Software Testing and Development Blog Posts

TLDR: clean recon - using the app to provide knowledge about the app

Using The Pulper v 1.2 I recorded a live recon session to try and create an example of note taking, model building, risk identification and next action identification.

You can repeat the exercise for yourself and see how you get on.

For the first time, in a long time, I’ve had to bypass WebDriver click() method and use JavaScript to issue a click event.

In this post I’ll explain why, and look at the pros and cons of doing so.

TLDR: When we use multiple tools and existing tool features, we open up new options in how we approach our testing. This can help us identify workarounds when we identify testability feature requests, and might even remove the need for the testability feature.

I set myself a Practice Test Exercise. You might want to try it yourself before reading the full text of this post.

TLDR; Apply MVP principles when coding. Code to the API first. The API is internal before it is external. Unit tests with classes. In code testing with classes in combination. In code API testing. External HTTP API Testing. And then if necessary -In memory and process HTTP API testing. GUI.

A long time ago, in a town which I no longer live in, I wrote a tool called Compendium-TA

Commercially that was a disaster: it was self funded, it took a long time to write and I made some poor technology decisions.

I learned MVP and API First Thinking the hard way. I’ll try and explain within.

TLDR; Mobile device connects to travel router making wireshark easy, and easier traffic capture.

I think, although I can’t find the blog post, that I’ve described use of a Travel router for mobile testing before.

TLDR; Testing driven by technical understanding seeks to observe at multiple levels of the application stack and the testing conducted is informed by identifying risks in a model built by observing the application below the GUI.

I created a short live exploratory testing video using Orange HRM

The video is on YouTube and ad free via Patreon (along with many more exclusive videos and content).

When I was preparing for the London Tester Gathering workshop I decided to try and fix a flaw in my documentation workflow.

The flaw was - I find it hard to have an overview of my documentation while working with Markdown. I fixed it with Freemind and a custom script.

This workshop is available as an online course on Patreon

London Tester Gathering Workshops June 2018 - Testability Audit

Audit, Explore and expand your ability to Test and Automate applications.

Title: The Evil Tester’s Test Ability Audit

Testability is different from Test Ability is different from Automatability. In this workshop we explore all of this with hands on examples.

Blurb

Ability is one of the key attributes that elevates your testing proficiency. In this workshop we will evaluate ability from a number of different perspectives:

TLDR; Notes on Shift Left, where I try to explain why I don’t use the term and what I use instead. Evolve, Grow and Improve rather than Shift and Move

For some reason I’ve had a few emails and linkedin questions asking me what I think about “Shift Left”. I thought I’d put out a public answer.

I’ll start with - I do not use the term “Shift Left” because:

• It seems like “consultant speak” and, while I’m a consultant, I try to speak clearly
• It obscures, rather than clarifies, whatever point it is trying to make
• It makes me think of ‘moving a whole thing’ rather than improving the System

Instead I think of supporting the growth and evolution of a System over its lifetime and I don’t need “Shift Left” to do that.

I was tidying up some old papers and found an article I had forgotten I had written. “The Question: Are there any Software Testing Superheroes?”

This appeared in the Eurostar magazine that was handed out at Eurostar 2013. I can’t find any mention of this in my blog or websites when I search, so I’m publishing it here, a mere five years later.