Many years ago— around 2001 if I remember— I worked with Paul Szymkowiak on improving the testing side of the Rational Unified Process (RUP). Paul was on the RUP team, proper, while I was an outside … [Read more...] about Bug Pipeline Reaction: Paul Szymkowiak and How Context-Driven Thinkers Talk
Test Reporting
Unclogging the Bug Pipeline
(Thanks to Michael Bolton for structural editing and for helping me develop this concept, which grew out of our recent testopsy. Thanks to Frances White and Marius Francu, on the RST Slack forum, for … [Read more...] about Unclogging the Bug Pipeline
Assess Quality, Don’t Measure It
How to measure quality is a popular question. The answer I want to give is easy to say, but not so popular: “Stop! Quality can’t be measured, but it can be discussed and assessed. Focus on that … [Read more...] about Assess Quality, Don’t Measure It
How Much is Enough? Testing as Story-Telling
This was on my old site as an HTML file for a long time. I've re-edited and corrected it for modern times. A classic question asked about test strategy is "How much testing is enough?" If you're … [Read more...] about How Much is Enough? Testing as Story-Telling
Tyranny of the Innocents, Exhibit A: Gary Cohen
Gary Cohen, Deputy Administrator and Director, Center for Consumer Information and Insurance Oversight, Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, is not a computer guy. He's a lawyer. He knows the … [Read more...] about Tyranny of the Innocents, Exhibit A: Gary Cohen
Healthcare.gov and the Tyranny of the Innocents
The failure of Healthcare.gov is probably not because of sinister people. It's probably because of the innocents who run the project. These well-intentioned people are truly as naive as little … [Read more...] about Healthcare.gov and the Tyranny of the Innocents
What Testers Find
While testing at eBay, recently, it occurred to me that we need a deeper account of what testers find. It's not just bugs. Here's my experimental list: Testers find bugs. In other words, we look for … [Read more...] about What Testers Find
Introducing Thread-Based Test Management
Most of the testing world is managed around artifacts: test cases, test documents, bug reports. If you look at any "test management" tool, you'll see that the artifact-based approach permeates it. … [Read more...] about Introducing Thread-Based Test Management
Putting Subtitles to Testing
I've released a new video, which is a whimsical look at a serious subject: explaining exploratory testing. In the video, my brother and I independently test an "Easy Button" for 10 minutes. Neither … [Read more...] about Putting Subtitles to Testing
Quality is Dead #2: The Quality Creation Myth
One of the things that makes it hard to talk about quality software is that we first must overcome the dominating myth about quality, which goes like this: The quality of a product is built into it by … [Read more...] about Quality is Dead #2: The Quality Creation Myth