“Thinking in Systems: Primer” is a great resource that can help you whether you are beginning, or have already started your systems thinking journey. Meadows helps us understand what a system is. “A system is an interconnected set of elements that is coherently organised in a way that achieves something”[1]. “Once we see the relationship …
Tag Archives: SoftwareTesting
Is the job market for testers over a century out of date?
Testers are building their careers in a job market that many experience as difficult. Our ancestors from the early years of the twentieth century would have recognised today’s job market. One of my relatives has researched the family tree. He found that when he researched individuals, they had different jobs each time they appeared in …
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Learning from winners
When we are testing it helps to be aware of the perspectives of people who work in other fields within IT. I attended an audience with the 2024 British Computer Society Lovelace and Society Medal winners. It was great to hear talks from the medal winners and to network at the event. Listening to the …
Exploring Systems Thinking
Systems thinking is an important part of a tester’s skill set. I really enjoyed discussing systems thinking on the Ministry of Testing’s Testing Planet with Simon Tomes, Sarah Byng and Rachel Kibler. It was great to learn from everyone on the broadcast. Thank you, Ministry of Testing, for inviting me to talk on Testing Planet …
Thank you software testing.
I have been a software testing professional since 1998 and am now changing my employment type on LinkedIn to “Mostly retired”. I saw that Dot Graham had set her employment type to “Mostly retired”, and it feels appropriate for me, too. I have retired, mostly. Software testing has been my second career. It has been …
We need cooperation between testers and developers
Sometimes there can be competition between testers and developers. Cooperation between testers and developers is better for the company and the customer. “A system must have an aim”[1]. A company is a system and so has an aim. Testers and developers are components of the company’s system and so share the company’s aim. “The obligations …
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There are advantages to using the API to tear down automated end-to-end tests
When I automate a test I create a clean starting position for each test so that the automated tests can run concurrently. “The establishment of a known-good starting position for the test before it is run, and its re-establishment at its conclusion, is vital to avoid cross-test dependencies”[1]. Re-establishing the start position of the test …
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Testers should not be defensive – A review of “Teaching Smart People How to Learn” by Chris Argyris
Testers often make suggestions about preventing bugs and sometimes find that these suggestions are rejected. Defensive reasoning can be a cause of their suggestions being rejected. Chris Argyris explains how defensive reasoning can prevent a company from learning and then explains how a company can overcome its defensiveness. I discovered Chris Argyris’s work through the …
Regular expressions can help you to do more with your automated tests
“A regular expression defines a set of one or more strings of characters” [1]. Regular expressions (regex) can be used when developing automated tests, for example, by passing a regular expression as a parameter. If you have not used a regular expression before the MDN Web docs are a good place to start learning about …
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How do testers assist organisational learning?
“Most organisations focus on the acquisition, processing of data and information….but data, information and knowledge are not all that can be learned, there is also understanding and wisdom”[1] Testers contribute to each of these types of learning. “These five types of mental content form a hierarchy of value; data have the least value, wisdom the …
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Using recognised techniques to create tests gives teams advantages
Creating tests using recognised techniques, such as boundary value analysis, enables teams to create more efficient tests and is a basis for learning about testing. Recognised techniques for creating tests provide a way of analysing functionality that enables the creation of more efficient tests. Teams that use techniques to design tests for their code have …
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Great careers advice for testers – A Review of The Software Testers Journey by Nicola Lindgren and Vernon Richards
This book offers useful advice to testing professionals on how to build their careers. The advice in the book includes examples from testers on how they progressed in their careers. There are different career paths: people, technology and business. When you start your career you should consider which direction you want to go in. Thinking …
Ten reasons why you should lint your test automation code
A linter is a static analysis tool that scans source files and reports warnings and errors for the code it scans. I use a linter on the test automation code that I write. The linter tests the code I write without running the code. Here are ten reasons to use a linter on your test …
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Interpreting ‘quality’ in more than one way helps me uncover issues
Each project has different requirements, and each set of requirements makes its own demands on ‘quality’. On every project I work on, I find it useful to interpret ‘quality’ in more than one way. Interpreting quality is more helpful than defining it. A definition is definitive whereas you can have many interpretations. It is useful …
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Benefit from a richer Page Object Model with abstract classes and functions
The Page Object Model we create to support our automated tests can be described as a model of the application we are testing. We can make it a richer model using abstract classes and functions. “classes, methods, and fields in TypeScript may be abstract.An abstract method or abstract field is one that hasn’t had an …
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