Test Engineer

Software testing is a highly technical, logical, rational effort. There's no place for squishy emotional stuff here. Not among professional testers. Or is there? Because of commitment, risk, schedule, and money, emotions can run high in software development and testing. It is easy to become frustrated, confused, or bored; angry, impatient, and overwhelmed. However, Michael Bolton says that, if we choose to be aware of our emotions and are open to them, feelings can be a powerful source of information for testers, alerting us to problems in the product and in our approaches to our work.

To create better test cases, Koray Yitmen says you must know your users. And the path to better test case creation in usability testing starts with the segmentation and definition of users, a concept known as personas. Contrary to common market-wise segmentation that focuses on users' demographic information, personas focus on users’ behavioral characteristics, animating them in the minds of designers, developers, and testers. Put these personas “on stage” and let them play their roles in user scenarios.

The best software development teams find ways for programmers and testers to work closely together. These teams recognize that programmers and testers each bring their own unique strengths and perspectives to the project. However, working in agile teams requires us to unlearn many of the patterns that traditional development taught us.

A tester’s toolbox today contains a number of test case design techniques—classification trees, pairwise testing, design of experiments-based methods, and combinatorial testing. Each of these methods is supported by automated tools. Tools provide consistency in test case design, which can increase the all-important test coverage in software testing. Cause-effect graphing, another test design technique, is superior from a test coverage perspective, reducing the number of test cases needed to provide excellent coverage.

In today’s competitive world, more and more HTML5 applications are being developed for mobile and desktop platforms. Spotify has partnered with world-renowned organizations to create high quality apps to enrich the user experience. Testing a single application within a few months can be a challenge. But it's a totally different beast to test multiple world-class music discovery apps every week. Alexander Andelkovic shares insights into the challenges they face coordinating all aspects of app testing to meet their stringent testing requirements.

Some test automation ideas seem very sensible at first glance but contain pitfalls and problems that can and should be avoided. Dot Graham describes five of these “intelligent mistakes”—1. Automated tests will find more bugs quicker. (Automation doesn’t find bugs, tests do.) 2. Spending a lot on a tool must guarantee great benefits. (Good automation does not come “out of the box” and is not automatic.) 3. Let’s automate all of our manual tests. (This may not give you better or faster testing, and you will miss out on some benefits.) 4. Tools are expensive so we have to show a return on investment. (This is not only surprisingly difficult but may actually be harmful.) 5. Because they are called “testing tools,” they must be tools for testers to use. (Making testers become test automators may be damaging to both testing and automation.) Join Dot for a rousing discussion of “intelligent mistakes”—so you can be smart enough to avoid them.

Do you struggle to find the best way to explain your testing status and coverage to your stakeholders? Do numbers and metrics make your stakeholders’ eyes glaze over, or, even worse, do you feel dirty giving metrics that you know are going to be abused? Do you have challenges explaining your strategy to fellow testers and developers? Visualizations are a great way to turn raw data into powerful communications. Thomas Vaniotis presents eleven powerful visual tools that can be created easily with simple materials around the office—sticky notes, graph paper, markers, and whiteboards.

Test automation scripts are in a constant state of obsolescence. New features are added, changes are made, and testers learn about these changes long after they've been implemented. Marcus Merrell helped design a system in which a "model" is created each time a developer changes code that affects the UI. That model is checked against the suite of automated tests for validity. Changes that break the tests are apparent to the developer before his code is even checked in. Then, when features are added, the model is regenerated and automation can immediately address brand-new areas of the UI.

If you’ve tried to make testing really count, you know that “risk” plays a fundamental part in deciding where to direct your testing efforts and how much testing is enough. Unfortunately, project managers often do not understand or fully appreciate the test team’s view of risk—until it is too late. Is it their problem or is it ours?

No matter how thorough the test team or how expansive the test lab, Chris Munroe knows that defects still abound in mobile apps after launch. With more “non-software” companies launching mobile apps every day, testers have increased pressure to ensure apps are secure and function as intended. In retail and media especially, audiences are incredibly diverse and expect apps to work every time, everywhere, and on every device. These expectations make it imperative for companies to take every possible step to make their mobile apps defect free.

The software testing business is in the grip of a commoditization trend in which enterprises routinely flip flop between vendors—vendors who are engaged in a race to the bottom on price. This trend introduces perverse incentives for service providers, undervalues skill, and places excessive emphasis on processes, tools, and methods. The result is a dumbing down of testing and the creation of testing services that are little more than placebos.

Few topics are hotter these days than mobile software development. It seems that every company is rushing to release its own mobile application. However, when it comes time to build that software, companies quickly discover that things are different now. Many developers claim that it is very difficult, if not impossible, to test drive an application. Traditional testing tools are unable to automate the application in the emulator or on the device so testers usually are left with a manual testing approach.