Test Guide
Making the invisible visible since 1987
The Best Software Writing Indeed!
I just finished The Best Software Writing I, selected and edited by Joel Spolsky. The idea is that...
Author: humbugreality Date: 10/30/2005
My Favorite Things
With apologies to Rodgers and Hammerstein, and Julie Andrews:BVT blockers and feature team...
Author: humbugreality Date: 10/19/2005
Dr. Dobb's + Me
Dr. Dobb's published my article "Achieve More Comprehensive Verification With Less Work" online -...
Author: humbugreality Date: 10/11/2005
End The Positive/Negative Schism!
For any specific feature there are of course an infinite number of possible tests. Humans don't...
Author: humbugreality Date: 10/05/2005
How Do You TDD UI?
Something I've been experimenting with recently is Test-Driven Design (TDD) for user interfaces...
Author: humbugreality Date: 09/28/2005
Sparkle Bloggers: A Compendium
I've mostly avoided linking to bloggers on my team for fear of inadvertently giving away what we are...
Author: humbugreality Date: 09/21/2005
Mrmmmf == Microsoft Expression “Sparkle Interactive Designer”
Finally I can say! The super-secret app I've been working on all this time is the long-rumored...
Author: humbugreality Date: 09/14/2005
I Am Victorious!
I wrote last month about my travails in attempting to unit test an Avalon - I mean, Windows...
Author: humbugreality Date: 09/14/2005
How To Unit Test Avalon / Windows Presentation Foundation
WindowRunner helps you launch a window on a separate thread and then stuff your content into it:...
Author: humbugreality Date: 09/14/2005
Inkboard!
A device I have wanted for a long time is a Mobile Digital Whiteboard, which I've taken to calling...
Author: humbugreality Date: 09/07/2005
A Mobile Digital Whiteboard Device
OverviewPundits have been predicting the paperless office to be "just around the corner" for...
Author: humbugreality Date: 09/07/2005
What Is A Braidy Tester, Anyway?
I have recently been attempting to identify how exactly I add value to my team (both where I add...
Author: humbugreality Date: 08/31/2005
Mrmmmf == ???
I still can't tell you what product I'm working on, but I can finally tell you that we will be...
Author: humbugreality Date: 08/26/2005
Fail Fast
The only way to succeed is to fail. Therefore, fail early and often.Think about the last time you...
Author: humbugreality Date: 08/17/2005
Killing Me Hardly With Its Trash Talk
I've been trying to figure out how to unit test Avalon applications. One might think (I sure did)...
Author: humbugreality Date: 08/10/2005
I Want Testers, Not Automators
I think my team - much of Microsoft, in fact - is going about testing all wrong.My team has a...
Author: humbugreality Date: 08/03/2005
Take My Ideas, Please!
Someone told me recently that ideas aren't worth anything if they aren't shared. For sure I have way...
Author: humbugreality Date: 07/27/2005
The LFM Applied
Jerrad is writing a Logical Functional Model for a website. He is approaching the problem exactly...
Author: humbugreality Date: 07/27/2005
Now That's A Tester!
Hans Bjordahl's very funny comic Bug Bash is published in an internal newsletter. The most recent...
Author: humbugreality Date: 07/26/2005
Verily, 'Tis Truth
Your Logical Functional Model lets you write test cases from your user's point of view, test cases...
Author: humbugreality Date: 07/20/2005
No Guts, But Lots Of Glory
My previous post hinted that the Physical Object Model takes advantage of some underlying magic that...
Author: humbugreality Date: 07/13/2005
A Peek Behind The Curtains
With the LFM defined and hooked up to Execution Behaviors it makes sense to move on to defining the...
Author: humbugreality Date: 07/06/2005
Who Ya Gonna Call?
Once you create your Logical Functional Model the other pieces can follow in any order immediately...
Author: humbugreality Date: 06/29/2005
Use Your Users' Viewpoint
As soon as you have even a vague idea about what your feature is all about you can start defining...
Author: humbugreality Date: 06/22/2005
Nuts And Bolts
All that theory is great, but without a practical application none of it matters. Thus...
Author: humbugreality Date: 06/15/2005
All For One And One For All: Our Complete Automation Stack
Factoring these details out of the test case into intuitively organized libraries allows the test...
Author: humbugreality Date: 06/06/2005
How Do I Invoke Thee? Let Me Count The Ways: The Physical Object Model
Most test cases that manipulate a user interface are tightly tied to the current details of that UI....
Author: humbugreality Date: 06/03/2005
Show Me Yours: Application Internals
Details regarding how data is pulled out of our application’s internal data structures and...
Author: humbugreality Date: 06/01/2005
Did You? Did You Really? Loosely Coupled Comprehensive Verification
Verifying that a test case’s actions had the expected result is perhaps the most important...
Author: humbugreality Date: 05/30/2005
How High? For How Long? Using Which Foot? Data Manager
Many tests don’t care exactly what data they are executed against. Our Data Manager uses...
Author: humbugreality Date: 05/27/2005
One Method To Rule Them All: Execution Behavior Manager
Most user actions in an application can be executed in different ways. As I mentioned earlier,...
Author: humbugreality Date: 05/25/2005
It All Starts With User Features: The Logical Functional Model
Even a small application such as Microsoft Notepad has a plethora of features that must be tested....
Author: humbugreality Date: 05/23/2005
So What Should A Test Case Look Like?
What if you had a test case that looked like this? (Assuming a shape-drawing application such as...
Author: humbugreality Date: 05/20/2005
Testers Are Little More Than Accountants In A Factory
The sum of these factors makes testers little more than factories churning out test case after test...
Author: humbugreality Date: 05/18/2005
Test Is Back-Loaded
All of these problems combine to make Test perpetually perceived as the “long pole”,...
Author: humbugreality Date: 05/16/2005
Test Cases Are Maintenance Hogs
These problems all combine to make test cases a maintenance nightmare. Anytime the application under...
Author: humbugreality Date: 05/13/2005
Test Cases Have Intimate Knowledge Of The User Interface
Test cases do not often make a distinction between the user actions a test case is testing and the...
Author: humbugreality Date: 05/11/2005
Most Of Each Test Case Exercises A Small Fraction Of The Code
The execution section of a test case is itself composed of three subsections: setup, execution, and...
Author: humbugreality Date: 05/09/2005
Multiple Paths Of Execution Cause Duplicated Verification
An individual operation can usually be executed via several different user actions. For example,...
Author: humbugreality Date: 05/06/2005
Execution And Verification Are Tightly Coupled
Test cases are composed of three primary sections: Cache initial state. The primary task for any...
Author: humbugreality Date: 05/04/2005
From Accountant To Scientist
In many of my posts I have alluded to the automation stack my team is building, but I have not...
Author: humbugreality Date: 05/04/2005
There Goes The Neighborhood
They've let me on to the Microsoft Careers "Meet Our People" page!...
Author: humbugreality Date: 05/02/2005
Build Me Up Tear Me Down
It's rather a peculiar state of affairs, but one sign of a well maintained infrastructure is that...
Author: humbugreality Date: 04/20/2005
To Power Point, And Beyond!
I've been reading Cliff Atkinson's blog Beyond Bullets since his first post and have been trying out...
Author: humbugreality Date: 04/13/2005
Show Them That You Care
Apoorva asks, in response to my post from SD on the House Of Quality:But how does one reach out to a...
Author: humbugreality Date: 04/06/2005
Office Space
Yes, I saw that movie in the theater when it first came out, before it was cool. That's not really...
Author: humbugreality Date: 03/30/2005
Stuffing My Brain, Part 08
What is quality to you? How do you measure quality? When is quality accomplished? If you don't know...
Author: humbugreality Date: 03/18/2005
Stuffing My Brain, Part 07
When Jeffrey Richter - who has been consulting to Microsoft lo these many years - talks about...
Author: humbugreality Date: 03/18/2005