Testing the Limits with Cem Kaner (July 2010)
Our Q&A With Testing Guru Cem Kaner
After more than 30 years in the software industry, Dr. Cem Kaner has witnessed some remarkable innovations in programming and design - but NOT in testing. As our most recent Testing the Limits guest, we asked the noted professor/author/lawyer/speaker to comment on the apparent lack of progress in testing. Here's his response, as well as a few other highlights:
Why testing is stuck in the 1980s: "Thirty years ago, a “big” program was 10,000 lines of code. Today, even cell phones have millions of lines of code. This enormous change in productivity comes from revolutions in the practice of programming and software design. But we aren’t seeing revolutions in testing...No one would think of teaching the programming methods of the 1970’s or 1980’s as state of the art today. But the current certifications in testing (and many of the “applied” university and college courses) seem to me to be based on “best practices” and attitudes that aren’t much different from what I started writing Testing Computer Software to rebel against back in 1983."
The problem with QA measurements: "When you start measuring something that people do, people will change their behavior to make their scores better. People will change what they do to get better scores on the measurements — that’s what they’re supposed to do. But they don’t necessarily change in ways that improve what you want to improve. Often, the changes make things worse instead of better (a problem commonly called “measurement dysfunction.”)
The subjective stakeholder: "It took well over a decade before I accepted the idea that two different development managers, running essentially the same project, could legitimately want different information from their testers and that it could make sense and be ethical for the two different test groups to structure their work differently, finding or being blind to or ignoring different classes of bugs, in order to satisfy the information needs of their key stakeholders."
Read the entire three-part interview from the beginning.
Take the uTest Product Tour
Want to see how uTest works? You're not alone. After countless requests, we've launched this new product tour to let you see our platform in action. This short video covers:
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uTest on Facebook - What's In It For You?
Not that you need a reason to visit us on Facebook, but we'll give you one anyway. To match the page's updated look, we've rolled out a bunch of new and exciting features, including:
- Weekly poll questions
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Quality Quotes
"Software Testing: Where failure is always an option." "The Definition of an Upgrade: Take old bugs out, put new ones in." "Project Managers want it to work. Developers try to make it work. Customers hope it works. Testers know how it works." (These and other quotes can be found on Fazeel Ahmad's blog.)
Top 10 Testing Events
We recently blogged about some high-quality testing events. Here they are, in order of occurrence:
- QUEST - Quality Engineered Software & Testing Conference (Apr 19-23, 2010: Dallas, TX)
- Rapid Software Testing - By DevelopSense (Jul 5-7, 2010: Amsterdam, NL)
- STANZ - Software Testing Australia/New Zealand (Aug 23-34: NZ & Aug 26-27: AU)
- CAST - Conference of the Association for Software Testing (Aug 2-4, 2010: Grand Rapids, MI)
- STARWEST - Software Testing Analysis & Review (Sept 26-Oct 1, 2010: San Diego, CA)
See who else made the list.
Testing Services: iPad and iPhone 4
A reminder to all the iPad and iPhone 4 app developers out there: uTest has already equipped our top testers from around the world with these devices, so we're ready to help you with your testing needs. Top media, gaming and retail companies are racing to get their iPad apps to market - or to make sure their existing web and mobile apps work on the iPad (there have been a lot of user complaints about GUI and other rendering or functional issues), so if you need help testing your native iPhone apps, web apps, or even your new iPad applications, get in touch with us for a price quote.
Best Error Message Ever: "Your Printer is On Fire" (lp0)
From Wikipedia: "The origin of the "on fire" message was in the 1970s when line printers were large machines with a high speed drum rotating at 1200 to 2400 RPM and impact printing heads. Misaligned operating components could cause the paper to come into direct contact with the high speed rotating parts, generating lots of paper dust and increasing the likelihood of a paper jam. If a jam was not detected soon enough, the accumulated paper dust, ink dust and paper could generate enough friction along the rotating drum to start a fire."
Bug of the Month
BMW Prank Calls Police:"If an air bag deploys, the car sends out an automated call to summon help to your location. In our previous BMWs, the SOS system had been activated by the dealer. This one apparently wasn't...The car continued to call 911 even with the keys removed while it was in our parking lot at the test track. This prompted a very irate call from the local police, who jokingly threatened to bring some of their larger implements to stop it from bothering them." (From the Consumerist)