Skip to main content

#30DaysOfTesting update! Day 4 - Share a Testing Blog!

So it's been a tad difficult to do the challenges over the weekend (had school fete, kids parties etc!), so I've changed things up slightly and am going to do challenge 2, 3 and 4 today...


So, first things first, a photo of work...


Whilst this wasn't today, the premise is still the same, this was of a QA++ training session, where we were going through YAGNI and DRY principles (You Aint Gonna Need It and Don't Repeat Yourself) with regards to Software Development, however these principles can easily be applied to Testing, if you don't need to Test for something then don't do it and if you communicate effectively then there's no need to repeat yourself, so it's an art for sure!

For the listening to the Testing Podcast, I'm going to listen to the latest Testing in The Pub Episode on my way home from work, so will no doubt include that in my next update!

And finally, to share a Testing Blog with a Non Testing Person... I've chosen this one: "Testers get out of the Quality Assurance Business" as it's a topic that's close to our hearts at the moment, as we're going to be debating about whether we are QA or Test in a Community event tomorrow, so that should be interesting! (I'm advocating for Test Engineers obviously!) It's important to choose a blog post that the people reading it will get something out of, and not just read it and think "WTF did I just read!?" I think this blog post offers value to both Testers and Non Testers and will hopefully help them understand what we do!

Whilst it's not great that I didn't manage to do any over the weekend, I did manage to do some reading of my Testing Book (Dear Evil Tester), so that's something... The book itself is interesting and I quite enjoy the humourous writing style, though I'm going to finish it soon, so I may end up getting another one, I'm looking at Explore It! as a number of other people are reading it also!

Comments

  1. Nice article... unfortunately the picture of the QA++ session isn't showing... not sure if this counts as #5 Read and comment on a blog post, or #13 Find a user experience bug!

    ReplyDelete
  2. Much better. Now who is that handsome chap at the top of the picture?!

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Treating Test Code as Production Code

It's important when writing automated tests to remember that the code you write should be up to production standards, meaning any conventions that you have in place should be adhered to and that it should follow good design patterns. Too many people often say why does it have to be as good as production code, it's "Only" a test, so long as it passes then that's fine... To answer this we need to look at why we want our tests to be written in such a structured and efficient manner: - Maintainability - by making the test code structured and efficient, it becomes far easier to maintain and in doing so changes in the future can happen quickly as the test isn't linked to anything that it shouldn't be and it's easy to understand for a new set of eyes. - Durability - Again by making the tests structured they should be resistant to changes, if you change a variable name for instance then it shouldn't effect the unit test unless it absolutely has to....

Testers: Be more like a Super-Villain!

Who doesn't love a Super Hero? Talk to my son, and he'll tell you how much he loves them, talk to many adults and they'll say the same! Deep down, we all love to be the Super Hero, we all want to save the day! However, I want to talk about the flip side of Super Heroes, the Super Villains... I often play Imaginext with my son, and I (unfortunately?) am nearly always the Super Villain! Be it Lex Luthor, Joker, Two Face, Mr Freeze or The Riddler! These are all great characters and great Super Villains, but why would I want to write about Super Villains? A while ago where I worked, we had a few Super Heroes, people who would be able to come in and "fix" things that had broken and help deliver projects on time. We then shifted, we decided to do away with the Super Hero culture and try and prevent from being in that position in the first place, whilst we didn't go as far as wanting to hire Super Villains, it's definitely a story that has stuck with me and t...

Using BDD and gherkinising your Acceptance Tests

In my post Testing of Automated tests , I mention about a BDD framework which involves using BDD to drive your acceptance tests. BDD stands for Behaviour Driven Development.  One effective method of writing BDD tests are by using a format known as Gherkin language. These consist of Given, When, Thens. The main advantage of the gherkin language is that it's readable by the business, and in an ideal world forms part of the Conditions of Acceptance around a PBI. Also, using a Visual Studio plugin of SpecFlow , you can integrate your Gherkinised COAs into your solution with feature files, and then drive the automated tests, however, for this post I will focus solely on how to effectively gherkinise your acceptance tests. A Feature file consists of a feature outline, which details what the feature file is testing followed by Scenarios and examples (parameters).  The BDD scenarios are made up of a Given, When, Then... These are effectively an initial state (Given), an action (W...