Testing

Software Testing is a skilled technical investigation designed to reveal information.

Exploratory Testing

What Is Exploratory Testing?

Exploratory testing was first coined by Cem Kaner who defined it as a style of software testing that emphasizes the personal freedom and responsibility of the individual tester to continually optimize the value of her work by treating test-related learning, test design, test execution, and test result interpretation as mutually

Exploratory Testing

Exploratory Testing FAQs

I’ve come across a number of Frequently Asked Questions about Exploratory Testing and I’ve got what I hope are pretty good answers. Exploratory Testing FAQs Frequently Asked Questions about exploratory testing. Got a quick question? Get a quick answer. Yes, there are many examples where people have used

Exploratory Testing

Exploratory Testing Charters

An exploratory testing charter is a mission statement for your testing. It helps provide structure and guidance so that you can focus your work and record what you find in a constructive way. How to Write an Exploratory Charter My favorite way to structure exploratory testing charters is to base

Hiring

The Future of Software Test Engineers and Codeless Tools

A few months ago I was chatting with Evgeny Kim about some of the reservations I had while exploring a new codeless test automation tool. He was also exploring some codeless tool options and so he invited me onto his podcast to talk about it. We chatted about a wide

Test Design Featured

Good Tests vs Bad Tests and why you shouldn't repeat them

A little rant on this concept of Good Tests vs Bad Tests and whether a good test (case) is a repeatable one.

Community of Practice

Testing Community of Practice (CoP) Experience Report #1

I published an audio experience report about running my first Testing Community of Practice (CoP) at work. tl;dr it was a really good exercise that I intend to run regularly. Here’s an imperfect transcript: Hello everyone, Chris Kenst here, I wanted to talk about running my first community

AST

Better Tester Training Materials

Last month the Association for Software Testing (AST) announced a new partnership with Altom, the owner of BBST®, that enables the AST to refresh our curriculum lineup with the new BBST® Community Track and help fund the future growth of the materials. This partnership and refresh are a huge milestone

Data Analysis

Hiring a Software Tester, an Analysis

In May of 2020, back when Promenade Group was still called BloomNation, I opened a job posting for a Software Test Engineer. This was to be the first of many test positions we eventually hire for. After going through the whole process of hiring a software tester, I thought it

Events

I'm Speaking at TestFlix

It’s true, I’m speaking at TestFlix on November 28th, 2020. You should sign up to join; it’s free to register! I recorded and submitted my 7 minute talk on “Using Test Idea Catalogs for Better Testing”. The premise is: Testers can develop a set of tests or

Testing

The TestOpsy

Back in January I hosted James Bach and Michael Bolton for an AST webinar on the concept of a TestOpsy or a way to learn about the testing you do by dissecting it. Below you’ll find not only a description and the webinar video but a transcription for what

Mac

How to take a screenshot and record video in macOS

One of the nice things about macOS are the built-in tools. A recently improved upon built-in tool is called Screenshot which allows users to take a screenshot and record video. Taking screenshots has been around macOS forever, but taking video directly from OS shortcuts came along in macOS Mojave. The

AST

I’m running for the 2020-2022 AST Board of Directors

Elections just opened for the Association for Software Testing’s Board of Directors for which I’m a candidate. If you are a voting-eligible member of the AST I’d appreciate the consideration as I run for my 2nd term. For those who are voting (or possibly just interested) I

AST

My First Term on the AST Board of Directors

The Association for Software Testing (AST), a non-profit professional organization dedicated to advancing the understanding and science of software testing, has announced a call for nominations for the Board of Directors for 2020-2022. This means my two-year term as a director is coming to an end. I feel fortunate and

Test Design

Regression testing isn’t only about repetition

Often when I’m chatting with someone about their regression testing strategy there is an assumption regression is all about repeating the same tests. This is a bit problematic because it ignores an important aspect which testers tend to be good at: focusing on risk. A better way to think

Year in Review

2019 in Review

My yearly tradition has been to summarize the most popular and important (to me) articles I’ve written over the past year along with some reflections and other forward-looking (and likely wrong) statements mixed in. You can find previous years in review here: 2018 | 2017 | 2016 | 2015 What happened in

Conference

What it means to be a leader in testing

Background: During CAST I sat for an interview with Pradeep Soundararajan of Moolya Testing. We talked about a few things mostly on what it meant to be a leader in the testing space. They made a short video on the interview so check it out or read the transcript. Transcript:

AST

Help me choose my CAST 2019 schedule

I’ll be attending CAST in Cocoa Beach, FL next week and I can’t quite decide what sessions and workshops I want to attend on during the conference days (Wednesday and Thursday). I will definitely live tweet but I’d also like to do some live blogging / recaps / summaries

Recaps

Five for Friday - July 26, 2019

I have now managed to keep my publishing trend of 4 weeks straight with this post! Here are five links worth exploring: * I recently finished reading (technically I listened to the audiobook) Lost and Founder: A Painfully Honest Field Guide to the Startup World. It was a really fascinating book

Heuristic

Do things that don’t scale

If you can find someone with a problem that needs solving and you can solve it manually, go ahead and do that for as long as you can, and then gradually automate the bottlenecks. – Paul Graham With the title of Automation Engineer it might seem like automating bottlenecks is “my

JavaScript

Participating in Code Reviews as a Tester

Have you ever wondered what a code review is and/or what it’s like to participate in one? Are you a tester, product or business person who regularly interacts with the output of the code but wonders if they could catch bugs earlier by “shifting left”? Turns out you

Tradition

Move fast and make things better

I much prefer the saying move fast and make things better over move fast and break things. The latter might be more popular but the former is more realistic. Moving fast (software agility) used to be a business advantage but now, at least for any service business, it’s mostly

Debugging

Join my Webinar on Participating in Code Reviews as Tester

Last year I wrote an article for Stickyminds about Participating in Code Reviews as a Tester where I made the case for Code Reviews being more than just a chance to catch bugs. They also serve as a chance to see how something is built and have a conversation about

Recaps

late-April Updates

April has come and is nearly gone without any prose being published. I couldn’t have that. You see I’ve been writing but I haven’t condensed that prose into a nice enough package to share. In the meantime lots of things are happening that are worthy of sharing:

Quality

Quality Equals Profit – Understanding Quality Helps Us Test

A coworker sent me an email about a conversation he had with one of our executives about risk and how quality played into her decision making: “She [the executive] was giving me some insight… As we were discussing the balance of quality policies (as we experienced them in the beta

Year in Review

2018 In Review

As it has become a yearly tradition I will attempt to summarize the most popular and important articles I’ve written over the year along with some other forward-looking (and likely wrong) statements mixed in with past reflections. You can find previous years here: 2017 | 2016 | 2015 What happened in