Mike Harris' Testing and Quality Blog
To illustrate how the use of theory leads to learning W. Edwards Deming told the story of Chanticleer the cockerel[1]. Chanticleer crowed every morning, and after he crowed he saw that the sun rose. This led him to develop the theory that the sun rose because he crowed, however, one day he forgot to crow …
Continue reading “The Theory of Knowledge helps us learn from our work”
“The Art of Software Testing” by Glenford J. Myers is a classic book about software testing and I often use it as a reference. In the book, Glenford J. Myers wrote that “test cases that explore boundary conditions have a higher payoff than cases that do not”[1]. Boundary Value Analysis is a widely used testing …
Continue reading “A thought regarding boundary value analysis”
Many teams, create a definition of done to clarify what putting a card in the Done column on a scrum or kanban board means. A good number of teams also have team agreements or ‘ways of working’ which define ways in which the teams work. Also, some teams have checklists of items that need to …
We all need to be able to reevaluate issues and concepts. We have also all heard it said that adapting to change is harder for older people. Dr Joseph Juran is one of the significant figures in quality and he changed how he defined quality when he was over 95 years old. In the third …
Continue reading “It is never too late to reassess how you define quality”
“Architect of Quality”[1] is the autobiography of Dr Joseph Juran. Juran’s autobiography is the moving story of a Romanian immigrant to the USA who rose from poverty to being a world leader in quality and receiving honours from the Emperor of Japan and the President of the USA. Those of us who work in quality …
Continue reading “A review of Dr Joseph Juran’s autobiography: “Architect of Quality””
Continuous delivery and continuous deployment offer testers opportunities for growth What will come after “agile”? How should we test in the Red Beads Experiment? Grow Your Skills with Low-Code Automation Tools Managing for Quality with Dr Joseph Juran The Role of Continuous Testing in Delivering Quality Digital Experiences Maximizing Feedback for Developers with Continuous Testing …
If we want to make good quality software we need to remove barriers to good work. Dr Deming‘s 14 Points for management were the basis for lessons for top management in Japan. Dr Deming said that “the 14 Points apply anywhere, to small organisations as well as to large organisations[1]”. Point 12 is to “remove …
Cause-effect diagrams are a useful technique that can be used to improve quality. Glenford J. Myers wrote that “a weakness of boundary value analysis and equivalence partitions is that they do not explore combinations of input circumstances”[1]. A technique that can be used to explore and describe combinations of inputs to an issue is a …
Continue reading “Using Ishikawa diagrams to improve quality”
How a company responds to a complaint about quality needs careful consideration. A model that we can use to explore this issue is Dr Deming’s Red Beads Experiment. We can extend the Red Beads Experiment to include a complaint from customers. I explored the Red Beads Experiment in a previous blog post The blog post …
Continue reading “How to deal with a complaint about quality”
The Five Whys is a technique for finding the root cause of a problem. Toyota developed this technique and it is now widely used, including in software development. I was introduced to the Five Whys by Tom Gilb as part of a course he ran on Lean QA and have used the Five Whys in …
When we test we think about the users of the functionality and we include their needs in our testing. Creating categories of customers, such as internal and external, can help us understand our customers’ uses of the functionality. Dr Joseph Juran advocated viewing customers as either internal or external customers. Juran was born in Romania …
Continue reading “Testing needs to include the needs of internal and external customers”
We can all learn a great deal from people who have influenced our industry. BCS SIGiST recently hosted a discussion with Mary and Tom Poppendieck about “How have approaches to quality changed over the past 20 years?”. Mary Poppendieck wrote books with her husband Tom about Lean Software Development based on her experience of applying …
Continue reading “How have approaches to quality changed over the past 20 years?”
Identifying what states exist in functionality and how changes in state take place enables testers to identify tests that should be executed. State transition diagrams provide simple notation for summarising states and how changes in states take place. I recently used a state transition diagram on a project and it helped me identify the tests …
Continue reading “State transition diagrams help to define tests”
When I started as a tester I learned that test documentation, such as test plans, needed to gain approval from the Director and could be regarded as a project deliverable. I have learned that this is not helpful and that test documentation should support testing and the development. I remember that, before testing started, we …
Continue reading “I have changed my mind about…Test Plans and Test Documentation”
“How Can I Test This?” is a book that contains examples of how to test different sites and apps along with test heuristics applied, the reasoning as well as ideas for which tools will help testing. The book aims to be useful both to new testers and to more experienced testers, and has just been …
Continue reading “How Can I Test This? an app with microservices”
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