testing

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.

Software professionals are prone to classic nerdy behavior, but a few may actually be suffering from something deeper that interferes with both their work and their personal life. It may feel like they are from an alien culture and speak a different language, even though they're using the same words as everyone else. In this column, Danny R. Faught describes how this problem has affected him and how you can better integrate into the alien culture if you or someone you know is affected.

A decade's worth of test automation history reveals that not much has changed. Experts still dwell on how much to automate and how to estimate different types of ROIs. Test automation's growth is stunted because it's not revered as a discipline different from manual software testing. In this column, Dion Johnson urges us to correct the situation so that test automation can develop into a more lucrative opportunity.

There are two distinct roles in many software projects that are involved with testing: developers and testers. Should they take the same approach to testing, or are there some principles that apply to only one of the roles? What should they do to coordinate their work? Danny Faught went through an exercise to compare and contrast and found that the questions he couldn't answer were as interesting as the questions he could answers.