Our testing is only as good as our thinking—and all too often we are hampered by limiting ideas, poor communication, and pre-set roles and responsibilities. Based on the work of Edward de Bono, the Six Thinking Hats for software testers have helped Julian, and numerous others, work more effectively as testers and managers. The concepts are simple and easy to learn. For instance, we can use these concepts as individuals performing reviews and while testing and in groups during team meetings. Each of the six hats has a color representing a direction of thinking—the blue hat provides the overview and helps to keep us productive, the white hat helps us to collect facts, the red is a way to express intuition and feelings without having to justify them, the yellow hat seeks the best possible outcome, the black hat helps us to discover what might go wrong—not only with the software but also with our tests and our assumptions!

Over the years, Rob Sabourin has discovered testing lessons in the Looney Tunes gang, the Great Detectives, and Dr. Seuss. Now he turns his attention to the Simpsons, a primetime cartoon television show entertaining audiences since 1989. Rob believes that Matt Groening's popular characters can teach us important lessons about software testing. Homer's twisted ideas tell us about test automation--why it works and why it fails. Could your software stand up to Bart's abuse? Lisa Simpson, the brilliant but neglected middle child, provides a calming influence on projects. Apu, the Kwik-E-Mart operator, works 100 hours a week--should you? When is Montgomery Burn’s authoritarian management style effective? And can we bribe stakeholders as easily as Police Chief Wiggum takes a donut? Inside this simple cartoon are lessons on personas, context, organization, ethics, situational leadership, and motivation.

Few would think that the tactics employed by military and law-enforcement Special Forces to breach buildings under siege bears any relation to software project teams. After a number of weekends training with ex-military and ex-law-enforcement Special Forces—just for fun—Antony Marcano draws a surprising parallel between the dynamics of modern Special Forces "room-clearing" methods and the dynamics of modern software development teams.

A mapping illustrates a relationship between two things. In testing, a map might look like a road map, but it might also look like a list, a chart, a table, or a pile of stories. We can use any of these to help us think about test coverage.