I’ve realized that I’ve got a couple of problems with blogging regularly. Maybe you can help me to do something about it.

The first issue is that I don’t really like to publish unpolished material in a blog. The draft mechanism handles that, to some degree. I have less of a problem with that if there’s a strong sense of mission about the material that I’m publishing–so writing magazine articles under contract and deadlines, with help from reviewers and editors, is a little easier for me.

A bigger problem is that I seem to have trouble getting traction if I’m not writing in response to something specific. If I’m merely musing or journaling, I have a lot less motivation than if I’m answering a question.

Johanna Rothman suggested to me at one point that Myers-Briggs Es (the extraverts) sometimes have a hard time with writing things that they’ve already said. Once it’s out, it’s out, and our temperaments incline us not to repeat ourselves. Or perhaps, more accurately, we Es don’t like talking without a live audience with whom we can engage, where the Is (introverts) can live and even thrive without that form of feedback. In the mailing lists, people ask plenty of questions that engage me, and I’m energized to answer them. So another way I might address this issue is that I might take questions that I’ve been answering in the comp.software.testing mailing list, or in Agile Testing, and either link to them or reproduce the salient points here.

James Bach had the most interesting approach to solving this problem, so I’m extending the same invitation as he did: please ask me a question via email, and I’ll answer it in a blog entry. (I’m happy to answer questions even if you’d like to remain anonymous.) That allows us to have a conversation, instead of me feeling like I’m merely spouting–and maybe we can solve some problems together along the way.

One thing that Michael Hunter pointed out to me after the Rapid Software Testing course, which I hereby rectify: he claimed that he couldn’t find FDSFSCURA anywhere on the Net. What is FDSFSCURA and why should you care?

FDSFSCURA is the mnemonic for the nine test techniques that we identify in the course. It comes from James Bach’s Heuristic Test Strategy Model. It stands for

Function Testing
Domain Testing
Stress Testing
Flow Testing
Scenario Testing
Claims Testing
User Testing
Risk-based Testing
Automatic Testing

You can read a lot more about the Heuristic Test Strategy Model and its some of its applications in various places–predominantly on James’ Web site and in my articles for Better Software.

Oh–and the mnemonic? It’s pronounced FEDs-fa-Skew-ra. It was the cry of the Roman soldiers as they stormed across the field of battle. It’s Latin for “my sandals hurt.” (Here’s a heuristic: the dumber the mnemonic, the more memorable it is.)

I first noticed Michael Hunter‘s blog a couple of years back. Michael’s blog was the most thoughtful and valuable work I had seen on testing coming from Microsoft, and it has only got better since then.

I found out that Michael would be at SD West 2005. I wasn’t able to attend the conference–I was teaching in Sunnyvale that week. However, a a large number of my pals–colleagues involved with the AYE Conference, the SHAPE Forum, and other projects initiated by Jerry Weinberg–were in town for the conference. We had arranged to meet for dinner, and I thought that Michael would be a good fit, so I invited him. After that, we kept an active correspondence, and met again at STAR East 2006, where Michael shared Best Paper honours with Vipul Kocher, another friend. At the conference, I ran Michael through a couple of the exercises from the Rapid Software Testing course.

I was honoured to have Michael attend the recent public session of Rapid Software Testing in Toronto (January 9-11, 2007), and I was even more honoured by his comments on the course.