Computerworld UK "Test Driven"

Don't Mention the Test

Fri, 28 Aug 2009 14:45:00 GMT

As an expatriate Australian living in England, the word "Test" carries a very unhappy association right now. My national team has lost the prized trophy of The Ashes, in the latest closely-fought contest between these two nations in Test Cricket.

Tesco suffers from failing to test

Tue, 12 May 2009 17:42:00 GMT

Tesco, the largest supermarket chain in Britain, was faced with closing many of its stores and creating long queues and angry customers in others yesterday, due to a defective overnight software upgrade.

My time is your money

Mon, 13 Apr 2009 16:17:00 GMT

I have just been through what must have been the slowest ever on-line purchase of my entire web-life, taking over an hour to buy tickets for an exhibition at the Natural History Museum in London. Although I persevered and completed the purchase, the excrutiatingly slow performance of this website firmly changed my mind about adding a donation or becoming a member.

Are you a Driver, Navigator or Seat-Belt-Wearer?

Thu, 19 Mar 2009 13:25:00 GMT

It seems you can have too much of a good thing. Dedicated testers working alongside developers, what a luxury for a project! Think of all the extra testing going on there! I wonder if my car journeys will be safer if I put a Seat-Belt-Wearing specialist in the back seat?

A defect report is just an opinion, until a stakeholder acknowledges it

Fri, 20 Feb 2009 21:29:00 GMT

Dont call me defective, detective. Just because a tester's job includes finding defects, it does not follow that everything they detect is a defect.

I won't mention 'green shoots', or the 'A' word

Fri, 23 Jan 2009 14:35:00 GMT

I won't mention 'green shoots'

Fri, 23 Jan 2009 14:35:00 GMT

I was kindly invited by a major UK supermarket to come and do a presentation about test strategy to a selection of their staff in headquarters. This particular supermarket chain is bucking the trend of the recession and is not only reporting strong sales, but is investing heavily in some pretty substantial IT infrastructure projects. I don't want to be accused of talking about "green shoots of recovery" but it was certainly refreshing to be in a company that has a real sense of just getting on with things.

Bridging the Communication Gap

Sun, 04 Jan 2009 15:42:00 GMT

Gojko Adzic is one of those guys who leads an enviable life, being darn good at what he enjoys doing, getting paid to do it, and still finding time to share his amazing range of knowledge with the rest of us via his website, his open source projects, his free seminars, and now his new book. Just released and available both as a paperback and as a PDF, "Bridging the Communication Gap" is certain to be a 'must read' for all those working on agile teams trying to improve the way the technical and non-technical roles interact.

What about analysts?

Thu, 09 Oct 2008 11:27:00 GMT

Effective teams think in terms of activities, rather than roles. In the early days of Agile and XP, methodologists and textbooks talked very clearly about the interactions between the Customer and the Developers. The common cry I heard in response was "What about testers?" I believe the agile world is now comfortable with the fact that testers also now ride in the first-class carriage alongside the (other) developers in the team. But when I talk about "Customer, Developers and Testers" working together, I sometimes get the question "What about Analysts?"

Test Driven Development as high-jump

david.evans@sqs-uk.com — Tue, 26 Aug 2008 19:16:00 GMT

I thought it would be far too corny to put some kind of Olympic-themed testing analogy blog entry up during the last fortnight, but with the closing ceremony well and truly behind us, it must be safe to do so now.

Is Unit Testing on the Wane?

david.evans@sqs-uk.com — Wed, 13 Aug 2008 15:53:00 GMT

A recent article by Andrew Binstock titled Is Unit Testing Doomed? uses the demise of the unit test-tool company Agitar to ask the question if this signals a cooling of interest in unit testing within the development community.

Test Driven Development as insurance

david.evans@sqs-uk.com — Fri, 01 Aug 2008 10:09:00 GMT

I'm an agnostic generally, but Test-Driven Development is something that I can get quite preachy about. It may not save your soul, but it can save a lot of searching.

Are Late Test Results as bad as Wrong Test Results?

david.evans@sqs-uk.com — Tue, 15 Jul 2008 17:13:00 GMT

Educational Testing Services (ETS), the private US company responsible for marking over a million British schoolchildren's national curriculum tests, faces being sacked and having to repay millions of pounds in penalties over late test results.

Good news for database testing: DBFit is here

david.evans@sqs-uk.com — Fri, 04 Jul 2008 14:31:00 GMT

There are times when you feel good about life. As a tester, I admit this does not come around often.

The bigger the name, the bigger the loss

david.evans@sqs-uk.com — Mon, 23 Jun 2008 16:08:00 GMT

I don't want this blog to start sounding like I'm banging the same old drum of the cost of failing to test properly, but these stories do seem to be coming out with frightening regularity.

Heathrow T5 Baggage Handling System - the jury is still out

david.evans@sqs-uk.com — Wed, 18 Jun 2008 21:10:00 GMT

I said in an earlier post that I was looking forward to hearing Huub van der Wouden, the test manager for the Heathrow Terminal 5 Baggage Handling system, speak at the BCS SIGIST, and I think his presence had a lot to do with the unusually high attendance at the conference today.

HMRC and Capgemini count the real cost of software errors

david.evans@sqs-uk.com — Wed, 04 Jun 2008 15:26:00 GMT

A programming error has resulted in HMRC systems failing to make child trust fund payments to the accounts of thousands of families. Read the story here.

Testing Times (and Dates)

david.evans@sqs-uk.com — Thu, 15 May 2008 11:18:00 GMT

Every application has to be tested, but not in equal doses. Risk-Based Testing 101 tells you that given a limited amount of resources for testing, you should concentrate those resources on testing areas of greatest risk. Unfortunately it is often the case that the graph of the spread of testing effort across an application bears a remarkably similar shape to the graph of the testability of the application.

Was Testing to blame at Heathrow T5?

david.evans@sqs-uk.com — Sat, 10 May 2008 15:33:00 GMT

I think it takes a very brave man to say they are a Test Manager for the Heathrow Terminal 5 Baggage Handling system. Well, not only do Huub van der Wouden and Roger Derksen admit this, but they are getting up in front of a crowd of other testers at the BCS Special Interest Group in Software Testing, to talk about the project.

Confidence in Quality

david.evans@sqs-uk.com — Thu, 01 May 2008 17:06:00 GMT

What is it that we testers and other software quality professionals actually produce? What is created that wasn't there before we do our 'stuff'? I find that I have differences of opinion with many of my peers in the industry about this. For many, we are in the business of producing Quality. If, the theory goes, we are doing our job well and doing it more often, more Quality is being pumped into the ether. I don't subscribe to this view.