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Hire Ben Simo!

I have four or five blog posts in the hopper, each almost ready to go. I’m working on a whole book and a chapter of another one, and I’m on a deadline that I’m about to blow. The kids are still out of school, and I really should be cooking dinner right now. And yet… As I write, one of the best testers that I know is looking for work. … Read more

Statistician or Journalist?

Eric Jacobson has a problem, which he thoughtfully relates on his thoughtful blog in a post called “How Can I Tell Users What Testers Did?”. In this post, I’ll try to answer his question, so you might want to read his original post for context. I see something interesting here: Eric tells a clear story to relate to his readers some problem that he’s having with explaining his work to … Read more

All Testing is (not) Confirmatory

In a recent blog post, Rahul Verma suggests that all testing is confirmatory. First, I applaud his writing of an exploratory essay. I also welcome and appreciate critique of the testing vs. checking idea. I don’t agree with his conclusions, but maybe in the long run we can work something out. In mythology, there was a fellow called Procrustes, an ironmonger. He had a iron bed which he claimed fit … Read more

Questions from Listeners (2a): Handling Regression Testing

This is a followup to an earlier post, Questions from Listeners (2): Is Unit Testing Automated? The original question was Unit testing is automated. When functional, integration, and system test cannot be automated, how to handle regression testing without exploding the manual test with each iteration? Now I’ll deal with the second part of the question. Part One: What Do We Really Mean By “Automation”? Some people believe that “automation” … Read more

Acceptance Tests: Let’s Change the Title, Too

Gojko Adzic recently wrote a blog post called Let’s Change the Tune on some of our approaches in agile development. In changing the tune, some of the current words won’t fit so well, so he proposes (for example), “Specifying Collaboratively instead of test first or writing acceptance tests”. I have one more: I think we should change the label “acceptance tests”. Acceptance tests are given a central role in agile … Read more

When Should the Product Owner Release the Product?

In response to my previous blog post “Another Silly Quantitative Model”, Greg writes: In my current project, the product owner has assumed the risk of any financial losses stemming from bugs in our software. He wants to release the product to customers, but he is of course nervous. How do you propose he should best go about deciding when to release? How should he reason about the risks, short of … Read more