Software Testing Blog

Did you ever have that teacher who would give up on Friday afternoon and let the class watch a movie? We didn’t, hence your weekend reading assignment. What else are you gonna do while you wait in line for the iPad? That’s what I thought.

So, here are some testing/crowdsourcing articles to help pass the time. There will be a multiple choice exam on Monday. Or maybe we’ll just watch Ferris Bueller’s Day Off instead. Be prepared either way.

Serve Your Stakeholder
“Dr. Cem Kaner describes stakeholder as someone who has a vested interest in the success of the testing effort and/or in the success of the product. Stakeholders could be project managers, marketing managers, product managers, programmers, technical support representative, sales representatives, customers and many others in many different roles. Testing is done on behalf of the stakeholders. Here is a question for you. Have you ever asked who your stakeholder is before you start to test?” (From Parimala Shankaraiah’s latest post on curioustester.blogspot.com)

CNN Believes Whatever Computers Say
“Note to CNN: Information retrieved from an onboard computer is not reliable in cases where the computer itself is a suspect in the crime. No one is claiming that ghosts are causing the cars to go out of control. And there is no evidence yet that a mechanical failure is the culprit, despite the NHTSA looking hard for that evidence. Alcohol is also not a factor in these specific cases (or else we wouldn’t even be talking about them). That leaves two big possibilities: sober experienced people are suddenly forgetting how to drive OR something is wrong with the software or electronics that controls the cars.” (From James Bach’s blog on Satisfice.com)

Five top causes of nasty embedded software bugs
“Unfortunately, stack overflow afflicts embedded systems far more often than it does desktop computers. This is for several reasons, including: (1) embedded systems usually have to get by on a smaller amount of RAM; (2) there is typically no virtual memory to fall back on (because there is no disk); (3) firmware designs based on RTOS tasks utilize multiple stacks (one per task), each of which must be sized sufficiently to ensure against unique worst-case stack depth; and (4) interrupt handlers may try to use those same stacks.” (From Michael Barr’s latest post on embedded.com)

One Book, One Twitter … aka #1b1t
“What if everyone on Twitter read the same book at the same time and we formed one massive, international book club? Usually such programs are organized by big city libraries. Seattle started the trend for collective reading in 1998 when zillions of Seattlites all read Russell Banks’ book, Sweet Hereafter… When the program works—and it doesn’t always—it gets more people reading, more people talking, and more people generally appreciating the written word. What’s not to like?” (From Jeff Howe’s recent post on crowdsourcing.com)

Have a great weekend everyone!