Better Software Magazine Articles

Orthogonally Speaking: Deriving a Suitable Set of Test Cases

Is your testing effort facing an impossibly wide choice of test parameters? Shooting in the dark can yield hit-and-miss results--and that’s just not very effective. When your testing effort faces an impossibly wide choice of test parameters, the Orthogonal Array Testing System technique can be a very useful method for deriving a suitable set of test cases.

Elfriede Dustin's picture Elfriede Dustin
Looking Under the Hood

Understanding a program's inner workings, dataflows, and bug history can enable you to build more robust tests. Here are pointers on investigating a system's internal design as a tool for effective testing.

Len DiMaggio
Step-By-Step Test Design

Testers are often faced with short development cycles and partial product specifications. This simple, six-step design method helps you come up with a reasonably thorough set of tests for individual product features in a reasonable amount of time. It employs list and table and encourages you to look at the software from a variety of perspectives.

Kathy Iberle's picture Kathy Iberle
Session-Based Test Management: A Strategy for Structuring Exploratory Testing

Unlike traditional scripted testing, exploratory testing is an ad hoc process. Everything we do is optimized to find bugs fast, so we continually adjust our plans to refocus on the most promising risk areas; we follow hunches; we minimize the time spent on documentation. That leaves us with some problems. For one thing, keeping track of each tester’s progress can be like herding snakes into a burlap bag. Every day I need to know what we tested, what we found, and what our priorities are for further testing.

James Bach's picture James Bach
Testing Web-based Applications

To be most effective in analyzing and reproducing errors in a Web environment, you need to have a command over the operating environment. You also need to understand how environment-specific variables may affect your ability to replicate errors. With the application of some of the skills covered in this article, your Web testing experience should be less frustrating and more enjoyable.

Hung Nguyen
Testing in the Dark

How can you test software without knowing what it should do? Here is a step-by-step approach to overcoming undocumented requirements, including how to discover the requirements, how to define "quality" for the project, and how to create a test plan including release criteria.

The Test Matrix: How to Keep a Complex Test Project on Track

When testing needs to account for different user environments and installation configurations, the possible combinations can add up quickly. Read how one company used a simple data organization method to keep everything on track.

Mark Pawson
On-Track Requirements: How to Evaluate Requirements for Testability

Prior to using the requirements to develop the Test Plan, an analysis should be performed to evaluate the testability of the requirements. This article suggests a proven method used on a recent project that accomplishes such an evaluation.

Rodger Drabick

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