Software Testing Blog

Here’s a quick Q&A with Carl Shaulis, QA Engineering Manager at HomeAway.com. Carl has been testing software for 10+ years and has over 15 years of management experience. Here, Carl explains his presentation on Testing in the World of Kanban.

Want to see more interviews from STPCon? Check out the full list here.

We’ve talked to a lot of people this week at STPCon, but nobody can quite create waves like Lanette Creamer. Outside the box is where Lanette exists, and she’s constantly looking for new ways to challenge the mindset of software testing and push it forward. When she’s not blogging, she’s building her new test consulting business, training others, and promoting software testing best practices.

We caught up with Lanette and asked her about her STPCon presentation. She’s a strong advocate for pairing different kinds of people together so that they can each learn new things. Today, she talked about pairing programmers with non-programmers. Here’s her summary:

If want want to read more from Lanette, check out our Testing The Limits conversation with her from 2010.

Our next interview in our STPCon 2011 video series is with Justin Hunter, the founder and CEO of Hexawise. He had just finished giving a presentation about best practices for documenting tester instructions, so he had a little bit to tell us about his favorite approach for communicating with testers. Take a look:

Want to see more interviews from STPCon? Check out the full list here.

What can you learn about testing from Harry Potter? That was the subject of Peter Walen’s presentation here at STPCon, which shared some great lessons about software testing magic with a room full of muggles. Pete took a few minutes and gave us a summary in this next video in our STPCon 2011 video series:

Want to see more interviews from STPCon? Check out the full list here.

Next up in our STPCon 2011 video series is Yvette Francino, editor of SearchSoftwareQuality.com. You’d be hard-pressed to find someone with more QA connections than Yvette, who’s interviewed virtually all of testing’s notable figures in her tenure as editor.

Well, this time the tables are turned. Here’s our quick Q&A with Yvette:

Want to see more interviews from STPCon? Check out the full list here.

Are you managing testing? Or managing the test process? That’s the subject of Fiona Charles’ latest presentation at STPCon. With 30+ years experience in software development, Fiona has managed testing and consulted on testing on many challenging projects for clients in retail, banking, financial services, health care, telecommunications and emergency services. To learn more about her, check out her website.

Here is her short video interview:

Want to see more interviews from STPCon? Check out the full list here.

We’re excited to share the details of our fourth uMeetup event – held in Shenzhen, China. In case you missed the details of our other 3 uMeetup events, you check them out here. uMeetups are local networking events organized by top testers and sponsored by uTest. Invitations are extended to all software testers in the local vicinity to meet in person, listen to presentations on special software testing topics, and learn more about participating in paid projects with uTest.

Colin Zhang, a silver uTester organized this latest uMeetup where testers gathered from Hong Kong, Shenzhen, and Guangzhou. They enjoyed making introductions, exchanging testing experiences, and generally enjoying each other’s company. Meeting at a Starbucks at Zhongxin Square,  lively and caffeinated discussions were surely had.

We’ve received some great feedback from testers who have taken part in uMeetups in the past. Being passionate about testing and about uTest seems to be a common thread that brings these testers together.

Want to have a uMeetup in your area? Check the forums to find the one nearest to you. If you don’t see your country on the list  apply for a sponsorship here.

Take a look at a  few pictures from the event after the jump:
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Here’s the latest interview in our STPCon 2011 video series. Jerry Odenwelder (a product owner) and JoEllen Carter (a tester) from VersionOne weren’t communicating as well as they could. So the two of them got together and realized that product owners are from Mars and testers are from Venus. Realizing this was worth telling the world, they put together an STPCon presentation. Here they are with a synopsis:

Want to see more interviews from STPCon? Check out the full list here.

Are you attending STPCon this week in Dallas, TX? If so, good for you! If not, well have we got a treat for you. uTest is a platinum sponsor for STPCon this year, and we’re here meeting with some of testing’s top experts and thought leaders. Oh, and did we mention that we brought along a video camera, too?

For the next couple of days, we’re going to be sharing some quick video interviews with some of the testing world’s smartest people. Keep an eye on the uTest blog to hear some great testing ideas about testing, agile, Harry Potter (wait, what?) and to find out what’s happening here at STPCon.

First up, we got to talk with Rex Black. Besides being an author and former president of ISTQB, Rex was also a Testing The Limits guest back in November, 2010. He’s currently the president of RBCS, Inc., a leader in software, hardware, and systems testing. To learn more, check out the RBCS blog, or follow them on Twitter, Facebook and YouTube.

Rex’s keynote was about the importance of metrics in testing. Not just any metrics, mind you. The right metrics!

Want to see more interviews from STPCon? Check out the full list here.

As you probably know, uTest is all about the community. In fact, we built this company on the idea that testing could be greatly enhanced by leveraging a global community diverse in terms of skill sets, experience, locations and other criteria.

As we discovered, one area where the community showed great value – but posed an even greater challenge – was in the creation, distribution and execution of test cases. At first it sounds easy: You describe your application/requirements and your virtual testing team follows your guidance. But with a community of 45,000+ testers, maintaining an orderly process across so many matrix combinations (device, platform, version, carrier, etc) isn’t always easy.

So over the last 9  months we decided to take a smarter approach. We asked ourselves: What’s the best way to distribute testing assignments across a global community of testers? How can we create a community that’s optimized for test cases – one that would give any testing manager the capability to capture feedback from various teams, on different environments, at the same time?

Short answer: Partner up with open source pioneer Mozilla to launch CaseConductor!

Why uTest and Mozilla? 

Of course, Mozilla also relies on the development and testing efforts of its community members to create/enhance products and help find bugs. With dozens of products and millions of end users, managing the open source community is a challenge for Mozilla as well. So when Mozilla started leveraging the uTest community, we learned pretty fast that Mozilla shared our same test management challenges. That’s where CaseConductor comes in.

What is CaseConductor?

CaseConductor is an open source test case management system that allows in-house QA teams, outsourced testers, and even community-based testers to collaborate, create, manage and execute test case libraries.  As a result of uTest and Mozilla’s partnership announced in April of this year, CaseConductor beta is now available for download in a github.com repository, where developers and QA managers are encouraged to start leveraging this powerful tool, view source code, provide feedback on usability, and ultimately help advance the development of this TCM system..

Why CaseConductor? 

We decided that CaseConductor would be developed with three core values in mind:

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