Test This Site

A motif in my lectures is the lack of appreciation for testing and testers. In addition, especially in the era of outsourcing, there is simply not enough research done on testing. Since my lecture this week in the Software Engineering class is on testing, I was rummaging through my testing resources. A gem is this site, The Testing Standards Working Party, hosted by the British Computer Society's Special Interest Group in Software Testing. The site offers everything from a glossary to How To's to Papers on testing. Highly recommended!

Do you have any suggestions for testing resources? If so, add a comment mentioning them. Thanks and later!

Comments

[Curtis Eckhardt]

Actually, while taking the lower level programming classes at ASU, I used common testing practices, but didn't know it at the time. When you discussed the different testing procedures that can be used, I realized that I used most of them. I'm surprised that the subject isn't a whole class in itself.

[Justin Hunsaker]

While working on Master's in Computer and Information Systems from FloridaTech, I took a handful of classes from Prof. James Whittaker. He's written a couple of books and has helped organize the Center for Software Testing Education & Research. It has a lots of good articles and slides including introductory coursework. The only disadvantage is that if you're looking for something specific, you may have to dig a little bit to find it.

[Sankaran Namboodiri]

Our organization is slowly recognizing the importance of software quality. As first step, a group was formed called SQA (Software Quality Assurances). The SQA group started working with various software development groups and business areas and standardized testing methodologies for different systems. The group also purchased tools to help the testing process (TestDirector from Mercury). To socialize the changes in testing strategy, they initiated an organizational level campaign by explaining the importance of QA. It was a major change in our software development culture towards a very positive direction.

[Chanviet Vo]

A collegue of mine recently pointed me to the following website: http://www.testinginstitute.com/

I found it pretty interesting reading. They offer online references as well as seminars.

Here's a quick blurb from their website:

The International Institute for Software Testing (IIST) is an educational and professional development organization that has been founded to advance the software test profession by promoting and recognizing professionalism through educational , consulting, publications, conferences, and certification.

How many testing certification programs are there? Which ones are legitimate?

[Nandakumar Rajagopalan]

My company has always been very focussed on testing (some say to the detriment of project timelines and costs). The availability of commercial testing software has been a major blessing- we managed to rollout some major core system changes into production in less than 7 months. The tools serve another critical purpose- testing documentation required by internal and external auditors. Here , we are now requiring all project team members to undertake 1-3 day courses on testing automation and tools

[Rajesh Ramamurthi]

Good article for Testing: Forrester Report, May 2002, "Best Practices For Usability Testing"

[Melanie Zairis]

There are three observations I have about testing - mistakes we seem to never learn from at my company:

1) When design and development timelines slip, we just keep compressing the time allotted to testing. Senior business managers have little appetite to stick to original estimates for testing duration once the estimates are proven false. Why do we fail to include contingency in our project plans (both IT and business)? We must learn to lead by instilling realism in our culture, not this hopeless optimism where we sit in meetings all day and "will" the project to happen successfully (when everyone knows we are slipping daily.) There's always a giraffe in the room that no one wants to discuss...and that's the fact that it is unacceptable to compress testing when development has slipped. Especiallly when the slippage also means that design and unit testing have suffered.

2) We have a QA department which sits in our Infrastructure division and performs very limited testing. They are limited to setting up QA environments and performing minimal performance, load, configuration testing but do not do any testing where a knowledge of financial services or our security/client/transaction data is required. Our users, on the other hand, have no testing competencies to speak of and are not as thorough as required in testing large changes. One day I'd like to help build a QA department which actually understands user interface designs, data, financial concepts, etc. How much more effective that would be! (especially during our compressed timelines where the users are typically also performing training and salesforce communications)

3) SHIFT THE RISK TO THE LEFT OF THE PLAN. It amazes me how willing we are to leave testing to the right (end) of the project plan instead of testing during specs and design. Part of this is attributable to our waterfall methods of requirements gathering, part of it is related to a cultural denial of testing's importance.

The good news is that we are in the process of building a formal SDLC which should alleviate some of these concerns. The bad news is the culture is very resistant to change. If anyone has any thoughts/ideas on the above, please contact me. I'd love to hear how this works at other large firms.

[software testing services]

I think by taking the help of story you can give lecture on testing so that students are able to remember in future as well. You can tell them there is two type of testing that is 1.) White Box Testing and 2.) Black Box testing and then take all type of its testing one by one.

[Diana]

You certainly deserve a round of applause for your post and more specifically, your blog in general. Very high quality material