Testing Lessons from Springfield-Home of the Simpsons

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. Just like you, the people of Springfield commit to absurdly complex projects, such as the Monorail, all of which ultimately fail miserably. Join Rob in a revealing "Simpsons retrospective" loaded with tons of testing lessons from Springfield.