Posts Tagged heuristic

The Big Exploratory Testing Rolling Strategy Dice

Marlon Brando said in a role he played: “People win with loaded dice“…
This is the exercise we’re building today, loaded dices – for the win!


…I get by with a little help from my friends. One of the friends at work who pushes me into all sort of good experiences is Issi Hazan. At this example, he invited me to join him in a testing class for the Tech-Career project (a social wellbeing program in Israel that works with immigrants from Ethiopia to form them and prepare them for a job in the High-Tech industry. They were mentioned at this old post about building a portfolio, and at work we volunteer by giving them coding and testing classes).

Issi’s aim is to teach the group strategies for Exploratory Testing.
But how to do that in a single short out-of-the blue session? How do you convey the strategy, heuristics, coverage models, quality criteria in a practical easy-to-get form? How to make it dynamic and not-boring?

In this post we want to run through you this idea for an aiding tool for the instruction — and the execution too — of tests of exploratory nature. Read the rest of this entry »

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STAREast 2010 – Bugs on a Plane!

Last month I visited the STAR East conference. It was over two weeks ago, which on the internet age makes it old news.
I follow my own clock, however, and will start posting about STAR East only now. Scott Rosenberg would call this type of blogging ‘history’ instead of ‘journalism’ (link), and it sounds just as fine.

In next blog posts, I’ll write about what happened at STAR. What happens in Orlando doesn’t stay there.
But on this one, it’s a bit about what happened in the way there.

For some time before travelling, I’ve been thinking about physical problems that resemble computer bugs. “Spirits in the material world”. For example:

In this picture you can (barely) see a water bottle that was forgotten by a worker on my neighbors’ roof. Just like a programmer would forget a temporary variable she invented to get some refreshment from the code inherent limitations, a worker will forget his own refreshment once it isn’t needed anymore.

Read the rest of this entry »

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