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Test Techniques

A collection of 12 issues

Regression testing isn’t only about repetition

Often when I’m chatting with someone about their regression testing strategy there is an assumption regression is all about repeating the same tests. This is a bit problematic because it ignores an important aspect which testers tend to be good at: focusing on risk. A better way to think

BBST Domain Testing – An Experience Report

In late January of 2014, after the Workshop on Teaching Software Testing (WTST) at Florida Institute of Technology, Dr. Cem Kaner and Dr. Rebecca Fiedler put together a 5-day pilot course to beta test a new Black Box Software Testing (BBST) course called Domain Testing. I was one of ten

How To Run Your Selenium Tests with Headless Chrome

The Problem If you want to run your tests headlessly on a Continuous Integration (CI) server you’ll quickly realize that you can’t with an out-of-the-box setup since there is no display output for the browser to launch in. You could use a third party library like Xvfb (tip

What are Quicktests and when are they used?

What are Quicktests? Tests that don’t cost much to design, are based on some estimated idea for how the system could fail (risk-based) and don’t take much prior knowledge in order to apply are often called quicktests (sometimes stylized as quick tests or even called attacks). When are

Selecting a few Platform Configuration Tests

I’ve been developing a GUI acceptance test suite to increase the speed of specific types of feedback about our software releases. In addition to my local environment I’ve been using Sauce Labs to extend our platform coverage (mostly by browsers and operating) and to speed up our tests

The Apple Watch won’t change Testing

Probably. The Apple Watch won’t change Testing, probably. Last month uTest announced a contest to win an Apple Watch. All you had to do was provide a response to this post: In just a paragraph, describe how the Apple Watch will or will not change software testing as we

When to use a Gemfile

I’ve been building a GUI acceptance test automation suite locally in Ruby using the RSpec framework. When it was time to get the tests running remotely on Sauce Labs, I ran into the following error: RSpec::Core::ExampleGroup::WrongScopeError: `example` is not available from within an example (e.g.

Getting better at Domain Testing

In late January of 2014, after the Workshop on Teaching Software Testing (WTST) at Florida Institute of Technology, Dr. Cem Kaner and Dr. Rebecca Fiedler put together a 5-day pilot course to beta test a new Black Box Software Testing (BBST) course called Domain Testing. I was one of ten

The Domain Testing Workbook is available

Cem Kaner, Sowmya Padmanabhan and Doug Hoffman have a new book called The Domain Testing Workbook. I’d highly recommend picking up a copy or at least adding it to your reading list! This book is not just a deep dive into one test technique but it represents a collective

How do you handle regression testing?

Matt Heusser sent the context-driven-testing email group a series of questions about handling regression testing. Specifically he asked: How do your teams handle regression testing? That is, testing for features /after/ the ‘new feature’ testing is done. Do you exploratory test the system? Do you have a standard way to

AST Membership and Learning Goals

It’s official I’m a member of the Association for Software Testing or AST as it’s commonly known. I’ve been meaning to sign up so I can take the BBST Foundations Course, meet some local (or not so local) context-driven testers, perhaps post on their discussion boards

Review: Exploratory Software Testing - Tips, tricks, tours and techniques to guide test design

Some of the first testing books I read were from James Whittaker’s How to Break Software series. Those books, like this one, are laid out in a practical manner with each chapter focused on a specific attack or approach making them easy to read, reference and apply. Perfect for