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On Red

What actually happens when a check returns a “red” result? Some people might reflexively say “Easy: we get a red; we fix the bug.” Yet that statement is too simplistic, concealing a good deal of what really goes on. The other day, James Bach and I transpected on the process. Although it’s not the same in every case, we think that for responsible testers, the process actually goes something more … Read more

What Is A Tester?

A junior tester relates some of the issues she’s encountering in describing her work. To the people who thinks she “just breaks stuff all day”, here’s what I might reply: It’s not that I don’t just break stuff; I don’t break stuff at all. The stuff that I’ve given to test is what it is; if it’s broken, it was broken when I got it. If I break anything, consider … Read more

On a Role

This article was originally published in the February 2015 edition of Testing Trapeze, an excellent online testing magazine produced by our testing friends in New Zealand. There are small edits here from the version I submitted. Once upon a time, before I was a tester, I worked in theatre. Throughout my career, I took on many roles—but maybe not in the way you’d immediately expect. In my early days, I … Read more

A Bad Couple of Days

I’m home in Toronto for a day after several weeks of helping people learn to test software, and as far as I can see, the whole Web is screwed up. Here are some of the things that have happened in the last 48 hours or so. A fellow on Twitter told me about an interesting Skype bug: send the string “http://:” (no quotes), and Skype hangs. Fpr me, it did … Read more