The Irrational Tester - video and new version of paper

Here is version 1.06 of my paper "The Irrational Tester". SQE have kindly posted a video of (one version of) the talk that goes with it; keynote at STARWest 2009.

TestLab stuff coming soon...

TestLab Followup - not yet...

Bart Knaack and I ran the "TestLab" at EuroSTAR. I've got lots to write about it - but unfortunately (or fortunately) I came back to an unexpected job in the UK. I'll post conclusions, bugs, pictures and more in a day or two. I've not yet submitted the bugs to OpenEMR, either. It will all happen, but not immediately!

For now, read Michael Bolton's blog postings Bravo! and Best Bug, or Rikard Edgren's Notes.

Cheers -

James

Oh for goodness sake

The estimable Association for Software Testing isn't exactly approachable via Google, is it?



As it happens, it's reasonable on Bing.

The AST is an association for testers, run by testers. Perhaps it works on their machine.

I shouldn't be so sarky. I've sponsored their conference before now, in 2006 and 2008. I recommend you go.

(now, let's see if my journal-to-blog tool manages picture attachments properly. Expect to see an edit if it's still bust.)

Exploratory Testers - London 3 July - Prince Arthur, Euston.

As you may know from a previous posting, Michael Bolton and I are going to bring the participants of our separate Exploratory Testing / Rapid Testing classes together, after our classes finish on Friday evening. Please join us!

Date:                Friday 3 July, from 5:30 pm
Place:                The Prince Arthur pub, near Euston station. Reviews from Beer in the Evening and Fancy a Pint. Here's Google streetview, which should help you get there. Being just next to Euston, it's good for tubes, trains, bicycles and other rational London transport.

I think this is a remarkable opportunity – I hope to see you there!

Cheers - James

London, 3 July – Exploratory testers in a pub

Tentative plan: Michael Bolton and I are (separately) teaching in London in July. Our courses, mine on Exploratory Testing, his on Rapid Testing, end on the same day. We've talked about bringing the participants together in a London pub at the end of the course. Yesterday, at the SIGiST, we slipped into an announcement.

We don't yet have a pub set, and one or both classes will have to travel (my course is in the City, Mike's is in Westminster). We hope that we will have an enthusiastic, engaged, but not-too-exhausted group of exploratory/rapid testers, and that by bringing the participants in our classes together, we'll all have a lovely time, and learn some stuff.

Details will be posted closer to time, but are, so far: A group of exploratory testers will be meeting in London sometime in the early evening of Friday 3 July. It will be a unique event. Please join us.

PS - a few places are still available on my course. Details here, book here.

More testers in a pub

If you're interested in testing and based in London, you'll want to be in the Washington pub in Belsize Park tomorrow (Tuesday) night.

http://blogs.imeta.co.uk/RLambert/archive/2009/05/19/the-testing-revolutions-first-meeting-london-tuesday-16th.aspx

The Wash is, funnily enough, only 15 minutes wobbly walk from the LEWT pub (and five minutes by steely steed from Workroom Towers). However, you'll have to tell me all about it – one of my other lives has precedence tomorrow pm. Have a lovely time.

Designing Experiential Exercises

Readers of this blog may already know that I prefer to learn/teach by doing. If your preferences match mine, you'll be interested to know that Jerry Weinberg and Esther Derby are running a public workshop in Albuquerque on the Design of Experiential Training, from June 22-25 (or 26, depending on which web page you read). Details from Jerry, from Esther.

Jerry is, in addition to his other stuff, the master of the experiential exercise. Or so the people I trust tell me. I'm hugely excited to be going to the workshop. Heaven knows why I've not mentioned it here before. Anyway: I'll be in Albuquerque for midsummer, doing fun stuff.

Have I mentioned my class? Getting a Grip on Exploratory Testing, in London. 2-3 July? Looking forward to that, too. It's all very hands-on and participative – and I imagine I'll still be full of the joys of ideas, and just past my Albuquerque jetlag.

Busses and Exploratory Testing classes

You wait for ages, then two turn up at once.

I'm running my course in Exploratory Testing in London on 2-3 July. Details here. This is the course I've taught at Nokia, Google and around the world. It is a limited size, practical, hands-on class, and it is all about testing – specifically, how to uncover problems in working systems in a disciplined and efficient manner. I really enjoy teaching this class; lots of lightbulb-on moments for all.

To our mutual frustration, my colleague Michael Bolton is teaching 'Rapid Software Testing' at the same time, also in London. It's a great class, too. The scheduling problem is ours - but the choice is yours!

There's more to say here, but I've got a lovely on-site hands-on testing gig until the end of the week, and the daily stand-up happens in 35 minutes, at the other end of a 30-minute tube ride. Scrums wait for no man, or, at least, no tester...

Best Paper at STAREast

I'm pleased to announce that The Irrational Tester won "Best Paper" at STAREast. * ** ***

The paper is currently at version 1.0. I'm adding stuff (and sorting out the prose) for version 1.1. Please read it - if you've got any comments, I'd be very interested to hear them.

* The presentation got 9.something out of 10, too.
** In 2002, my paper Adventures in Session-Based Testing (written with Niel vanEeden) won "Best Paper" at STARWest and at EuroSTAR.
*** Three Best Paper prizes! Three! Wahey! ... shutting up now ...

London Exploratory Testing, 2-3 July 2009

Getting a Grip on Exploratory Testing will happen in London, on 2-3 July.

We're at the lovely Royal Statistical Society, near the Barbican, just north of the City.

I've kept close to last year's prices, and even managed a small reduction (you get a buffet lunch in 2009...), so it's £630+VAT. There's an early-bird discount, so if you book and pay before June 8th, you'll get 10% off (£567+VAT). Email me to register, or get into the online registration here: Online registration

This is the course I teach at corporate clients (recently Google and Nokia). It's very hands-on, with exercises and discussions driving the workshop. You'll discover:

• The test design skills to probe a system and trigger a bug
• The analysis skills to model the system and understand a bug
• The discipline to manage your exploration and sustain your bug rate

Exploratory testing is a disciplined approach used to uncover risks and surprises in real systems. It's a great complement to the massive confirmatory testing found on agile projects, and a necessary skill for agile testers, and for any other tester who needs to do more than simply verify that a system is working as expected. Test managers find this course useful for reconnecting with their test skills, and for understanding the challenges of effectively managing a team that is making good use of ET.

Help me work out when to run the next Exploratory Testing class in the UK.

I tend to run an Exploratory Testing course in London once or twice a year. A bunch of people have recently asked me when the next one would be.

Rather than set a date and see who can come, I thought it might be better to gather suggestions for dates. I've set up a survey to help you tell me, and I'm giving contributors a discount. It's a two-minute job, if that. Click here to help.

Note - if you're in mainland Europe, I'll be running a class in Berlin, June 4-5. Details in the most recent Testing Experience.

Cheers - James

Firehose

Gotta love* Safari Books Online.

Every book I was about to buy this afternoon, I find I already have**. It's not the first time, either.

No*** Kaner, no Bach, no Whittaker, no Weinberg, so I still need my library. But for everything else**** – from visualising data to Ableton Live, from Python to a guidebook for a 2-versions-old iDVD, there's Safari.


* I agree that it has a frustrating interface, clunky search, single-source issues, is slow for page-flipping, and the 'tokens' make me cross - but I can read those books right now. And there's no new money to find. And I can search. And copy/paste.
** Or, rather, have access to, while I'm online, while my subs continue, and while the service yet lives.
*** I understand the reasons for all these authors not being on SBO, but pure-testing books are generally under-represented. Use this to see the books in the Testing and Debugging section.
**** Of a technical bent.

Funny bug

Facebook. Hardly unusual, but made me smile.

Just back from Amsterdam and Copenhagen; enjoyable classes, nice feedback, new contacts. Took the train from A to C - lovely.

Common programming errors (in the news recently)

Seen this? 25 Dangerous Programming Errors

It's from SANS, a training provider. I've removed the words "Top" and "Most" to reduce unnecessary hyperbole.

It's culled from this: MITRE's Common Weakness Enumeration. Interesting stuff.

I don't have an opinion on it, yet - but I'd be interested to know who, in the software testing community, does. Answers on a postcard, please. Or a comment here, if it's easier.