Making BIG Testing a BIG Success
By Hans Buwalda
There is no one recipe to make big testing a big success. It takes planning and careful execution of the various aspects, like test design, infrastructure and organization – a mix that can be different for each situation in which you may find yourself.
In writing about big testing, the first question that comes up is, “What is ‘big’?” In this article, “big” means, well, a big test.
Now, that does not necessarily mean a big system under test. There are, in fact, a number of factors that can make for a substantial testing effort. They include:
Expanding Usability Testing to Evaluate Complex Systems
By Ginny Redish
When you think of usability testing, do you think about working with someone for an hour or two, watching and listening as they do a series of short, discrete scenarios where there is a clear ending or a correct answer for each scenario?
For most of us that’s a typical usability test. It’s the type of usability test assumed by the Common Industry Format (ISO/IEC 25062, see http://zing.ncsl.nist.gov/iusr/). It’s the type being discussed for the CIF-Formative (Theofanos and Quesenbery, 2005). It’s the type that the various CUE studies have focused on (see http://www.dialogdesign.dk/CUE.html).
Vietnam: Rice Country
By Brian Letwin
Rice and Vietnam are almost synonymous. Not only does the staple make up the country’s culinary soul, it also helps keep its people in good health.
2010-2011 Global Testing Survey Results – Demographics of the Respondents
In this installment of the 2010-2011 Global Testing Survey, we analyze the demographics of the more than 100 respondents from 14 countries. The next and final installment will analyze the “For Managers” section of the survey.
Book Review: Project Management of Complex and Embedded Systems
By Marcin Zręda
I am not a big fan of concepts which moves industry standards to IT. I am rather a Agile and Scrum guy. Managing multiple projects at once and trying to set a highest quality standard is a challenge and this book shows how industrial language can be translated into software development. I do not think that it is a IT project Bible but it is a some kind of handbook for multiple project management purposes. Not easy and not obvious but worth reading to imagine some structural and complicated issues. Second part of the title is “Ensuring Product Integrity and Program Quality” – great catchword, let’s see if there is an answer.
Authors Jon M. Quigley and Kim H. Pries are well known project management authorities. Kim is an author of a book regarding Six Sigma for New Millennium, Jon is a project management consultant with many years experience in software and hardware development. The book written by practitioners is compact, concise and based on the problems and solves them. Quickly get answers for your questions. There are many charts, diagrams and schemas. “War stories” that end every chapter give us a concrete solutions for real life issues.
I will explain a few chapters, which were taken especially in my memory. Every project manager will find something valuable.
How to Write a Great Software Test Plan
By Robert Japenga, MicroTools
With complex software systems, you can never test all of the functionality in all of the conditions that your customers will see. Start with this as a fact: You will never test enough!
Step 2 in getting started is to read and re-read The Art of Software Testing by Glenford Myers. This classic will set the stage for understanding some of the strategies and methodologies for testing software. He provides a good definition of a number of terms we will be using in this article. Myers makes a simple statement that most of us miss when we test:
[Software] Testing is the process of executing a program with the intent of finding errors.
Glossary: Big Testing
Ultra-large-scale system
An ultra-large-scale systems (ULSS) is one which has the characteristics of:
- operationally independent sub-systems;
- managerially independent components and sub-systems;
- evolutionary development;
- emergent behavior; and
- geographic distribution.
A Big and Complex Interview
For this interview, we talked to Greg Wester, Senior Member Technical Staff, Craig Jennings, Senior Director, Quality Engineering and Ritu Ganguly, QE Director at Salesforce.
Salesforce.com is a cloud-based enterprise software company specializing in software as a service (Saas). Best known for its Customer Relationship Management (CRM) product, it was ranked number 27 in Fortune’s 100 Best Companies to Work For in 2012.
What is big or complex about your system (users, physical size, data, load, distribution, safety, regulation, security, other)?
The Seven Most Stunning Website Failures of 2011
Apica, a leading load testing and performance-monitoring provider for cloud and mobile applications, recently offered its list of the “Seven Most Stunning Website Failures of 2011.”
“This year’s list proves that ongoing website failures and performance problems are costing companies lost revenues and damaged reputations. As you can see, even the biggest in the business are suffering. When a website goes down, an online business has effectively shut its doors and is left wondering ‘Will that visitor ever come back?,’” said Sven Hammar, website performance optimization expert and CEO for Apica. “Website failures and performance problems can be minimized greatly by simply conducting on-going testing and monitoring to avoid being the next big failure story.”
