test methodologies

Articles

Serious Acceptance Checking Serious Acceptance Checking

Matthew Heusser goes beyond trivial examples to talk about the tradeoffs and ancillary benefits of a large-scale acceptance check automation strategy.

Matthew Heusser's picture Matthew Heusser
Decrease Your Debt with Technical Debt Sprints

Technical debt is one of the primary impediments to long-term software product success. Every team feels the pressure to deliver value frequently to the business. At the same time, we know that we need to keep our code clean and supported by tests to operate at a sustainable pace. Regular technical debt sprints are one way to make our “interest payments.”

My Experience with Test-Driven Development

Vinay Krishna explains why agile development includes testing and coding concurrently, which is also what test-driven development emphasizes. The transformation from coder to developer to tester is needed in all agile software development projects.

Vinay Krishna
Writing Good Test Cases

We all know writing test cases is an integral part of the testing activity. In order to write good test cases, we must first understand what a test case is and why we need to write test cases. Can’t we live without writing test cases?

Anand Gupta's picture Anand Gupta
Career Paths for Testers Using Personas

A lack of inspiration in the workplace can leave you lost at sea, reaching for any scrap of driftwood. On the other hand, having an effective role model can make you a better-prepared and more successful tester. In this article, Alan Page offers an alternative to real-life role models in the form of tester personas, which can help guide you and your team along the right career path.

Alan Page's picture Alan Page
Fuzzing Through the Side Door

Fuzz testing, or "fuzzing,” is an approach to test automation that attempts to uncover weaknesses in a system using tool-generated data. In this article, Jonathan Kohl recounts how he used this technique on a published web services interface to test “through the side door”—those testable, in-between areas like messaging APIs.

Jonathan Kohl's picture Jonathan Kohl
Transitioning to Agile Testing

Your developers are already working feature-by-feature in iterations, but your testers are stuck with manual tests. How do you make the leap to agile testing when the nature of agile's iterative releases challenges testers to test working segments of a product instead of the complete package? In this column, Johanna Rothman explains that the key challenge resides in bringing the whole team together to work towards the completion of an iteration. Only then will the testers—and the entire team—know how to transition to agile.

Johanna Rothman's picture Johanna Rothman
Tips to Overcome Test Automation Challenges

In her recent StickyMinds.com column, "Fool Me Once," Linda Hayes took a look at the difficulties encountered by those who dove into automated testing early on, only to be bitten by the record/replay shark. In this follow-up column, she offers some solutions to those who still struggle with making test automation successful.

Linda Hayes's picture Linda Hayes
example XML file XXX Automation

In this article, Dion Johnson takes a peek at an automation approach that isn't for the immature or the inexperienced. It is, however, for testers interesting in improving their scripting technique. But don't let the title fool you—you can use Dion's "XML, XPath, and Xcitement" approach in broad daylight.

Dion Johnson's picture Dion Johnson
New Year, New Level: What's Next in Automation

Sometimes we get so focused on solving the problem in front of us that it doesn't occur to us to ask if we are solving the right problem. Linda Hayes finds that starting a new year makes her think less about what has been and more about what could be. In this column, she offers her thoughts on the validity of the way we approach the most variable of all factors: the user.

Linda Hayes's picture Linda Hayes

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