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  • Representing Agile Testing

    Several members of the Agile community describe different styles for expressing user story tests and the testing of an entire theme.

  • Ensuring Product Quality at Google

    James Whittaker, a former Microsoft architect, author of several books in the “How to Break Software” series, and currently Director of Test Engineering at Google, has written a series of posts on how Google does testing. Google blends development with testing, having relatively few testers, and each product goes through successive channels before is ready for prime time.

  • The Holy Grail of Zero Defect Systems

    While, zero defects sounds very good to hear, is it really possible or is it an unachievable goal? Many organizations adopt a 'zero defects methodology'. Does it really mean anything?

  • How To Complete Stories Without Leaving Bugs Behind

    What can you do when unacceptable numbers of stories are "done" with development, but they still have many quality problems?

  • Big Ball of Mud, Still the Most Popular Software Design

    Big Ball of Mud, is a code jungle which is haphazardly structured, sprawling, sloppy and connected by duct-tape. Over the years we have been introduced to various guidelines such as SOLID, GRASP and KISS amongst age old, high cohesion and low coupling to deal with this Mud. However, the situation still remains bleak and Big Ball of Mud seems to be a popular way to design and architect software.

  • W3C Releases Unicorn Web Validation Tool

    W3C has released Unicorn, a one-stop tool to help people improve the quality of their Web pages. Unicorn combines four popular tools, including the Markup validator, CSS validator, mobileOk checker, and Feed validator, with a single interface.

  • What Color is your Backlog?

    At the recent SDC conference in Wellington Prof Philippe Kruchten delivered a talk titled “What Color is Your Backlog”. The thrust of his talk is about bringing a focus on architecturally significant aspects of software into Agile projects, along with delivering the functional components of the system. He uses a color metaphor to illustrate the importance of addressing four types of work.

  • Temporary Code, Sustainable Code and Everything in Between

    There is code which is well tested, well re-factored and built to last. There is also code which is planned to be thrown away in a few days. Between these two extremes, there is a lot of gray area. The code in this gray area is written with the presumption that it would be cleaned up later but is never done.

  • Empirical Studies on Software Quality Mythology

    Microsoft has released a summary of research findings that challenge traditional software-engineering mythology. Can code coverage really improve product quality? Does TDD take more time? What impact does a distributed team have on quality? Are assertions useful?

  • EU Software Libability lawsuit: half say unit testing is the answer

    52% of the .NET developers surveyed by Typemock think that unit testing can help companies avoid law suits associated with the proposed EU software liability bill. What does this say?

  • Coping with Bugs on an Agile/Scrum Project

    An often asked question is how does Scrum recommend a team to handle bugs? Should they be placed on the product backlog? Or on a separate bug list? If they’re on the backlog, does the Product Owner get to set their priority or are they automatically the most important items? Should there be a separate bug fixing sprint?

  • Code quality for teams

    Jaibeer Malik has posted an introduction of how to address and introduce code quality within a team. His series of posts may suite you if you are in a situation where you have to either learn more yourself or introduce these ideas to others. The series provides a brief overview of the topic and gives pointers in different directions of where to go to study more.

  • Top Ten Reasons to Love Agile Testing

    What are the top ten reasons that Tester's love Agile Testing? Kay Johansen recently asked this question and got responses from many of the leading testers.

  • Presentation: A Tale of 2 Systems

    In this video recorded during QCon London 2008, Pete Goodliffe presents two Linux-based audio products with a complete different outcome, software design making the difference.

  • Dedicated Tester on an Agile Team

    The need for dedicated testers on an Agile team has been long discussed and debated. In many Agile teams dedicated testers play a pivotal role where as in others developers double up as testers. A recent discussion on the Scrum Development group tries to revisit the need for having a dedicated tester on the team.

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