I’ll be traveling and training this fall. Take note of where I’ll be, because if I come near where you are and want some relatively free consulting, all you have to do is take me to dinner.
I’ll do almost anything for free food.
September

Reston, Virginia
San Diego, California

October

Stockholm, Sweden
Tartu, Estonia
Cluj-Napoca, Romania
Bucharest, [...]

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. “Test” for many people is a noun.
For me test is a verb. Testing is something that I do, not so much something that I [...]

An exploratory DOCTOR is known as… a “doctor.”
An exploratory WELDER is known as… a “welder.”
An exploratory PILOT is known as… a “pilot.”
An exploratory WRITER is known as… a “writer.”
An exploratory SCIENTIST is known as… a “scientist.”
An exploratory TRUCK DRIVER is known as… a “truck driver.”
A non-exploratory doctor is known as… “irresponsible.”
A non-exploratory welder is known [...]

I have often said something like “We found a hundred bugs!” Lots of people have heard me say it. Statements like that are very valuable to me. But we should ask some vital questions about them.
Consider Raisin Bran cereal. If you lived in America and weren’t in solitary confinement during the 80’s an 90’s you [...]

Regular readers know that I’m dissatisfied with the state of the testing industry. It’s a shambles, and will continue to be as long as middle managers in big companies continue to be fat juicy targets for scam-artists (large tool vendors, consulting firms, and certain “professional” organizations) and well-meaning cargo cultists (such as those who think [...]

Pradeep blogged this, today.
I need to amplify it because it provides a nice example of at least six useful and important patterns all in one post. This is why I believe Pradeep is one of the leading Indian testers.
Practical advice: “Ask for testability”
His story is all about asking for testability and all the good things [...]

One of the comments on my post about The Esssence of Heuristics went like this:
“An excellent example of a heuristic is a hammer.”

Ecstasy is your friend: it picks you up at the airport.
Non heuristics that can help an expert solve a problem, without being a guarantee - an abridged list:
* Money
* Time
* Expertise
* [...]

A lot of what I do is give names to testing behaviors and patterns that have been around a long time but that people are not systematically studying or using. I’m not seeking to create a standard language, but simply by applying some kind of terminology, I want to make these patterns easier to apply [...]

Excellent testing requires skill, but heuristics give structure to that skill. Heuristics help us access our skills under pressure.
A heuristic is a fallible method of solving a problem or making a decision. Cem Kaner and I came to this definition based on an extensive search of papers and books across fifty years of psychology and [...]

Stuart Reid is planning to do a talk on how we should use “evidence” in our debates about what works and doesn’t work in testing.
A funny thing about that is Stuart once spent 30 minutes trying to convince me that the number “35,000″ was evidence of how great the ISEB certification is, as in “35,000 [...]

A former fellow of the ISTQB sent me some secret dirt about the ISTQB qualifications process.
(Editors Note: The ISTQB is the organization of cash-grubbing bullies that runs advertisements that say things like “join the elite”– meaning “pay us to give you a ridiculous and unnecessary exam that almost everyone passes so that dimwitted managers will [...]

I just discovered that all new comments were being sent to the spam instead of held for moderation. I have no idea what has triggered this strange behavior.
If you have made a comment in the last couple of weeks and didn’t see it appear, it maybe lost. Please try again. I did manage to rescue [...]

Yesterday, I got to thinking about what I like to do. I want to be an expert. I’ve always wanted to be an expert. I’m aspiring to be that.
I recalled that Steve McQueen played my kind of expert, in the movie The Towering Inferno. So, I found a clip and added subtitles to turn it [...]

(CNN) — Early evidence points to driver error as the reason a 2005 Prius sped into a stone wall on March 9, according to federal investigators.
“Information retrieved from the vehicle’s onboard computer systems indicated there was no application of the brakes and the throttle was fully open,” according to a statement [...]

I’m not against Toyota, really. I’m against manufacturers who try to weasel out of their responsibilities after they put people at risk with poor design. I do not know if Toyota is guilty of that, here.
I also don’t know what the real story is with this Sikes fellow who was in the car that he [...]