I sponsored the testing competition at CAST, last week, awarding $1,426.00 of my own money to the winners. My game, my rules, of course, but I tried to be fair and give out the prizes to deserving winners. There was some controversy… We set it up with simple rules, and put the onus on the [...]

In a new guidance document discussing the clinical testing of medical devices, the FDA includes a long section about the value of exploratory testing: The Importance of Exploratory Studies in Pivotal Study Medical devices often undergo design improvement during development, with evolution and refinement during lifecycles extending from early research through investigational use, initial marketing [...]

I named a technique the other day. It’s another one of those things I’ve been doing for a while, but only now has come crisply into focus as a distinct heuristic of testing: the Paired Exploratory Survey (PES). Definition: A paired exploratory survey is a process whereby two testers confront one product at the same [...]

Adam Goucher noticed that I recently laid a curse upon commercial test tool vendors (with the exception of Hexawise, Blueberry Consultants, and Atlassian). He wondered to me how a tool vendor might avoid my curse. First, I’m flattered that he would even care who I curse. But, it’s a good question. Here’s my answer: Test [...]

My brother and I are instituting a new award at the CAST conference on Monday: The Bach Brothers Legion of Testing Merit. We will give this award periodically in recognition of certain testers who, we feel, deserve to be famous, but aren’t yet internationally recognized in the way they should be. The first recipients of [...]

I recently had the opportunity to converse about tester certification with Carol Cornelius, who’s on the board of the New Zealand version of the ISTQB. The discussion went well in one respect: she did not physically run away. (Oh, and she concurred with me on the subject of Stuart Reid, which was nice to hear.) [...]

Maturities models (TMMi, CMM, CMMi, etc.) are a dumb idea. They are evidence of immaturity in our craft. Insecure managers sometimes cling to them as they might a treasured baby blanket. In so doing, they retard their own growth and learning. A client of mine recently asked for some arguments against the concept of maturity [...]

CAST 2011 is coming. If you are serious about testing, you want to be a part of it. It’s not your ordinary conference. This is a gathering of people with a true passion for testing. People who focus on skills, not just words. CAST is the annual conference of the Association for Software Testing. It’s [...]

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 anything that threatens the value of the product. (This ties directly into Jerry Weinberg’s famous dictum that quality means [...]

The Context-Driven School of software testing is a way of thinking about testing, AND a small but world-wide community of like-minded testers. There are other, larger, schools of testing thought. But CDT represents my paradigm of testing. By paradigm, I mean an organizing worldview, an ontology, a set of fundamental beliefs. When I say CDT [...]

The short answer is: you never know for sure that a test has ended. Case in point. The license plate on my car is “tester.” It looks like this: On December 20th, I received this notice in the mail: As you see, it seems that the city of Everett, which is located between Orcas Island [...]

In the Context-Driven Testing community, the testing craft is a living, growing thing. This dialog, led by my partner in Rapid Testing, Michael Bolton, is a prime example of the life among us. Read the PDF that Michael refers to, and what will you see? You see many ideas proposed and discarded. You see definitions [...]

I’ve been everywhere, man. This year I taught in the US (Ohio, Colorado, Florida, California, Virginia) , England (Oxford, London), Sweden (Stockholm, Malmö, Lund, Gothenburg, Kista), Denmark, Israel (Tel Aviv, Haifa), Estonia (Tartu, Tallinn), Romania (Cluj-Napoca, Bucharest), New Zealand (Wellington, Christchurch), Australia (Sydney, Adelaide). But for volcanoes, I would even have been to my nemesis, [...]

Alex Rotaru is a precise, lawful man. Apparently this is not common in Romania, judging by the other drivers. A pickup truck charges by us at high speed, “DACIA” emblazoned on its tailgate. It weaves in front of us to miss oncoming traffic by no more than a few feet. “You see what I mean? [...]

Last week I enjoyed the company of many old tester friends in Sweden. This week I lit out for a new territory about which not much is known: Estonia. At least in America, we don’t think “Estonia! YES!” when we think of sharp-minded testers. This needs to change. (More Americans are familiar with Elbonia, sadly.) [...]