The Software Tester in a Scrum Team

The integration of software in a Scrum team is not easy. As Agile software development favours continuous development in short iterations, the software testing activity should be completely integrated with the requirements and coding activities, not postponed at the end like in a traditional Waterfall approach.

JMeter: the new standard for load testing

Apache JMeter is open source software Java desktop application, designed to load test and measure performance of web sites. It was originally designed for load testing web applications but has since expanded to other test functions.

Apache JMeter may be used to test performance both on static and dynamic resources (files, Servlets, Perl scripts, Java Objects, Data Bases and Queries, FTP Servers and more). It can be used to simulate a heavy load on a server, network or object to test its strength or to analyze overall performance under different load types. You can use it to make a graphical analysis of performance or to test your server/script/object behavior under heavy concurrent load.

A important ecosystem has been developped around JMeter. Many companies are offering load  testing services based on JMeter, like Amazon or Blazemeter. There are also many JMeter plugins that have been created to extend its functionalities and better exploit the data provided by this open source load testing tools.

You can get more informatoin and download JMeter from http://jmeter.apache.org/index.html

Mobile Applications Testing Bug Management

The key activity between the discovery of a bug during a software testing session and its resolution is bug management. I have found an interesting article where Jonathan Kohl discusses how to log and describes bugs on when you test mobile applications, which is part of an upcoming book on mobile apps testing.His opinions is that the difference between getting an issue addressed and fixed or bug getting ignored often has to deal with the accuracy of the information that is contained in the bug report. In the article he provides some tips to follow when you notice something that should be dealt with and how to report it well.

Speeding Up Java Unit Testing

The Java Tutorials and Videos web site has published an interesting article titled "Speeding Up Java Test Code". This article explains that there are two distinct areas where we can work to improve the speed of our feedback cycle: code and build. The author shows you how to speed up your Java test code.One of the advice is that you don’t want your test to set up things you’ll never use. Another recommendation is that you should avoid making network calls in your unit tests. More specifically, we should see that the code we’re testing doesn’t access the network because calling the neighbors is a seriously slow conversation. We also want to minimize access to the file system in order to keep our tests fast. Keeping these in mind is a good idea if your feedback loop starts growing too long.

Automated Acceptance Tests and Requirements Traceability

This article on Automated Acceptance Tests illustrates an approach to automated acceptance testing when you develop software with Java. The acceptance tests are connected to the software requirements. The main factor to achieve maintainable tests is to manage correctly the traceability between the requirements and implementation as well as between the requirements and acceptance tests.

http://www.methodsandtools.com/archive/archive.php?id=118

Mocking Frameworks in .NET Introduction

There are several open source unit testing tools to apply mocking principles in .NET. Tools like Rhino Mocks, Automoq and Moq allow us to create mocks and stubs within our test method. These tools have a learning curve, but the video ".NET Mocking Frameworks" presents techniques that can ease you into these frameworks and help you automated your unit testing process.

Scenarios for Load Testing

This article explains how to build a portfolio of scenarios for software load testing automation. You have rarely only a single scenario to test, so you have to decide which scenarios to include in your test plans. Criticality, frequency, difficulty and verifiability are the four key factors that should be considered to determine the scenarios to automate. Choosing the right scenarios is an essential key factor to ensure the success of your load testing automation strategy.