Better Software Magazine Articles

Welcome, Programmers

We're pleased to bring you technical editors who are well respected in their fields. Get their take on everything that relates to the industry, technically speaking. In this issue, read about the changes we're making to Better Software this year.

Brian Marick
Tell Me Where It Hurts

Even the healthiest applications don't always thrive in new environments. Deployment errors can occur despite extensive testing—and can be very difficult and expensive to correct. Find out how to give your deployed application the ability to self-diagnose so you can avoid making an eleventh-hour house call.

Mike Clark
It's All In How You Slice It

Most incremental releases resemble grandma's fruitcake-ad hoc pieces of customer requested functionality cobbled together in no particular order. What if, instead, you took a more structured approach—dividing your product into working layers, each one functional enough to use on a daily basis? Learn this foolproof recipe for project success.

Jeff Patton's picture Jeff Patton
STARWEST 2004: Interpersonal Skills for Working with Business Stakeholders

As a professional test manager or test engineer, you must keep up with the latest test techniques, management practices, and systems technologies. But that is not enough. You also must interact with and, more importantly, learn to influence executive managers and other non-technical project stakeholders. Even today in many companies, testing and test management are not well understood, and their work is unappreciated by non-technical people. Now, it is time for you to take action and do more than simply "get along" in your organization. Join Robert Sabourin for a lively session on developing your hidden and interpersonal skills, including communication, persuasion, problem solving, and teamwork. Find out new ways to work harmoniously with non-technical people while getting your important testing job done efficiently and effectively.

  • How to use individual differences and perspectives to your best advantage
Robert Sabourin, AmiBug.Com Inc
A Systematic View of User Acceptance Testing

Acceptance testing is a vital and specific form of testing whether you are tasked with rolling out an enterprise application package, releasing a major system enhancement, or developing acceptance tests in an agile development project. In addition, acceptance tests can give some teeth to service level agreements and software acquisition contracts. However, most treat acceptance testing as the same activity as system testing-but done by different staff. That is wrong! Because acceptance testing is not about bug hunting and breaking the software, you need a different strategy. With over 25 years of experience covering acceptance testing for all types of systems from safety critical control systems to standard financial applications, Geoff Quentin shares his views on how to do acceptance testing correctly.

Geoff Quentin, QBIT Ltd
Who is Stealing a Living off Your Web Site?

So, your company makes money from its Web site. Who else might also be doing the same? While the Web is a profitable venture for many companies, it is often equally profitable for hackers and thieves. Due to unknown vulnerabilities of your Web application, hackers may end up with more profit from your Web site than you do. See examples of hacker techniques-SQL injection, format string attacks, session-based attacks-and a host of others. Find out why the current crop of Web testing tools is not sufficient to thwart hackers and will leave you with a false and dangerous sense of security. Learn the skills and techniques you must know to stay ahead of hackers and find security holes in your Web applications.

  • Hidden Web application security vulnerabilities
  • Testing skills and techniques to find security holes and prevent breaches
  • Tools to help you with security testing Web sites
Florence Mottay, Security Innovation LLC
Workgroup Retrospectives for Test Teams

You may have heard about the power of project retrospectives, but will a retrospective benefit your test team or development team when you don't control the budget or set priorities for the entire project? The answer is yes. Workgroup retrospectives apply the proven methods and techniques of project retrospectives to improve teamwork and results within a software team. An experienced retrospective facilitator, Esther Derby describes how a retrospective supports learning and offers the basics of putting on a retrospective for your team. Learn about the phases, exercises, outcomes, and action planning that go into a successful retrospective. The next time you complete a project, invest in a workgroup retrospective instead of doing a standard post-review. You will be surprised and possibly amazed by the results.

  • How retrospectives differs from post-project reviews
Esther Derby, Esther Derby Associates Inc
Free Test Tools are Like a Box of Chocolates

You never know what you are going to get! Until you explore, it can be hard to tell whether a free, shareware, or open source tool is an abandoned and poorly documented research project or a robust powerhouse of a tool. In this information-filled presentation, Danny Faught shows you where open source and freeware tools fit within the overall test tool landscape. During this double session, Danny installs and tries out several tools right on the spot and shares tips on how to evaluate tools you find on the Web. Find out about licensing, maintenance, documentation, Web forums, bugs, and more. Discover the many different types of testing tools that are available for free and where to find them. Danny demonstrates examples of tools that you can put to use as soon as you get back to the office.

Danny Faught, Tejas Software Consulting
Mistaken Interpretation Mistaken Interpretation

Our brains are wonderful processors capable of making sense of the huge amount of sensory input we receive every day. But sometimes, our first interpretation of sensory data can lead us astray. Esther Derby shows us how assuming our interpretation of events holds the truth of the matter can damage relationships, and how testing our interpretations can help.

Esther Derby's picture Esther Derby
Using Personas to Improve Testing

Too often testers are thrown into the testing process without direct knowledge of the customers' behaviors and business process. As a tester, you need to think and act like a customer to make sure the software does-in an easy-to-use way-what the customer expects. By defining personas and using them to model the way real customers will use the software, you can have the complete customer view in designing test cases. Get the basics of how to implement customer personas, their limitations, and ways to create tests using them. See examples of good bugs found using personas while learning to write bug reports based on them.

  • What you need to know to develop customer personas
  • Use customer personas for designing test cases
  • The types of bugs found by using personas but missed by other techniques
Robyn Edgar, Microsoft

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