Mike Harris' Testing and Quality Blog
BCS SIGiST’s Summer Conference 2023 was a great success. We had more speakers and more attendees than at our previous conference. Everyone I spoke to enjoyed the conference and asked when the next one would be. I got a real buzz from the day of the conference! It was great to hear so many great …
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The Art of Software Testing is a book that I often refer to. The book contains valuable views on how to approach testing and clear descriptions of some test case design methodologies. It was first published in 1979 by Glenford J. Myers and an updated third edition was published in 2012. The book starts with …
Continue reading “A review of “The Art of Software Testing””
Automated tests can be run multiple times with different values by parameterising tests. Parameterising your tests can improve test coverage because a value in the test can be parameterised which means that the test can iterate through a number of values. This enables one automated test to cover a number of test cases. You could, …
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Teams whose focus includes testability are more likely to be high performing.[1] Good testability will “minimize testing costs”[2]. Testability can also be seen as one of the factors that determine quality. When the testability of a feature is discussed people often ask what is meant by testability. The clearest definition of testability I have found …
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“The ability to work and deliver in small batches is especially important” [1], which is why many development teams work in small batches. Scrum teams work in small batches by limiting the work they plan to do in a sprint. Kanban teams work in small batches by limiting the work in progress. Working in small …
Continue reading “Why we should work in small batches – a story from Japan”
W. Edwards Demings’s System of Profound Knowledge (SoPK) is a valuable framework for leadership. SoPK provides a view, which Deming called a lens, “by which to understand the organisations we work in”[1]. The SoPK is “a framework for applying best efforts to the right tasks”[2]. There are four parts to the SoPK: The theory that …
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I often write javascript to manipulate the browser either as bookmarklets or as part of automated tests. OpenAI contains two AI tools that can provide solutions if I get stuck with a programming problem. OpenAI is a research organization focused on developing artificial general intelligence through natural language processing, robotics, and machine learning. Through OpenAI …
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Kaoru Ishikawa was a significant figure in the development of quality in Japan. In his book Total Quality Control – The Japanese Way he describes many of the ways that Japanese businesses achieve quality. His book contains many points that are useful to testing professionals. He wrote that the very essence of Total Quality Control …
Continue reading “A review of “Total Quality Control – the Japanese Way” by Kaoru Ishikawa”
When I gave the talks on “What is quality” I found it was not possible to provide a definition of quality on which everyone would agree. I recently read a book by Kaoru Ishikawa which included him describing quality using a cause-and-effect diagram[1]. It occurred to me that using a cause-and-effect diagram to describe something …
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I really enjoyed talking with John Willis on his Profound podcast. We talked about testing and the role Deming’s philosophy plays in helping me to test. I learned from the conversation. Thank you, John Willis. Please click on this link to listen to the podcast: https://www.buzzsprout.com/1758599/12422563
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”
I test the steps in the Help documentation for the functionality that I am testing. It is easy to forget to test the examples in Help. Testing the steps used in Help can be useful in more than one way. It is important that the steps described in Help ‘work’ because they are what the …
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From time to time, development teams need to replace back-end architecture and when doing so they need to ensure that the application’s front-end functionality remains the same. These projects can vary in size, from short projects to long-running pieces of work. This process contains risk as the backend unit tests passing does not guarantee that …
Continue reading “Using front-end tests for Test-Driven Development”
“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 …
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