How To Recruit, Motivate, and Energize Superior Test Engineers

This video is an interesting presentation with eight points explaining why test is a better place for software developers than software development and showing how and when to express these points to hire, motivate and retain top talent.

Implementing Automated Testing by Elfriede Dustin, Thom Garrett & Bernie Gauf

This book presents a comprehensive treatement of the domain of software testing automation. The first part defines and describes test automation, proposing a business case for automation and discussing the pitfalls that should be avoided. The second part is a roadmap for test automation. It gives six keys for software testing automation payoff:
1. Know your requriments
2. Develop a strategy
3. Test your tools
4. Track progress and adjust
5. Implement the process
6. Put the right people in the process.
Four appendixes complete the book. They provide a process checklist, explain how automation applies to various testing types, disscuss tools evaluation and give a case study.

The fact that the autors have worked with the Defence industry might have affected the way the book was conceived and written: with structure and rigor. The discussions, recommandations, references and tools suggestions apply however to every software testing situation and not only to organization that are strongly process oriented. The aim of the book is to be a guide that can help to implement successfully automated software testing and it certainly achieve its objective.

Reference: “Implementing Automated Testing”, Elfriede Dustin, Thom Garrett & Bernie Gauf, Addison Wesley.

Get more details on this book or buy it on amazon.com
Get more details on this book or buy it on amazon.co.uk

Applying User Testing During Development

This presentation focus on the relationship between Production, Game Design, and User Research (Usability). What it takes to prepare game builds for User Research, what the goals are for the usability test, and what Production and Design do with the results. Halo3 will serve as the primary example.

Don’t Mock Yourself Out

An interesting video on mocking. Used appropriately, mock objects are a powerful design tool that can lead to highly maintainable applications.

http://www.testingtv.com/2009/05/28/dont-mock-yourself-out/

Agile Testing by Lisa Crispin and Janet Gregory

Some authors are good at presenting theories but unable to connect them to practice. Other are good at telling stories from the trenches, but without being able to produce an analysis of the situation and propose some solutions. On the less examined domain of agile testing, Lisa Crispin and Janet Gregory are, luckily for us, presenting a book that covers both the personal experience of being a tester in agile projects and a conceptual vision of the place of quality assurance in software projects. Thus you will find in this book “stories” that comes from past projects and “mind maps” that helps to have a high-level vision of the material of each chapter.

The book offers resource to organize the quality assurance and testing activities in an agile project. It explains also the relationship between test automation and agility. It provides also a part dedicated to the chronicle of the agile testing activities during project life, showing how every member of the team could contribute to quality.

I think however that the more interesting contribution of the book is Testing Quadrants. This concept classifies testing activities depending on their focus (technology or business) and their intent (supporting the team or validating the product). Adding an agile perspective to the original work of Brian Marick, the authors provide resources and examples for each quadrant to make sure that you will cover all the aspects of testing for your project.

This book is certainly a very valuable resource for every people involved in software testing, even if this is not in an agile project. It will also be valuable for ScrumMasters and project managers that have to think on how to integrate the testing activities in their projects.

Click here to get more details on this book or buy it on amazon.com

Click here to get more details on this book or buy it on amazon.co.uk

Removing Duplication in Unit Tests

This article shows how to remove duplication from unit tests.

http://www.sqazone.net/modules/news/article.php?storyid=396

Software Quality Assurance Planet

The Software Quality Assurance Planet is an aggregator for RSS feeds concerning software testing (unit testing, functional testing, regression testing, load testing), code review and inspection, bug and defect tracking, continuous integration.