Category: Software Testing

Thinking about Test Strategy – A mnemonic device

I’ve recently been on the move a little, and have had a lot of chances to work on test strategy. I generally have historical documents to work from, but decided I should try to come up with a mnemonic device to ensure that I have all of the critical conversations that I need. One of […]

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More agile and software-development Haiku

Time has passed, and I thought it was time to update my thoughts on what’s critical to successful software testing (and development). While originally, I started noting important ideas for agile teams, Increasingly, I find most of these apply no matter what environment I’m working in. Check them out on my Haiku page.

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Running Watir cross-browser using Internet Explorer, Firefox and Celerity

Since reading about Celerity, I’ve been excited by the idea that I might be able to take my Watir scripts and run them more quickly by using a browser simulator. It also raised the possibility of taking scripts and running them in different environments and on different platforms, because Celerity runs under JRuby without a […]

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Test automation models, dehumanising testers and Agile dysfunctions

This tweet was forwarded to me yesterday: martinfowler: Manual scripted testing should be a human rights violation It bothered me on a few levels. Firstly, the simplicity of phrasing around manual and scripted testing. Secondly, that agile developers might view themselves as the saviour of oppressed testers everywhere, and the perpetuation of the concept of […]

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Tools for simulating slow and low bandwidth connections

I needed to do some page-weight testing on a new site, and found these handy plugins at http://www.uselessapplications.com IEThrottle is the Internet Explorer version, and Firefox Throttle is, unsurprisngly, the Firefox version. In Internet Explorer, for me at least, the plugin was hidden in the IE 7 tab bar, next to tools: In Firefox, you’ll […]

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Claims testing in the wild

As yet another poor internet soul is scammed by a man pretending to be a woman in online chat rooms, I’m reminded of the sensibility of my number one internet heuristic. Jared’s first law of online safety is ‘Assume that everyone you are talking to online is a man’. This has held me in good […]

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Requirements and specifications: What's the difference and what's it to you?

There have been a number of threads I have followed in a few different forums recently where people have discussed requirements, what it means for requirements to be ‘good’, and what it might mean for requirements to be unambiguous. What usually follows is a long-winded back and forth, with no resolution. At the heart of […]

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A first step toward saying what we mean when we say "Automated testing"

“In the universe, nothing can be said to be automatic, as nothing can be said to be without design. An imperfect parallel may be found in human inventions; springs may move springs, and wheels, indexes; but the motion and the regulation must be derived from the artist;” From Elements of Chemical Philosophy Part 1, Vol.1 […]

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