Carnival of Testers #19

" #softwaretesting #testing "

“February is a suitable month for dying.” 

(Anna Quindlen)

Well, no, I disagree - not with what was on offer to read in the past month, with blog posts from four continents...



Visual

• I enjoyed the way that Ralph van Roosmalen illustrated the difference between iterative and incremental development, here.

• A nice picture series from Mike Brown and utest.

• A post from Rob Lambert where he points to a video and draws some interesting parallels to communication for testers to non-testers/managers.

Mind Maps

• I got a little worried when I saw the title of Darren McMillan's post 'Mind Mapping 101' - thinking of George Orwell's room 101 - but luckily it wasn't scary and a very readable account of how he uses it in his testing. :)

• Using mind maps as part of reporting was discussed by Albert Gareev, here.

• Aaron Hodder uses mind maps as a piece in the puzzle to create a test approach, here.

Confer-ing

• A very comprehensive account (as usual!) of Belgium Testing Days 2011 from Nathalie de Vries.

• A good overview of the Bug DeBug conference in Chennai was posted by Dhanasekar S.

• Pete Walen wrote about the possibility to get involved in the emrging topics track fro CAST2011. If you're going, and fancy a punt, then check out this post.

• On the topic of CAS2011 you may have read James Bach's recent post about the nature of context-driven testing. If not then here's the link.

Testers working together

• There is no best tester and it's almost wrong to think in those terms, was the topic of a post by Martin Jansson.

• Some good advice from Esther Derby on team construction - the 0th trap.

• Some clever wording in a job description and the thinking behind it was a two-part posting from Thomas Ponnet, with the second part here.

• The importance of the thinking and collaboration, and not the tools, in ATDD is highlighted in this post from Elisabeth Hendrickson.

Miscellany

• The super bowl and bug hunting made an unlikely combination for Ben Simo's write-up, here.

• Dorothy Graham responded to a suggestion that certification is evil, with some background on the original thinking behind one of the certifications. An interesting read in three parts, finishing here.

• The word 'kakonomics' graced the testing blogosphere, courtesy of James Christie. I like the word and must resist over-using it...

• Have you read 'Perfect Software..'? Some are re-reading it. Here's what KC got out of re-reading it.

• Good analysis of a challenge and his response, with an embedded challenge, from Peter Haworth-Langford, here.

• A parable from Pradeep Soundararajan on the value a tester can add to the product - or in this case, costs that they can save.

• Tim Western asked a question challenge, and then posted his analysis and thoughts around the answers, here.

• A reminder from Pete Houghton about sticking to the happy path - even if you don't realise that's what you're doing.

• There was a round-up of different aspects of bias that has been written about by testers, posted by Del Dewar. Good read.

“If February give much snow

A fine summer it doth foreshow”

(Proverb)

Until the next time...