The Software Quality Advisor Newsletter

December, 2008

Welcome to the December issue of my newsletter. Thanks for being a part of my work this year by attending a class or conference session, using my training or consulting services in your company, or just being on my mailing list.

I want to wish you a very Merry Christmas and a prosperous New Year in 2009!  I know with the economy looking bleak and uncertain, "things are tough" or so you'll hear, but compared to others in the world we have it good here in the USA and other countries. Stay positive and keep adding value to your company and career. Remember it's the people in your life that are most important. Be thankful for them. The rest is just stuff.

Feature Article

The Top Tester Skills for the Future

I presented a keynote address last month at EuroStar 2008 on "Trends that May Impact the Future of Software Testing". In that address, I spoke about how the skill sets of testers will need to evolve to meet the needs of the business. In this article I explore these skills and why they will be important to testers in the future.

To read and comment on this article, click here - http://randallrice.blogspot.com/2008/12/skills-for-software-testers-in-future.html





News from Rice Consulting

Award from EuroStar - I was humbled to win the "Best Tutorial" award for my one-day tutorial, "Becoming an Influential Test Team Leader." Thanks to all the people who were in the session and who gave me high evaluations. We had a really great time together.

I had a great week at EuroStar 2008 at The Hague in the Netherlands. You can read more and see some pics at http://randallrice.blogspot.com/2008/11/thoughts-about-eurostar-2008.html.

Thanks to Roger Graham for the pics!

New Online Courses

If you are a new or aspiring test team leader, be sure to check out my newest online course, "Software Test Management Quick Start Course." You will learn the basics of software test management, such as test organization, estimation, monitoring and control, risk assessment, configuration management and incident reporting. You get almost 4 hours of recorded slide shows.

To celebrate the launch of this course, you can get $50 off the normal registration of $249 until January 3rd. Then, the price goes back to the regular price. You can learn more and register at: http://www.mysoftwaretesting.com/ProductDetails.asp?ProductCode=TESTMGR2 .

My other new online course is "Use Cases from Concept to Test Cases" which is an expanded version of my live one-day course. This course is designed to show by example how to write, review and test use cases. The result of this workshop is an increased understanding of use cases and how to apply that understanding in real-life projects. This course is perfect for organizations that need a quick start in writing use cases.

This course takes about 6 hours to complete, including exercises. The narrated slide shows total about 3 hours.

To celebrate the launch of this course, you can get $50 off the normal registration of $349 until January 3rd. Then, the price goes back to the regular price. You can learn more and register at: http://www.mysoftwaretesting.com/ProductDetails.asp?ProductCode=USECASES .

Podcasts on TalkShoe.com

Every two or three weeks, I conduct a live call-in podcast at www.talkshoe.com. You can find the time of the next podcast call on my home page at http://www.riceconsulting.com, or at http://www.talkshoe.com/tc/27009.

You can listen on your computer, as well as over the telephone. Our next call will be this Friday at noon Eastern time (USA). If you are outside of the USA, you can still ask questions by using the chat feature.

You can also listen to past programs at http://www.talkshoe.com/tc/27009

Book Review

Clean Code by Robert C. Martin
Published by Prentice Hall
Buy at Amazon.com - http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0132350882?ie=UTF8&tag=randyricessof-20

(5 stars out of 5)

I knew I was going to like this book after I read the Foreword and Introduction. I know not many people read those and as an author myself this bothers me, but it gives insight to why the author has written the book, which is a very important thing to understand. I was hooked by the affirmation that details are important and that the only meaningful metric is the number of "wtfs" per minute in a code review. For a long time I have kept my "profanities per test session" metric as a way to measure software usability.

Long before I was a software testing guy, I was a coder. Back in those days it was common for rookie coders to sit next to guys with gray hair and bad breath (or if lucky next to ladies with better appearance and who smelled better) to learn the craft of writing code. Yes, coding was a craft before the attempt to make it an engineering discipline. Although there was a lot of bad code, there were plenty of people who took pride in how they coded. This book reminds me of what it was like to sit next to these intelligent people as mentors.

I have often lamented that today's young coders don't have this mentor/apprentice relationship. A reasonable facsimile would be to read this book and practice these very sensible and helpful lessons in coding. As a testing guy who has been through those 30 wtf/hour code reviews, my bulletin to developers is that: Your code can be better! This book can show you how!

Here's one example: Have meaningful names. Instead of a function named "int d", how about "int ElapsedTimeInDays;"? There's a whole chapter about naming things. It reminds me of the coder I knew that liked to label COBOL paragraphs after towns and cities in Kansas. Why? So he could write GOTOs that read "GOTO Topeka." He thought that was cute but the rest of us found it confusing and not-so-cute.

I also appreciated the chapter on Unit Testing. As a tester, I love it when testing is mentioned, but Martin actually has specific guidance on what makes for good Test Driven Development and Unit Testing.

This book is very readable, makes a lot of sense and would make most coders better. For testers that sit in on code reviews, this would be a great read for understanding how good code should be. I wish every coder in college or tech school would read this book before unleashing their creations upon the world.

Calling All Dashboards

I am preparing an upcoming presentations on software testing dashboards and performing research on what people typically measure and include in their dashboards. If you have some helpful input for me or would like a copy of my presentation when finished, please e-mail me.

Quote of the Month

"Wisdom is the reward you get for a lifetime of listening when you'd have preferred to talk."   Doug Larson

(c) 2008, Rice Consulting Services, Inc.

Last Updated on Monday, 16 March 2009 15:39