Better Software Magazine Articles
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A Story About User Stories and Test-Driven Development: The Setup While "testing" is part of its name, many TDD pundits insist TDD is not a testing technique, but rather a technique that helps to focus one's design thinking. Drawing on real events from the authors' combined experience, this story follows a fictional team as it encounters some of the pitfalls of using test-driven development. |
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Behind the Scenes Have you ever found a major defect while testing an unfamiliar system and been unable to explain exactly how you found it? The Framework for Exploratory Testing can help. These four activities help you explain your thought processes and allow you to train others to be better exploratory testers. |
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Test Automation Grows Up Can software test automation ever replace manual software testing? Dion Johnson says no, but he does think it’s time that test automation is recognized as a mature discipline with its own body of knowledge. This ABOK allows test-automation professionals to hone their skills and provides organizations wishing to automate a pool of able resources from which to hire. |
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McLuhan for Testers If a tester is "somebody who knows that things can be different," then Marshall McLuhan was a tester par excellence. According to McLuhan, the English professor who proposed the Laws of Media, the message of a medium is not its content but rather its effects. Find out how this translates to software testing and how we evaluate requirements. |
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Four Tips for Technique Seeking From an experience with a testing buddy in a large organization, Julie Gardiner had a career-shaping epiphany. She discovered that understanding and applying formal testing techniques can help you grow as a testing professional, and she has incorporated that knowledge into her management repertoire ever since. Learn four ways you can get started using formal testing techniques with your team. |
Julie Gardiner
September 26, 2007 |
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Pairwise Testing: An Easy Guide to Orthogonal Arrays & All-Pairs Combinations One of the testing challenges we face is how to handle the large numbers of test cases we sometimes need to create and execute. We can't test everything, but pairwise testing using orthogonal arrays or an all-pairs algorithm can help generate pair combinations that reduce the number of test cases we run while still finding a large percentage of bugs. |
Lloyd Roden
September 26, 2007 |
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Web 2.0: The Fall and Rise of the User Experience The Web has enabled pervasive global information sharing, commerce, and communications on a scale thought to be impossible only ten years ago. At the same time, the Web dealt a setback in the user interface experience of networked applications. Only now are Web standards and technologies emerging that can bring us back to the rich and robust user experiences that were developed in the desktop client/server era before the Web came along. Wayne Hom presents examples of great, rich client Web user interfaces and discusses the enabling tools, technologies, and methodologies for today’s popular Web 2.0 approaches. Wayne discusses the not-so-obvious pitfalls of the new technologies and concludes with a look at user interface opportunities beyond the current Web 2.0 state-of-the-art to see what may be possible in the future.
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Wayne Hom, Augmentum Inc.
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A CMMI® Success Story: What Happens in Guadalajara Doesn't Stay in Guadalajara Can a group of software developers, located in Mexico, achieve CMMI® certification and set the standard for their larger U.S. parent company to follow? A software branch of Freescale Semiconductors Inc., located in Guadalajara, did exactly that. Developing the CMMI® processes and procedures that made business sense for a remote software group was tricky, but not as tricky as assuring that they aligned their practices with the parent company's processes and requirements. The months of work that led to this achievement were filled with high points-and big challenges. Jeff Fiebrich discusses the planning, budgeting, and implementation that contributed to their ultimately successful CMMI® certification. He addresses the collaboration between their parent company and the local government that was an essential part of this effort. And, most importantly, Jeff reveals the immediate impact of their certification on the entire company. |
Jeff Fiebrich and Diego Garay, Freescale Semiconductors, Inc.
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Practical Software Sizing with Testable Requirements A new strategic project is in the design stages-how much will it cost? Your application requirements are constantly growing-what is the impact? System testing is scheduled soon-how much time and what resources will we need? And how do you get the answers? Measurement. Although software developers are often collecting measures of defects, earned value, variances, etc., the most fundamental measure-how big is the system?-is usually lacking. Lines of code and function points are established sizing measures but both have limitations that have prevented their widespread acceptance. Karen Johns presents testable requirements, an alternative sizing measure that can help you meet these challenges and more. Learn from Karen what testable requirements are and how to use them to size your software systems. |
Karen Johns, Mosaic, Inc.
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Real World SOA: From Concept to Application Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) is becoming a widely adopted approach for enterprises to attain agility and economy while meeting their Information Technology (IT) needs. Unlike previous attempts at component based software development efforts, development in SOA environments stresses code reuse through development, deployment, and orchestration standards. Frank Cohen explains the major trends currently in play that impact the use of XML in SOA and how a new base of computing technology using composite applications, Registry/Repository, Enterprise Service Bus (ESB,) Master Data Management (MDM), Database, and SOA protocols and practices deliver a solution. Frank begins with the SOA basics, explains their applications, and shares specific metrics that you can use to govern your SOA efforts.
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Frank Cohen, PushToTest
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