There’s a perception (mine) that one of the biggest questions in testing is “did this test pass or fail?” However, that big question pales in significance to a much more important question, in my view:
Is there a problem here?
And that is what this lovely little conversation between James Bach and Mike Kelly is all about.
A three-day public offering of Rapid Software Testing, and a keynote talk at the Conference on Free Testing Tools, sponsored by the Norwegian Computer Society, in Trondheim, Norway, March 22-26, 2010.
A three-day public offering of Rapid Software Testing in Berlin, Germany, March 29-31, 2010. It's sponsored by Testing Experience.
A three-day session of Rapid Software Testing, plus a day of free consulting, for a corporate client in Colorado Springs, CO, April 12-15.
Presentations at the third annual Kitchener-Waterloo Software Quality Association's conference, April 21, 2010.
I'll be at the Workshop on Performance and Reliability, one of the longest-running of the peer conferences, which this year is being held in Montreal, Quebec. James Bach is the content owner.
"I Wouldn't Have Seen It If I Hadn't Believed It: Confirmation Bias in Testing", a track session on Thursday, April 29 at the STAR East Conference, Orlando, Florida. The conference runs from Monday through Friday, April 26-30, 2010.
A three-day public offering of Rapid Software Testing in Berlin, Germany, March 29-31, 2010. This one is sponsored by Electromind.
I'll be assisting Cem Kaner as he presents his Black Box Software Testing class here in Toronto for TASSQ, the Toronto Association of System and Software Quality. This is a rare opportunity. You can get more information here. This class, the basis for the online courses offered by the Association for Software Testing is rarely offered live and in person.
Agile Testing Days in Berlin, October 4-7, 2010.
You can find an extensive list of presentations and courses that I've taught, including the slides and speaker notes for many of them, here.
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Great conversation. James has a talent for making people think beyond their intuition.
The pass/fail criteria that we testers are given will never cover everything that might be a problem. This reminds me that as we test we should not only question the software, but also question those that can answer the question “Is there a problem here?”.
Hey Micheal, I think I found a bug. The zip file of the conversation contains a Windows executable. Linux people (like me) would say there’s a problem there
. Is there any way to get it in a different format?
On a different (and more serious) note, how do we decide who’s problem it is? I guess I could install WINE and try to make it work. But what happens if it doesn’t? So far, I can think of ways to blame it on WINE, me, you, and possibly Microsoft. With so many people to blame, how do we decide who should fix it?