Ben Simo’s Gift to Testing
Check out Is there a problem here?
This is just what our craft needs. This wonderful, simple service brought to us by Ben Simo (AKA QualityFrog) documents bugs found in the field. I can use this in training new testers.
There is a little problem with it: It’s biased toward reporting problems that are vividly depicted in still photographs. Lots of otherwise interesting bugs are not so photogenic, because they involve complex sequences, timings, or obscure oracles. That limits its value in training, but something is a whole lot better than nothing.
March 1st, 2009 at 11:24 am
Thanks James. It is a gift that I’m happy to give. I’d appreciate feedback from you and others that find things useful for training testers. I’d like to know how problems from IsThereAProblemHere.com are used.
And, yes, there is a bias in the types of problems that translate well to the blog. I suspect we (me and the other authors/editors I’ve recruited) will be posting some videos too. However, some bugs just aren’t photogenic. Maybe we can tell stories for those.
For example, I don’t have a good visual for the software errors that led to my mortgage payment being taken out of my checking account twice. Had a video camera been on me when I discovered a much lower than expected account balance, I’d have a geat visual description of the impact it had on my emotions.
March 2nd, 2009 at 8:55 am
Hi James, qahatesyou.com provides similar insights. My only formal association with them is that they did feature a bug I discovered recently on a very popular internet job/career site. If I had known about IsThereAProblemHere at the time of my bug discovery I would have forwarded it to Ben as well.
DH
March 19th, 2009 at 9:31 am
James,
I realize this blog entry was posted some time ago; however, I have been toying with the idea of creating a web based application with intentional configurable defects in it for people to find to use as a training aid (I like to do some coding as a hobby). What are your thoughts on such an endeavor? I realize it doesn’t stand the chance of covering every type of defect you could have in an enterprise system, but it might be useful as a part of general training. I wonder what the community as a whole might think of such an approach.
[James' Reply: Sounds cool.]