In spite of many great testing “how-to” books, people involved with system and software testing—testers, requirements engineers, system/software architects, system and software engineers, technical leaders, managers, and customers—continue to make many different types of testing-related mistakes. Think of these commonly-occurring human errors as a system of software testing pitfalls. And when projects fall into these pitfalls, testing is less effective at uncovering defects, people are less productive when testing, and project morale is damaged. Donald Firesmith has collected more than 150 of these testing anti-patterns, organized them into twenty categories, and documented each with name, description, potential applicability, characteristic symptoms, potential negative consequences, potential causes, recommendations for avoidance and mitigation, and related pitfalls. Donald introduces this repository of testing pitfalls, explains its many uses, and provides directions for accessing additional information including his associated “how-not-to test” book and website that documents pitfalls and identifies pitfall categories.
Donald Firesmith
Donald Firesmith is an internationally-recognized authority on requirements engineering, system and architecture engineering, object-oriented development, and situational method engineering. He has written seven technical books based on lessons learned during his thirty-six years of developing and assessing systems ranging from both manned and unmanned aircraft to commercial information systems and eMarketplaces. Donald is currently completing a book on engineering safety and security requirements, has published dozens of articles, presented tutorials and spoken at many conferences, and has been the program chair or on the program committee of multiple conferences and workshops. Hundreds of his publications and presentations can be downloaded from his personal website.