I recently read an e-book from Elisabeth Hendrickson, entitled "Exploratory Testing in an Agile Context" (definitely worth a read if you havent already). In this e-book, Elisabeth uses an example of a test that James Bach performed called "the shoe test". For those of you who have never heard [...]
I've been researching a lot about "Inattentional Blindness" lately, and have been relating it to the world of software testing... Inattentional Blindness is a phenomenon where, if you are focussing intensely on something that is mentally demanding, you fail to notice other things happen around the thing that you are focussing on. There is a [...]
So the first week in the new job has come to its end successfully! I've had a great start! Everyone has been very friendly and helpful, and I've had a couple of tours around the company, which has helped me to better understand the business processes. It's brought the challenges that any new job brings... The [...]
So, this is my final week working at Fivium... Friday is my last day. I've been reminiscing about all the things that I've learned from working at Fivium over the past 2 years, and have also been wondering about the impact that I've made within the organisation. Fivium never had a tester before I joined them, [...]
At the London Tester Gathering event last week, I overheard someone ask the question: "What's the first task that a tester should do on a project?". There were various contrasting responses, such as: "write test case documentation", "play with the product", and "give an estimate for the testing effort". Although many projects are run differently (which is probably [...]
I've recently been involved in a discussion regarding the blame culture that lives within the software development industry. You hear the stories everywhere, where a bug is found on a live environment and people (usually management) automatically start finger-pointing at individuals to blame them for the bug, either for missing it during testing, or for missing it in the [...]
I know that this question will more than likely cause more of this ever ongoing debate and that the question itself is full of holes (stemming answers such as: "enough to who", or "it depends"), but this is a thought that I wanted to get out there... One of my previous blogs was about the [...]
With the help of an awesome developer friend, we've created a new testing tool!! The tool is a "Test Data Generator". It allows for the quick creation of sample test data to paste into an input field. You can download the tool from my LinkedIn Box account here: Dan's LinkedIn Box Any feedback about the tool, [...]
The Testing Planet have been ever so kind as to publish some of my ramblings on their website! If you haven't already read it, check it out here: http://www.thetestingplanet.com/2012/11/is-testing-an-art-or-is-it-something-more-2/ The Testing Planet (#TTP) offer a fantastically insightful magazine for testers of all experiences. Their latest issue which is out soon is based on the theme of "the [...]
"Can you list at least 2 test cases for testing a blank sheet of paper?” - This was a question listed on another LinkedIn discussion. There are over 80 comments (so far) that appear to be split right down the middle. Half of the commentor’s automatically started to list out various test cases... (Some of [...]
Dan Ashby 