January, 2010

Networking your way to QA expertise

Ah! I love that feeling of starting fresh. New year. New job. I started last week as the site editor for SearchSoftwareQuality.com at TechTarget, and I absolutely love the job. How did I get it? I was blogging about...

Software quality lessons learned from a cruise line

Three years ago, my wife and I went to a  pitch for a timeshare. The project was awful, and we would not recommend the company to others.  I should say that we would actively recommend people not deal with that company. Yet, at the same time, last year we booked a cruise that cost more than...

Status reports can help provide software testing focus

Recently, I found myself struggling on a program to help plan and manage the testing effort for a couple of different concurrent projects. For both projects, testing is a critical path, and resources are tight. For both projects, there's a mix of planning and execution activities happening within...

Running, debugging and analyzing load tests using JMeter

In a recent tip series, resident site expert Mike Kelly explored JMeter, a popular and free -- open source load testing tool. He uses JMeter frequently because of its easy of use and supports several programming languages, including HTTP/HTTPS, SOAP, JDBC, LDAP and JMS. In the first tip,...

Capturing feedback during sprint reviews

After sitting in a number of different sprint review meetings, with a number of teams, I've noticed that not all teams have a formal way of capturing feedback obtained in sprint review. Feedback can be any of the following:

• A defect noticed by anyone in the room during the demonstration...

Rapid prototyping for faster collaboration

This weekend, I was building houses for developers. As we were framing the first house, I suggested that the location of the door might be improved if it were shifted from where the original plans stated it should be. After a very...

Testing estimates in Scrum, taking it one story at a time

I really enjoy like doing small projects where I get to put hands on a keyboard and execute tests. Ideally for me when I'm doing this, I'm either doing exploratory testing or performance testing. There's a challenge that comes with doing this however. For these small projects to work well for both...

Top Agile development tips of 2009

In 2009, tips about Agile got more traffic than expert advice on any other topic on SearchSoftwareQuality. That didn't surprise our editors, because our surveys showed double-digit increases in our readers' adoption of Agile practices. Yet, while Agile adoption is on the rise, using Agile isn't...