Those who have been reading my blog for several years have probably figured out that when I want to learn something, I challenge myself to write a blog post about it. In 2020, I read one book on software testing each month and wrote a book review. In 2023, I learned about one Logical Fallacy each month, and wrote a post explaining it (which eventually turned into my book, Logical Fallacies for Testers). For the next five months, I’ll be taking on a new challenge: learning about the SOLID principles of clean code. I’ve wanted to understand these for years, but I’ve always felt intimidated by th ..read more

One of the first things I learned as a new software tester was how much I hated test case management systems. If you aren’t familiar with test case management systems, they are tools that allow testers to keep a collection of manual tests for reuse. In the days before test automation was popular, they were extremely common. In this post, I’ll discuss why I hate test case management systems so much, and then I’ll explain why I use one anyway, and how I don’t hate the one I’m using. Part One: Why I Hate Test Case Management Systems Reason One: They take too much time to set up Test case managem ..read more

I often talk with testers who are feeling frustration with their manager. Some of their complaints include: • My manager doesn’t give me enough time to automate • My manager expects me to test all the sprint items at the last minute • My manager signs our team up for too much work • My manager doesn’t appreciate how much work I do Have you ever struggled with any of these issues? Then it’s time to learn how to manage your manager! Read on for six ideas on how to do this. Think about what your manager wants The best way to get someone to behave the way you want is to figure out what they want ..read more

It’s a new year once again, and time to think about what improvements you and your team can make to increase the quality of your products! One complaint I often hear from testers is that they have become a bottleneck on their team. They feel constant pressure to get their testing done, and they feel that they don’t have time to do good exploratory testing or write quality automation. In my experience, there are nine main reasons why testing becomes a bottleneck. Read on to see if any of them apply to your team! Reason One: The team has too much tech debt When a product has crushing tech debt ..read more

As you know, this blog has focused for the entire year on logical fallacies. We’ve learned about all kinds of fallacies, from the Red Herring Fallacy to the Appeal to Ignorance Fallacy! It’s time now for the last blog post of the year: the Slippery Slope Fallacy. The Slippery Slope Fallacy occurs when someone assumes that one negative event will lead to a chain of negative events, causing disaster, when there’s no proof that each event will be the cause of the next. This is a common fallacy used by parents when they don’t want to let their teenagers do something. Imagine this scenario between ..read more

The Appeal to Ignorance Fallacy is an interesting one: it states that something must be true because it hasn’t been proven false. This fallacy is often used by people who believe in entities like Bigfoot, the Yeti, or the Loch Ness Monster: they will say that no one has proven that Bigfoot doesn’t exist, therefore he must exist! With an example like this, it’s very easy to see the false logic. The same kind of fallacy is common in software testing as well. Consider this statement: “We know our software is secure because we’ve never had a security breach.” Having no security breaches does NOT ..read more

This month, I’m taking a look at the Bandwagon Fallacy. This fallacy happens when someone makes a choice because “everyone else is doing it”. When you were a child, you may have tried to convince your mother that you should be allowed to do something because all of your friends were allowed to do it. This is the Bandwagon Fallacy at work! The Bandwagon Fallacy is prevalent in many areas of society. One area where this is very obvious is with diets. In the 1990’s, low-fat, high-carb diets were popular. Then in the 2000s, people switched over to the Atkins Diet, which was a high-fat, low-carb d ..read more

This month I’m continuing my look at logical fallacies with the Straw Man Fallacy. The Straw Man Fallacy occurs when someone takes another person’s position and exaggerates it in an extreme way, or makes a counter-assertion that is not relevant to the first person’s position. This is easier to explain with examples, so let’s take a look at a common one: a teenage girl asks her parents if she can go to a party at her friend’s house when the friend’s parents won’t be home. The girl’s parents say no, and the girl counters with: “Why do you hate me so much?!” Of course the girl’s parents don’t ha ..read more

I’ve posted in the past about how to make sure that you really have a bug before you log it; how to investigate a bug; and how to log the bug once you have finished investigating it. But I’ve never posted about how to get your bug fixed. Even if you log a fabulously detailed and clearly described bug, it’s still possible that your developer or your team will decide it’s not worth fixing. So in this post, we’ll take a look at five things you can do to help your bug get fixed. One: Choose Your Battles It may seem counterintuitive, but if you argue strongly for every single bug you find to be fi ..read more

Anyone who does any type of software testing understands that having test users is a necessary part of the process. Generally you can’t log into the production version of an application as an actual user because of security concerns, and test environments don’t have real users. In this post, I’ll talk about why test users are so important, and offer suggestions on how to care for them. Test users make manual testing easier Most applications have different user levels. For example, there’s often an Admin user that can do things that ordinary users can’t. In HR software, there are Supervisor us ..read more