March, 2005
Featured Article
How to Destroy Your Credibility as a Tester
by Randall W. Rice, CSQA, CSTE, CSTM Credibility can be destroyed in a moment or can be eroded over time.
As messengers and leaders for software quality, we put ourselves in a position where our own actions can take away from our message. Something as minor as a misspelling in a presentation can cause others in the organization to say things like, "They flag every mistake we make, but they can't even proofread their own writing."
Everyone makes mistakes, but how can we as testers avoid losing our credibility? Let's start by looking at some credibility killers.
Of course, the idea is that you will avoid doing these things so you won’t destroy your credibility. Consider these the pitfalls to avoid. [Read more here]
What’s New on RiceConsulting.com
New Online Training Course - Basic Training in Software Testing
I'm excited to announce that my basic training course for software testing is now online at RiceConsulting.com!
This course contains almost 8 hours of lecture in Flash movies with PowerPoint slides, along with interactive quizzes, exercises throughout the course and ways to interact with me as your instructor. If you can't attend one of my live classes, this is the next best thing. Whether you are in Dallas, India, the Philippines, or anywhere else in the world, you can view this course at your desk, whenever you like!
For more details, visit our e-Learning center.
New Course! - "How to Apply the IEEE Software Engineering Standards"
I am excited to announce a new course series to our extensive set of training courses!
Standards are your friend. They give you guidance and examples. Why spend time developing templates and processes when there are processes that have been developed, reviewed and perfected over the years by many people in many organizations?
This new series of training courses addresses how to apply five of the most commonly used IEEE standards:
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IEEE/EIA 12207-1997 for Software Life Cycle Processes
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IEEE 1540-2001 for Software Risk Management
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IEEE 1058-1998 for Software Project Planning
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IEEE 830-1998 Guidelines for Software Requirements Specifications
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IEEE 829-1998 for Software Test Documentation
In June, we will be adding IEEE 1012-1998 Standard for Software Verification and Validation to the courses
This course is presented on an in-house basis only unless offered as a special public course. The courseware does not contain the standards, but does include as a textbook, "The Project Manager's Guide to Software Engineering's Best Practices." Contact us for information about how to bring this course into your organization.
Leadership Thoughts
"Motivation is what gets you started. Habit is what keeps you going."
Jim Ryan
"Most of the important things in the world have been accomplished by people who have kept on trying when there seemed to be no hope at all."
Dale Carnegie
Book Review
The Project Manager's Guide to Software Engineering's Best Practices
Product Details:
ISBN: 0769511996
Format: Paperback, 552pp
Pub. Date: April 2002
Publisher: Wiley, John & Sons, Incorporated
I always try to bring the very best books to help you in your journey in creating quality software. This book meets that objective.
When I first bought this book, it sat on my shelf for awhile (like many do). When I started to search for a good textbook four our new course on Applying the IEEE Standards for Software Engineering, I read through the book and found it to be a very complete coverage of both the standards and how to apply them.
This is not a dry book. I compared this book to others on the topic and found it to be the most readable and applicable. This book does not contain the standards, but it does reference them heavily.
Don't let the title restrict your reading of it, either. This book is super for project managers, but also great for developers, testers, QA professionals and business analysts.
There is good coverage of best practices for requirements, risk management, verification and validation, metrics, project planning, software maintenance, software QA, software configuration management, and user documentation, plus other topics.
My only wish is that it would have covered more of IEEE 829 on Software Test Documentation. It falls short on covering that topic, but the authors had to contain scope someplace and testing is just my main topic. So, I don't let that omission keep me from highly recommending this book.
Readability - 5
Coverage of topics - 4.5
Depth of coverage - 5
Credibility - 5
Accuracy - 5
Relevance to software quality - 5
Overall - 5
Reviewed by Randy Rice
Tool News
I stay on the lookout for new tools that may be of interest to you. I also review tools, so in future issues you will likely see reviews of these tools. For now, I'm just bringing them to your attention.
From the web site:
"Test Explorer is a product suite for bringing the organizational paradigms and methodologies of automated testing to manual testing, and is specifically designed around the concept of Exploratory Testing.
TestExplorer is an intuitive and easy to use tool that provides both the right amount of structure and a wealth of documentable results, from Ad Hoc testing, Exploratory testing, and Manual Scripted testing.
It is designed to let the tester focus on the test, not the tool. With its VisualTest Playback capabilities, it allows testers to quickly review the proceedings from any manual test, to demonstrate questionable behavior for the development team, or to facilitate root cause analysis."
JStudio SiteWalker Professional
From the web site:
"JStudio SiteWalker offers an extensive and intuitive solution for automating websites and web application to automate functional tests, regression tests with flexible validation or to extract websites content to use websites as data source for your own information systems.
JStudio SiteWalker records web navigations by using Capture & Replay and enables recorded elements to execute specified activities. For each element of websites, test case definitions can be specified or data sources where to save extracted data or from where to import data to enter into website forms, can be defined in easiest, but effective manner - without programming.
The Quick Validator provides validation of HTML elements of loaded pages to specify test conditions for documents content with just a few clicks to enable inexperienced testers to get productive test results within minutes. For professionals, programming JavaScript enables access onto the complete object model of the website to be tested and validated."
QA traq is an open source test management tool that is at stage 4 of functionality with stage 5 to be released soon.
"'QA traq' streamlines test management to enable your test team to concentrate on application testing, and problem resolution. 'QA traq' is a step towards an efficient testing process, increased productivity and improved visibility of your test progress.
If you have been struggling to track you test projects with a mixture of text documents, spreadsheets and paper based records then perhaps now is the time to consider a different approach. Take a look at the QA traq tour and consider the benefits that QA traq could bring to your test projects!"
"Men who do things without being told draw the most wages."
Edwin H. Stuart
Links of interest
All of these links are very informative...check them out!
Metrics to Evaluate Vendor-Developed Software Based on Test Case Execution Results
Test-Driven Development as a Defect-Reduction Practice [PDF]
In-process Improvement Through Defect Data Interpretation
V&V Lifecycle Methodologies [PDF]
A Business Case for Software Process Improvement Revised
"One must learn by doing the thing, for though you think you know it,
you have no certainty until you try."
Aristotle
Last Updated on Wednesday, 28 October 2009 07:42
