Evil Tester

A while back, Rob Lambert started collecting Nursery Rhymes for the Software Testing Club. Since I enjoy Humpty Dumpty I created a version for STC. It has just become available on the Software Testing Club website, along with Rob’s entertaining take on The Gingerbread Man. They have posted the uncensored version of Humpty so those [...]

We all know by now the following things about test plan documents: a test plan document does not substitute for the process of test planning, a test plan document represents one way of communicating the results of the test planning process, the process of test planning stops only when you stop testing (even then, you [...]

One of the parts of Selenium 1.0 that I never enjoyed was debugging automation that didn’t work. I had to faff about creating custom Firefox profiles with Firebug installed and set to go through a proxy. Selenium 2 makes all of that so much easier. With the code below, my test runs through a proxy [...]

Honestly who doesn’t enjoy reading conspiracy theories? Who doesn’t enjoy putting on the “Helm of Paranoia”. I use paranoia as a learning strategy and as a testing strategy. You can too… For learning: Assume that the author of the book lied to you This forces you to do more research Read additional books Read differing [...]

My testing style, attitude and approach has had many influences. I only recently realised that one of them has become very mainstream. "nothing is true, everything is permitted" Words attributed to Hassan-i Sabbah on his death bed. Specifically ambiguous and open to misuse. Perfect for testing. http://old.disinfo.com/archive/pages/article/id1562/pg1/ This went all mainstream with the “Assassin’s Creed” [...]

  I may have some of the arrows the wrong way around in the above diagram. After all, who really knows what influences what. And as to the “?”, I hope that you decide what comes next.

There exist test ‘concepts’ which, while seemingly simple, have a tendency to melt my brain. Black Box/White Box Testing Functional/Non-Functional Testing Positive/Negative Testing Years spent studying hypnosis and revelling in the ambiguities of communication have left me with an inability to parse language the way I did as a child. I used to have the [...]

Did you enter? Probably not. And if not, you lost your chance to save the world. The survey will remain open as I found many of the answers highly entertaining. So feel free to pop random entertaining snippets into the survey and I shall read them and chuckle. Dare I draw conclusions from the survey, [...]

Well I have learned a lot about the self-publishing process. Any testers thinking about going down this route feel free to email me with questions and I’ll help you avoid the mistakes I made. The delays in the process were primarily my misunderstanding of the process. I have finally received a proof of Selenium Simplified [...]

I used to consider incorporating techniques from other disciplines into testing as something a little different. It felt right, but since the ‘industry’ didn’t do that, it seemed like a way of individually revealing our personal approach to testing. But testing has a secret history. The building of the Traditional Testing Canon has remained shrouded [...]