software testing Archives - Maverick Tester

Options not Obligations

How do we know if we are providing our business partners with suitable options allowing them to reduce their business risk? Is this something worth working towards and measuring?

If, as Gerry Weinberg states Quality is “value to some person” …then the corollary stands that risk is anything that threatens that value. This can be useful because Quality is an amorphous, shapeshifter, notoriously difficult to nail down. Its final judge is not us but our consumers. I compare quality to a Black Hole. We can’t […]

Emergent Quality

If you work in software development, like I do, you most likely work within a complex system. You also, most likely, work on a complex system. Not sure? Try answering these questions: Is it hard to model your system in all its complexity? Is it hard to work out root causes to identified problems? Is it hard […]

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Caroline Herschel (1750 – 1848) Gold Medal Winner of the Royal Astronomical Society in 1828

Under the Hood – Learning APIs

New to API’s and want to learn how to test them? Here are some learning strategies to help you get started on your way.

Lethal Weapon

I’ve spent a day testing a scheduler using a semi-automated technique. It’s a task that is cognitively demanding. It requires creating sophisticated test data, loading it into a scheduler, then identifying if the output is as anticipated. Sound’s interesting right? It is. There are lots of different scenarios to test and lots of different dates […]

Embrace your inner strange

As a tester, there are times you’re going to face pushback, ignorance, and disrespect. I say, pick your self up, don on those red party shoes, let your hair down, turn the music up and let’s get this party going!

Beyond the Black Stump

In Australia, the black stump is a metaphor or the edge of civilization., an imaginary beyond which point at the country was considered remote. There’s a whole lot of value of testing what we know. It helps create a mental model of what the system does. We can start making sense of what the system is […]

Whose moved my risk?

We know quality is ‘value to some person’, so it stands to reason that risk is also subjective. If we use risk as a factor to determine what to test, then how you test, what you test and your testing strategy will evolve and change. Is it though? Think of testing within your organisation as […]