this post by James Whittaker.  I didn't know he had a blog so now I'm excited to read it.  He has a lot of really interesting things to say on testing so I encourage you to read his blog (now linked on the left) if you
Posted by SteveRowe | 2 Comments
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Friday, September 26, 2008 7:20 AM

Test Suite Granularity Matters

I just read a very interesting research paper entitled, "The Impact of Test Suite Granularity on the Cost-Effectiveness of Regression Testing" by Gregg Rothermel et al.  In it the authors examine the impact of test suite granularity on
Posted by SteveRowe | 0 Comments
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Thursday, August 07, 2008 10:59 PM

Test Code Must Be As Solid As Dev Code

All good development projects follow certain basic practices to ensure code quality.  They use source control, get code reviewed, build daily, etc.  Unfortunately, sometimes even when the shipping product follows these practices, the test team
Posted by SteveRowe | 1 Comments
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Wednesday, June 04, 2008 7:55 AM

Test For Failure, Not Success

We recently went through a round of test spec reviews on my team. Having read a good number of test specs in a short period of time, I came to a realization. It is imperative to know the failure condition in order to write a good test case. This is at
Posted by SteveRowe | 3 Comments
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Friday, May 30, 2008 7:57 AM

We Need A Better Way To Test

Testing started simply. Developers would run their code after they wrote it to make sure it worked. When teams became larger and code more complex, it became apparent that developers could spend more time coding if they left much of the testing to someone
Posted by SteveRowe | 10 Comments
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Monday, April 21, 2008 6:56 AM

Know That Which You Test

Someone recently related to me his experience using the new Microsoft Robotics Studio . He loaded it up and proceeded through one of the tutorials. To make sure he understood, he typed everything in instead of cutting and pasting the sample code. After
Posted by SteveRowe | 3 Comments
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Wednesday, March 05, 2008 8:31 AM

What Tests Belong in the BVTs?

BVTs or Build Verification Tests are standard Microsoft parlance for the tests we run every day to ensure that we didn't break anything important with our checkins the day before. I've previously written about the importance of keeping them clean . Within
Posted by SteveRowe | 1 Comments
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Tuesday, February 26, 2008 9:36 AM

When to Test Manually and When to Automate

There's a balancing act in testing between automation and manual testing. Over my time at Microsoft I've seen the pendulum swing back and forth between extensive manual testing and almost complete automation. As I've written before, the best answer lies
Posted by SteveRowe | 11 Comments
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Wednesday, December 19, 2007 11:45 AM

What Is Test Automation?

I talk about it a lot, but I don't know that I've ever defined it. A reader recently wrote in and asked what exactly this was. I suppose that means I should give a better explanation of it. Long ago in a galaxy far, far away, testers were computer-savvy
Posted by SteveRowe | 8 Comments
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Thursday, October 25, 2007 7:43 AM

Testing A Daily Build

It is becoming accepted in the industry that teams should produce a build on a daily basis. Every project at Microsoft does this as do most projects elsewhere. If you happen to be on a project that does not, I suggest you work to get one implemented soon.
Posted by SteveRowe | 5 Comments
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Wednesday, October 24, 2007 9:40 AM

New MSDN Tester Center

MSDN now has a home for test information. Check out the new MSDN Tester Center . It has articles, videos, and a collection of blog posts all revolving around the idea of testing. If you are a tester or test developer, bookmark this site. It looks like
Posted by SteveRowe | 0 Comments
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