Beware of the Latest Testing Trends (May 2010)
Beware of the Latest Testing Trends
Having spent the last ten years as Quality Lead for Adobe, Lanette Creamer (aka "Testy Redhead") knows a testing fad when she sees it. We recently asked her to weigh in on some of the misguided trends of the past decade as part of our latest Testing the Limits interview. Here are a few clips: On spotting testing fads "I’ve been through countless industry trends, such as borrowing manufacturing ideas, extensive measuring schemes, and repeated attempts to automate all testing. The bottom line is exploratory testing works in practice. Not for a few months or years, but it works to find important bugs year after year no matter what other quality trends are happening." On testers and hardware "How much more affordable is it for a company to buy a great laptop every few years than all sorts of different hardware? Let someone else manage the machines so we can focus on the testing. Of course, this isn’t appropriate for every context, but I’m interested in going beyond multi-boot systems, local images, and to truly getting out of the business of managing hardware. I’m interested in cloud-based imaging." On why testing matters "The goal is always to provide the best experience to the user. I see the most potential for growth in the small to medium-sized software companies who are sincerely trying to adhere to the Agile manifesto. I don’t mean the companies trying SCRUM but keeping the stack ranking and individual competitive rewards, but companies who are really ready to try a team approach complete with team goals and rewards." There's plenty more when that came from. Go read the entire three-part interview.
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Top Twenty Twesters (aka: Testers on Twitter)
According to Twitter co-founder Biz Stone, Twitter now has 105,779,710 registered users—and is adding 300,000 new users a day. Attempting to weed through all of the fluff can be daunting! So, if you’re interested in jumping into the Twittersphere or are just looking to follow the leading thinkers in software testing today, check out our “Top 20 Software Testing Tweeps” list below (in no particular order):
- James Bach – @jamesmarcusbach
- Michael Bolton – @michaelbolton
- Testing At The Edge Of Chaos (Matt Heusser) — @mheusser
- Tester Tested! (Pradeep Soundararajan) – @testertested
- StickyMinds.com (Better Software Mag) — @StickyMinds
- SearchSoftwareQuality.com (Yvette Francino) — @yvettef or @SoftwareTestTT
- Google Testing Blog (Copeland/Whittaker) – @copelandpatrick or @googletesting
- Testy Redhead (Lanette Creamer) – @lanettecream
- Test Obsessed (Elizabeth Hendrickson) — @testobsessed
- SD Times — @sdtimes
See who else made the Top 20 list. By the way, are you following uTest on Twitter yet?
Quality Quotes
"Testing is the process of comparing the invisible to the ambiguous, so as to avoid the unthinkable happening to the anonymous." - James Bach "A 2% reduction in defects is usually accompanied by a 10% increase in productivity." - Lynas "Do not confuse motion and progress. A rocking horse keeps moving but does not make any progress." - Alfred A. Montapert Thanks to QuoteGarden.com for the material.
How To (Safely) Butcher Your iPad
So you’ve just received your brand new iPad from the states. That’s good! Unfortunately, it arrived with an AT&T MicroSIM, which is useless in the UK. That’s bad. But tech blogger John Benson has discovered a solution. That’s good! The solution involves scissors and a meat cleaver. That’s bad. Or maybe not. It might seem a tad bit reckless, but from the looks of his step-by-step blog post, this bizarre fix actually appears to do the trick. See how he "fixed" his iPad on mobileapptesting.com.
Bug of the Month
Twit-Napping: "If you have ever wanted Oprah Winfrey to follow you on Twitter, you might have been able to make that possible early Monday morning, when a software bug surfaced on Twitter’s Web site. The bug allowed anyone to force another user to follow them on Twitter, giving the site its first setback in several months." (From The New York Times)