Tools related to testing
Some books I’ve read that I found useful in my career and my life. The Logic of Failure: Recognizing And Avoiding Error In Complex Situations (Dietrich Dörner) One of my pet hates is when people try to oversimplify a complex problem in order to make it solvable. For example, “we’ll just automate everything through Webdriver and […]
I recently came back from teaching a day-long workshop at the Eurostar Conference in Gothenburg. My wonderful co-host Jim Holmes and I wanted to talk about becoming a testing craftsman. Jim was inspired by the software craftsmanship movement to create this workshop. I think the concept from this community that has resonated most with both […]
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 […]
Last year, I was feeling a bit overwhelmed by having to track multiple streams of information all day long. Luckily, I was able to merge two of those streams by combining Team City, our continuous integration tool, with Campfire, our chat room tool. Using the handy APIs for each of these tools, fellow tester Adrian […]
I’ve heard that people can identify with either visual, auditory or tactile methods of learning, or some combination of the three. This is called Fleming’s VARK model of learning. The concept is pretty simple. Visual learners learn best with visual aids, like diagrams, pictures and books. Auditory learnings learn best when they’re listening to things […]
I’d had this idea in my head for a while to create an automated script that would take any web application and click on every link, looking for big obvious errors. So when I found myself with a bit of time on my hands, and a task to test every page in the application for […]
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 […]
I’m quite a fan of Gherkin’s Given-When-Then syntax for test cases, so I was pleased to discover Specflow. Specflow is a .NET implementation of Gherkin, with complete integration with Visual Studio. Steve Sanderson’s blog post describes it most excellently, and is essential reading if you plan on using Specflow. I recommend that you have a […]
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 […]