I had a short bit of travel this week, and got a bit of reading done on the flights. I love my kindle, and use it when in the air, but I also pack a magazine or two to read during takeoff and landing. On the way home, I was catching up on a few…
As you know, I occasionally rant about GUI automation; but I don’t think I’ve done a good job explaining some of the reasons why it can be fragile, and when it can actually be a good idea. Let’s take a deeper look at some of the attributes of the GUI automation design challenges. Record &…
Thanks everyone who played the Numberz Challenge. I’ll get the boring part out of the way first. Based on response time and completeness (and bonus points for reverse engineering the “bad” parts of the app), lixiong is the winner of either a signed copy of HWTSAM or an Amazon gift certificate. Li – email me…
Last week I wrote about test design and imagined an app where I thought automation could help with testing. I had some time this morning, so I went ahead and made the application. When you press the “Roll!” button, the app generates 5 random numbers between 0 & 9 (inclusive), and sums the numbers in…
I’ve stated my distaste for GUI automation before, but after my last post, I feel the need to share some clarification. I’ve been meaning to write this post ever since I wrote GUI Shmooey, so here goes. First off, let me state my main points for disliking GUI automation: It’s (typically) fragile – tests tend…
I’ve been pondering test automation recently. Maybe it’s because of my participation in the upcoming stp summit (note: shameless self-promotion), but that’s only the surface of it. I’ve complained about misguided test automation efforts before, but it’s more than that too. For every tester that cries out that 100% automation is the only way to…
I’ve had a few conversations on twitter over the past few weeks about tester titles. My conclusion is that test titles are meaningless, but let’s look at why I think that, and why it doesn’t matter. Let’s say you’ve been testing for eight years, given a conference presentation or two and wrote a bit about…
Years ago, I began to get annoyed with meetings. I wasn’t quite sure what I didn’t like about them, so I attended as few meetings as possible. Of course skipping all meetings is somewhat of a CLM (career limiting move), so I had to be selective. Sometimes I left meetings energized and felt like they…
What do you do when your manager | project manager | dev manager | other leader asks you for some bit of data that you know is useless? Say that they want something like code coverage progress and test pass rates, but you know that those metrics aren’t truly useful. Side Note: waitaminute – some…
Should you automate everything, or nothing? Should you test everything, or nothing? How about leadership – should you dictate every detail of what your team should do, or give them no guidance at all. The answer for all of these questions – as you’d expect, is “somewhere in the middle”. In my experience, most people…
Phil Kirkham confirmed his birthright as a tester by asking the epitomical tester question regarding my last post. Why? To be fair, he actually asked: quite a schedule – so what do you get out of it ? Or conversely, if you didn’t go to these events what do you think you would be missing…
I just got back from (yet another) vacation with the family – it’s been fun spending some extra time with the family this summer, but I think we’re (almost) done now, and it’s time to get back to work and to start thinking transitioning the kids into sleep schedules that accommodate school hours. With the…
I wrote about using virtual machines for testing in hwtsam, and gave a talk at STAR West a few years back on using virtual machines for testing. What I remember most about the talk was the group of VMWare employees sitting about 10 rows back (I think to ensure that I didn’t say anything bad…
My interlude is over, and I’m back to blogging – at least that’s the plan, and I don’t see any reason why I won’t be back on the blog-waves on a semi-regular basis. My summer was crazy with work. I probably let myself get spread too thin, and I paid the price of context switches…
As you may have noticed, I’ve had to take a bit of a break from blogging. I’ve kicked out at least a post or two a week for a few years now, but I’m not dry on ideas, and I definitely want to follow up on my recent Test This post (before a follow up…
The “Test This” game pops up frequently in testing circles. Sometimes it pops up in the “How would you test a …” variety – e.g. How would you test a stapler. Participants in the game are expected to come up with functional tests (can it staple), as well as “out of the box” tests like,…
A former colleague of mine (a former manager, to be exact), recently blogged about the plight of the SDET as second class citizens earlier this week. I was going to reply to the post right away – then I was going to reply in a blog post, but in the end I decided to wait…
I think it’s been a long time since I took more than a week between posts. I was busy at WAT2, and then busy catching up from being busy at WAT2. I’ve had a busy travel schedule this year (a plane trip every month so far this year), and although Durango is closer to home…
I’m leaving early tomorrow morning for the Writing About Testing conference. I wasn’t able to attend WAT last year, but I’m looking forward to the trip, the meeting and talking with a group of great testers (who all enjoy writing about what we do). I don’t think there was ever a point when I thought,…
To Automate, or not to Automate, that is the question that confuses testers around the world. One tester may say, "I automate everything, I am a test automation ninja!". Another tester may say, "I do not automate, if I automate I fail to engage my brain properly in the testing effort!". Another may say, “I…