Tag Archives: process improvement

“Project: Risky Decision” – a Card Game

I designed this teaching game in 2014 as a different sort of hands-on activity to supplement my Software Testing & Risk Management training sessions and presentations, specifically to highlight certain concepts around risk mitigation strategies. This version of “Project: Risky … Continue reading

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The Difficult Journey – Building Quality Software

The goal of building software is to produce a product that will bring value to our customers. As software developers we have a reputation for finding and embracing new technologies. These new technologies, however, can only take us so far … Continue reading

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Testing Matters because Quality Matters

In the course of crafting my contribution for Alexandra McPeak‘s follow-up article for CrossBrowserTesting.com / SmartBear Software‘s #WhyTestingMatters thread, “Expert Insight: Why Testing Matters“, I wrote the following article.  Check out Alex’s first article, “Why Testing Matters“, as well for … Continue reading

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Confidence’s Role in Software Testing

Confidence – “the feeling or belief that one can rely on someone or something; firm trust.” https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/us/confidence A few weeks ago I sat down to write about verifying bug fixes. I wanted to determine if there was a systematic approach … Continue reading

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Better Test Reporting – Data-Driven Storytelling

Testers have a lot of project “health” data at their finger tips – data collected from others in order to perform testing and data generated from testing itself. And, sometimes test reporting gets stuck on simply communicating this data, these … Continue reading

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The Calculus of Acceptance Testing

It’s tempting to believe that acceptance testing is the straight-forward process of comparing the as-built solution to the as-required solution. Any differences discovered during testing are highlighted in defect reports and ultimately resolved through a defect resolution process. You’re done … Continue reading

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Augmenting Testing in your Agile Team: A Success Story

One of the facts of life about Agile is that remote resources, when you have a mostly collocated team, generally end up feeling a little left out in the cold.  Yet, with appropriately leveraged tools, sufficient facilitation, management support and … Continue reading

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Software Testing Guiding Principles

All effective test teams typically have well defined processes, appropriate tools and resources with a variety of skills. However, teams cannot be successful if they place 100% dependency on the documented processes, as doing so leads to conflicts. Especially when testers use … Continue reading

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Testing COTS Systems? Make Evaluation Count

Over the years, I have been involved in a number of projects testing COTS (Commercial-Off-The-Shelf) systems across a range of industries. Sometimes the project was with the vendor and sometimes with the customer. When it came to supporting a company … Continue reading

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Stop Testing – Start Thinking

Throughout my career I have observed numerous organizations all looking for the ‘silver bullet’ to solve all their product quality problems. News Flash: There is no ‘silver bullet’.  Solving product quality problems can only begin when organizations “Stop Testing and … Continue reading

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