Ridgeback Tested

It’s Time to Embrace the Student Who Learns Differently Last in a series. In my last two posts I’ve written about enhancing the student and instructor experience in the AST’s BBST courses by focusing on updating the Fieldstones and making BBST courses more accessible by identifying some of the more common obstacles to BBST participation, and then working collectively to find ways to lower or remove those obstacles. In this post, I want to discuss the third and final area I would like to concentrate on if elected to the Board of Directors: researching and establishing alternate approaches to teaching that better suit different learning styles. As members of the AST, we have access to some of the best information and training available in the field of software testing. The AST hosts the Conference of the Association for Software Testing (CAST) each year, providing full-day tutorials, keynotes, and track sessions. They also offer four separate BBST courses:  Foundations, ...

Are time and financial worries keeping students away? Second in a series. In my previous post, I wrote about enhancing the student and instructor experience in the AST’s BBST courses by focusing on updating the Fieldstones. Today, I'm talking about another area I would like to concentrate on if elected to the Board of Directors: finding ways to make the BBST courses accessible to more people. When I say “make the BBST courses accessible to more people,” I’m not implying that the courses are in any way exclusive (other than requiring students to be members of the AST) or elitist. What I do mean is there are many reasons people are unable to take the BBST courses, and I think it would benefit the AST, and better help it to achieve its objectives, if we were to look into what those reasons are and find ways to resolve them. One of the more common obstacles I see involves the time commitment required to succeed in the courses. One of our guiding principles is that we view sof...

Honing Instructor Materials is First Step First in a series. The Association for Software Testing (AST) is holding elections for its Board of Directors starting August 2nd at 12:00 a.m. (GMT) and running through August 4th at 12:00 a.m. (GMT). I’ve been nominated to run for the Board, and ask that you cast your vote for me. My involvement with the AST is primarily educational. I’ve been a student in the AST's Black Box Software Testing (BBST) Foundations, Bug Advocacy and Instructors courses. I volunteer as an assistant instructor in the BBST Foundations class, working toward becoming an AST Certified BBST Instructor. I’m also a member of the AST’s Education Committee. So, when I was approached about running for the AST’s Board of Directors, it seemed to make sense that my focus would be on tester education. I think education is integral to the AST’s mission of “advancing the understanding of the science and practice of software testing according to Context-Driven ...

I had the opportunity to attend Noah Sussman's tutorial on Continuous Automated Testing last week as part of CAST2014. It was a great tutorial, with most of the morning spent on the theory and concepts behind continuous automated testing, and the afternoon spent with some hands-on exercises. I think that Noah really understands the problems associated with test automation in an agile environment, and the solutions that he presented in his tutorial show the true depth of his understanding of, and insight into, those problems. Here are some of the main highlights and takeaways that I got from his tutorial at CAST2014. Key Concepts Design Tools – QA and testing are design tools, and the purpose of software testing is to design systems that are deterministic Efficiency-to-Thoroughness-Trade-Offs – (ETTO) We do not always pick the best option, we pick the one that best meets the immediate needs Ironies of automation – Automation makes things more complex and, while tools can make...

I was looking for a bit of clarification on #NoEstimates, and I remembered reading one of Neil Killick’s posts about it that I thought would be relevant. As I was combing through his blog, looking for the post I had in mind, I stumbled across People Need Estimates . What caught my attention was not so much the title of the post, but the image of a red umbrella that went along with the post. That image of the umbrella, along with the title, had me making the connection between #NoEstimates and the work of Peter L. Berger because Berger says that society creates a sacred canopy (or umbrella) to help us relate to the world in a consistent way, and if we are forced to move from under that canopy we face chaos and fear. I began to get excited as I read the article because, whether he knew it or not, and reference to the umbrella aside, many of the points that Neil was making were resonating with what I remembered reading in Berger’s book The Sacred Canopy: Elements of a Sociology of Reli...

If you’re a tester and you’ve been around social media, attended a conference, watched a webinar, read blog posts, or watched videos of other testers speaking on YouTube, you may have heard at least one mention of polimorphic and/or mimeomorphic actions. But what does it mean when someone says that an action is polimorphic or mimeomorphic? Where do these ideas come from, and why, as testers, do we care? The concepts of polimorphic and mimeomorphic actions come from the book The Shape of Actions: What Humans and Machines Can Do, by Harry Collins and Martin Kusch. In the book the authors develop a new theory about what they call the shape of actions. I’ve attempted to cover the highlights and general topics of discussion, or at least what I found most interesting, from each chapter in the summary below. Chapter 1 – Humans and Machines In Chapter 1, Collins and Kusch introduce the reader to their theory which basically states that humans can do three things – they can do polimorp...