Mike Harris' Testing and Quality Blog
We want to find bugs as early as possible so that the cost of fixing them is as little as possible. The earlier a bug is found the cheaper it is to fix. If a bug is found and fixed in a specification before any code is written then it costs very little to fix. …
Continue reading “What testing does your team do that is Lean?”
What does it mean when a card is put into the Done column? Done can mean that the coding is completed, it can also include that the code has been reviewed, that it includes unit tests and many other things. Teams sometimes create a “Definition of Done” to state exactly what “done” means and this …
Continue reading “Three short stories about the Definition of Done”
Identifying risks to their work helps development teams. Recently I spoke to a team who had talked through the ways in which their work could fail, and built on this to identify risks to their work. The team adapted Failure Modes Effects Analysis (FMEA) to suit their needs. FMEA is a technique that is used …
Continue reading “How can you work with your team to identify risks?”
Quality is Free is the name of a book by Philip B. Crosby in which he argues that quality is free and lays out a Zero Defects program to improve quality. Crosby’s ideas, along with Deming, Juran, and others, influenced the Quality Movement. Crosby says that there is a cost of quality. The cost of …
There is always more testing that can be done on a feature but there are reducing returns on testing a feature over time. At some point you need to stop testing, and the question as to when to stop is sometimes a difficult call. Also, sometimes there is more than one feature to be tested. …
We want to create quality features, products and services. Using a framework to think through how to achieve this is helpful as the framework ensures that vital points are covered. Testers can provide value by understanding these frameworks and using them to shape their own thinking in order to be able to prompt and/or lead …
Continue reading “The Quality Trilogy helps discussions with your team”
I am looking forward to speaking about my story in the ebook Testing Stories at the BCS SIGiST webinar on the 12th October because I want to show how Test Lead’s have an important role to play in making agile transformations successful. I will be speaking with three of the other testers who contributed stories …
Continue reading “Testing Stories: Test Lead in an agile transformation”
We all need to understand our customers and the teams we are members of. Customers need to be understood as they keep the business alive. The team(s) we are members of need to be understood so that we can work with them to improve quality. The best tool that I have found to understand customers …
Continue reading “Team Activities to Better Understand Your Customers and Team”
Hi, I have been working as a testing professional for twenty years and have been a member of a test team, a Test Lead and a lone tester. I have started this blog to share what I have learned and am learning about testing and quality. I have automated tests with Playwright and carried out …
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