As we begin a new year, hoping it will be usher in global economic recovery, I would like to share what I can find about the collective forecasting in our industry. In my search, I found several predictions about stress testing the financial systems. Hmmm…interesting, but not helpful.
One really cool article on Business Insider showed the predictions of visionaries from 1931 of their view of 80 years in the future. William Ogburn had the best view of our high-tech world:
Technological progress, with its exponential law of increase, holds the key to the future. Labor displacement will proceed even to automatic factories. The magic of remote control will be commonplace. Humanity’s most versatile servant will be the electron tube.
Fascinating! Bravo Mr. Ogburn. Although it wasn’t the electron tube, you have the right idea. Wonder what will replace silicon chips in the next 80 years?
Mobile Performance Testing Predictions for 2011
Joshua Bixby, the President of web performance company Strangeloop, puts forth these prognostications in his article entitled 2011 Web performance predictions for the mobile industry:
- Companies will generate at least 15% of Web sales via their social presence and mobile applications.
- Android will become the No. 1 mobile platform, surpassing the iPhone in terms of units and usage.
- Retailers will realize that mobile shoppers have a goal-driven “hunter” mentality.
- As a result of No. 3, mobile Web performance will become as important as desktop Web performance.
Recently, Tom Cagley of Software Process and Measurement Cast interviewed me concerning load testing. Tom’s blogs and podcasts are focused on interviews, essays, facts and tips about process improvement and measurement in the Information Technology arena. INTERVIEW IS HERE
Tom is Vice President, Director of Process Improvement and Measurement at David Consulting Group, and the author of the hit book Mastering Software Project Management: Best Practices, Tools and Techniques. The book has received all 5-star ratings on Amazon.com.
Our load testing interview not only talks about web performance and stress testing, but it touches on several ancillary subjects of interest to Tom from his perspective with Agile software development. I have worked with LEAN manufacturing process, and Tom applies many of the best practices from this successful discipline in his approach to software development. One mantra of LEAN is, “You can’t control what you can’t measure.” Tom has a keen emphasis on measurement of any metric that can help a team deliver better software.
In fact, he has written several blog posts about Seven Deadly Sins of Measurement Programs that could be quite beneficial to developers studying load testing because measurement of metrics is critical to all web system performance.
Today is the 67th birthday of a musician who has been relevant in the mainstream for longer than virtually anyone else in modern music. Paul Simon was big when I was a child and still has a strong following. I remember the tunes of Simon and Garfunkel playing in our house before I even knew any of the entertainers. “I am just a poor boy…” was more than just a song, it was my story.
The following is an interview with Ryan Cramer, the CEO of RCD, LLC in Atlanta. Ryan specializes in design and development of medium-to-large scale web sites and web applications, and we are grateful he has shared his thoughts with us regarding software testing.
What is your technical background?
This is the third installment of an email interview with James Christie, software testing professional from Scotland. In the first part, James talks about his views on usability testing. In the second part he discusses leaders in usability testing, KPIs, test automation tools, cloud computing, and testing blogs.
James mainly discusses load testing in this last post. It’s my favorite segment. 😉
What would you say is the difference between load testing and performance testing?
I’d say performance testing is a general term that covers load testing too. Performance testing is a rather vague term covering response times and the application’s ability to cope with heavy loads. Load testing is a more specific term. I think of it as a technique to allow you to carry out performance testing effectively. You either work your way up through a series of load levels establishing how the application performs, or hit it with the maximum loads it will have to cope with (plus a bit more to allow a margin for error).
This is the second installment of an email interview with James Christie, independent software testing consultant and owner of Claro Testing Ltd. In the first part, James talks about his views on usability testing, and in this second part he discusses leaders in usability testing, KPIs, test automation tools, cloud computing, and testing blogs.
Living in Scotland, James has worked with large global organizations such as IBM, and he provides consulting services as leader of Claro Testing Ltd. His consulting includes setting testing strategy and budget, writing test plans, supervising test execution. and creating testing processes.
Who are the top 3 usability testing experts that you know? No need to list yourself, that is a given.
In this email interview, software testing professional James Christie, BA MSc MBCS CITP, and ISEB accredited Software Testing Practitioner, talks about his views on usability testing, load testing, test automation, and off-shoring.
My thanks to James for agreeing to share his expertise with us. James has 24 years of IT experience, and he is dedicated to providing professional testing services to his clients in order to deliver high-quality software. I follow James in Twitter and have enjoyed his insights into the testing industry.
Recently I’ve become aware of the existence of videos on YouTube relative to the software testing industry. Ok, I realize that I’m not cutting edge. You may have been watching these videos since before Andy Griffith went into syndication. Yeah right.
Anyway, I thought it would be nice if someone had screened out those that are difficult to understand or lacking in relevant content. After scanning through several of them today, it is obvious to me that I have a much different point of view than some of the reviewers that give most of these a thumbs up. Some are good. Many are not. I hope by pointing you to a few of my favorites over the coming weeks, you will gain some value from my wasted time and spare you the pain of watching all the bad ones.
Here’s a video presentation by one of the most well-known gurus in the software testing industry – James Bach. The posted summary is below the embedded video. Please let me know if you find this helpful.
I recently found and joined The Software Testing Club, an online community of software testers. The site has some very good video interviews of leaders in the industry.
A headline in one of the LinkedIn testing groups caught my attention this morning. Sergey Lesnikov posted a new discussion thread titled, Top 25 Programming Errors for Software Testing. It is on the Software Testing – ISTQB/ISEB group.
Quick summary:
- International collaboration from cyber security organizations
- List of bugs that enable cyber crime
Questcon Technologies hosted an excellent webinar this morning about how testing in Agile is different than traditional development. Officially titled “Assessing Agile Test Teams: Adoption & Effectiveness, the material was presented by Shaun Bradshaw, Director of Quality Solutions. Shaun is very knowledgeable and has Agile certifications (sorry I didn’t write them down).
My top 10 tidbits from Shaun’s discussion:
“I find it rather easy to portray a businessman. Being bland, rather cruel and incompetent comes naturally to me.” – John Cleese
Most people believe that if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. Software engineers believe that if it ain’t broke, it doesn’t have enough features yet.
Project studies by IBM, GTE, TRW, and several other large corporations have shown that an error in requirements detected in later phases of the software development life cycle increases costs by:
- 500% for architectural design
- 1,000% for coding
- 2,000% for unit testing
- 5,000% for acceptance testing
- 10,000% for maintenance
With such an impact on project costs, there is no wonder that few software development efforts come in under budget and on time.
Quality control is an important aspect of software development. Many small software shops skip the importance of hiring a QA department with the attitude that it is cheaper and not needed. The fact is that software development relies heavily on a good quality analysis department to find unforeseen defects. QA departments are often seen as the enemy in a programming department, but QA can greatly help a development team by finding production bugs.
Determining when testing is completed is not always a simple matter. In any significant application, it is impossible to prove that the software will never fail. As an example, Microsoft employs thousands of professional testers for their Testing and QA Teams. These testers receive excellent training and tools. They have extensive backgrounds in software testing and quality assurance.
Black Box Tools and Techniques
- “Bang on it until it breaks”
- Automated Testing
- Regression Testing
- Boundary Analysis
Bang on the Software
One of the most important roles on a software development project team is Testing and Quality Assurance. This role on the team is charged with verifying that the application or system complies with the functional requirements. Or put another way, this role finds the bugs.
Software testing is an important part of developing a program or web based application. Testing the functionality and usability of your website or program is a crucial part of determining if your website or program will function well for users. Software testing usually includes executing a program or performing actions on a website for the purpose of finding software bugs, assessing how the software or website performs under different conditions, and determining if it can manage the amount of expected load when in operation.
Software testing is an important step when designing a website or developing a program. Testing the usability and functionality of your website is important because if your web site does not function properly you may loose potential customers or traffic. Software testing normally involves performing actions on a website or executing a program in order to find bugs and glitches. It also assesses how well the software or website will perform given different variables and determines if it can handle the amount of expected traffic when in operation.
When we talk of software testing, technical prowess in white box testing involves detecting vulnerabilities in the logical structure of the code implementation. White box testing is also referred to as glass box testing, clear box testing and structural testing. It requires testers to create test cases to test the internal path of programs. The tester should have strong programming skills to choose the appropriate inputs for checking the accuracy of program logics
in order to get the required output. White box testing should ideally