Cambridge Lean Coffee

We hosted this month's Lean Coffee at Linguamatics. Here's some brief notes on the topics covered by the group I was in.

Have You Ever Said "No" to a Testing Task?

are we talking about can't or won't?
... or shouldn't (e.g. on moral or ethical grounds)
does the time in a project's cycle make a difference to the acceptability of rejection?
does the responsibility you take on when offering an alternative (and things later go wrong) prevent people from rejecting?
we've questioned the need
we've questioned the value that could be returned given the effort to be expended
we've questioned the resource available for testing
we've asked whether it could be done by someone else
we've asked whether it has been done by someone else
we've tried to understand the intent, in order to counter-propose

Exploratory vs Fixed Testing

the question concerned the automation of exploratory testing
... where the assumed defintion of exploratory is anything outside of the specified UAT tests (so a per-project definition)
... and it is felt that exploratory testing "takes longer" than UAT
... and examples of UAT given with the question were pretty much happy path
... and the automated exploratory examples given sounded like fuzz testing
some rejection of the premises:
... exploratory for most of us is not defined in opposition to specific UAT
... exploratory probably can't be automated in the way the question suggests
... exploratory (should) exercise intelligence on the part of the tester
... exploratory can take as long or short as you want; that's a strength of it
... you can trade coverage over risk over time over whatever constraints you want on the fly
The distinction the question really needs is probably testing vs checking

Who are Your Testing Heroes and Heroines?

James Bach, Cem Kaner: several of us started with Lessons Learned in Software Testing
Jon Bach: for the early work with James and the structure and business focus he gave to testing
Jerry Weinberg: for constant inspiration across so many aspects of testing
Michael Bolton: so much material, such a great contribution
Lisa Crispin, Janet Gregory: for their work on agile testing
Catherine Powell, QA Hates You: for their unique voices
the lead test architect at work: for the innovative approaches he takes
Chris George: for starting the Cambridge Lean Coffee

Image: https://flic.kr/p/cLXbEq

Comments

Conrad Braam said…

Thanks for the notes, overslept and missed the 2 year anniversary I believe.

December 17, 2015 at 2:18 PM

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