Manual testing
Okay, I think I finally get it. I’ve been looking at exploratory testing all wrong. I was trying to break down exploratory testing into a set of learnable techniques that can be followed by anyone to get them to be better testers. But exploratory testing isn’t like that. I was getting really frustrated because there […]
Some time ago I talked about linking automated scripts to keyboard shortcuts to generate test data on the fly. Since then, I’ve updated the code, stored it in Github and figured out how to make it work in OSX using Automator, rather than installing some additional app. You can find the Github repository here. For […]
Recently I found myself in a familiar testing situation – a developer had made a change to a feature that required testing by visual comparison. Hours of tedious, repetitive manual testing awaited me. Campaign Monitor is a web app that allows users to import an HTML page and send it as an email to a […]
Sometimes testing is like pouring a bucket of confetti on a snow leopard. Have you ever tried pouring a bucket of confetti on a snow leopard? Probably not, but now that the thought occurs to you, don’t you really want to know what happens? That’s like testing – you want to know what happens when […]
This is a story about my experience in using a wiki to manage test cases. Over the past few years, I have been evaluating different test case management approaches and tools. At first I was looking for a one-fits-all solution, but it quickly became apparent that such a dream was impossible to achieve. At Campaign […]
I’m a tester who used to be a developer. I find my developer skills to be very useful in my job as a tester. Knowing how to build software goes beyond just knowing how to code up a script. If a tester can understand how software fits together, then that tester will have a greater […]
Testing a product like Campaign Monitor means dealing with a lot of emails as test data. Here are some things I’ve learned about that. Unique email addresses In order to check the contents of emails that you have sent, you need to have an accessible email account. But trying to send all emails to one […]
I just spent the last 3 days doing the Rapid Software Testing Course run by James Bach. It was an excellent and fun course and I learned heaps from it – highly recommended for anyone interested in testing. One of the things James taught was a “blink test” – basically a test where you run […]
If you’re a web developer who does not enjoy seeing bugs assigned to you, you’re in luck – I’m about to reveal 5 easy tips to prevent bugs. Try these tricks on your own code before you check in your change, and you may find less bugs in your inbox the next morning. Run the […]
Earlier this year, I started work testing a system that had been developed over about 5 years and there were no documented test cases. There was a huge suite of automated tests, but no test cases whatsoever. I didn’t have time to write 5 years’ worth of test scripts for a system I knew nothing […]