Cook It Up

"new-tester" commented on my Hallmarks of a Great Tester post to ask

"I was wondering if you know where one can find a complete classification or description of class of bugs as you refered above. I don't mean generic classification but more specific, eg. 'Loss or overwriting updated data', etc."

I don't know of a such a list offhand, but Googling for "software bug cookbook" (such a list is often called a cookbook, since you simply follow the instructions one by one, just as though you were working through a recipe for Peanut Butter Pie or some other delectable nosh) turned up bunches, including

• Cem Kaner, et. al.'s classic Testing Computer Software has a list of common software errors in an appendix.
  Brian Marick's The Craft of Software Testing has a set of testing checklists.  His website https://www.testing.com has all sorts of nifty information about testing, too.
• Boris Beizer's Software Testing Techniques contains a bug taxonomy.
• Giri Vijayaraghavan wrote his master's thesis about developing a bug taxonomy for e-commerce (ECommerce Taxonomy, Bugs In Your Shopping Cart: A Taxonomy Paper, and Bug Taxonomies: Use Them To Generate Better Tests).  https://www.testingeducation.org has oodles of information about testing in addition to these specific papers.

It's not exactly what "new-tester" is looking for, but as I test I frequently refer to what I call my Did I Remember To list.  (Some people call this an Am I Done Yet list, but I don't like the connotations that come along with that name.)  This is by no means a list of everything that needs tested but rather a checklist of easily-forgotten items.

The list is rather long, so I've posted it as an article.  If you're an Office tester, this list will look familiar as my five years at Visio greatly contributed to its contents!  Suggestions for additions are gratefully accepted.

*** Comments, questions, feedback?   Want a fun job on a great team?  Send two coding samples and an explanation of why you chose them, and of course your resume, to me at michhu at microsoft dot com.  I need a tester and test lead, and my team needs a data binding developer, program managers, and a product manager.  Great coding skills required for all positions.

Comments

• Anonymous
  July 08, 2004
  The comment has been removed
• Anonymous
  July 08, 2004
  Dagnabbit! I thought I had fixed that. Oh well. It's fixed now. Thanks for letting me know!