http://www.quicktestingtips.com/tips Your daily feed of short software testing tips... Tue, 15 Nov 2011 12:05:11 +0000 http://backend.userland.com/rss092 en Following up on the last post on starting with a blank sheet of paper, Rick Grey pointed out that when he first starts writing up his notes, he prefers to work in a plain text editor - not a word processor. He does this so his focus remains on content, ... http://www.quicktestingtips.com/tips/2011/11/use-notepad-not-word-when-you-start-writing-your-plans/ When I sit down to write a formal test document, I start with a blank sheet of paper. I do not start with a template. I do that for a couple of reasons. First, I find that when I use a template I spend more time focusing on filling in ... http://www.quicktestingtips.com/tips/2011/11/start-with-a-blank-sheet-of-paper/ When we submit defects, we often include a core set of data that's included on every ticket. For most organizations, this will include the submitter, the environment where the issues was discovered, the steps to reproduce, and often some sort of attachment showing or demonstrating the issue. In many cases, ... http://www.quicktestingtips.com/tips/2011/10/capture-core-information-for-defect-in-an-automated-fashion-if-possible/ This is a test. Think of it as an test of WordPress analytics. No really, you're participating in it right now. I'm curious who's reading this thing we call QuickTestingTips. Here's your mission - should you choose to accept it... There are two steps: Right NOW: leave a comment on this post. ... http://www.quicktestingtips.com/tips/2011/10/hello-world/ When you work with someone for a long period of time, you start to develop a shorthand for communication. Similarly, many of us have found that we leverage a lot of the same heuristics and mnemonics for communicating how we're thinking about the problem and where we're at with our ... http://www.quicktestingtips.com/tips/2011/10/leverage-heuristics-for-speeding-up-recall-when-communicating/ We touched on this one before with this tip from Dave Christiansen, however the topic came up again at last month's IWST. Depending on the tools you use, you might consider attaching automated scripts to your defects. If you can find a bug, and then quickly record a simple script ... http://www.quicktestingtips.com/tips/2011/10/submit-an-automated-test-that-fails-along-with-your-bug-report/ In the past, we've shared a couple of tools for capturing desktop audio and video. In this post, we wanted to reinforce the idea of using audio and video recording tools for bug reporting. Instead of just submitting the steps to reproduce and a couple screenshots, try including a verbal description ... http://www.quicktestingtips.com/tips/2011/10/leverage-audio-and-video-recording-tools-for-bug-reporting/ It can take a lot of time to translate a whiteboard drawing into a Visio diagram. Sometimes it's worth the effort to do so: you plan on making updates over time you know that others will take the diagram and extend it in some way once you digitize it it needs to ... http://www.quicktestingtips.com/tips/2011/10/take-photos-of-whiteboards-and-use-those/ Often when I go to document something complex, I try to draw it out on a whiteboard first. I then go over to someone else's whiteboard and draw it out again - recreating it from scratch and explaining it along the way. As I do this, I get their feedback. ... http://www.quicktestingtips.com/tips/2011/10/start-with-a-picture-instead-of-words/ When you're trying to streamline your test documentation efforts, one aspect you should consider tackling early on is to get everyone involved into a room and to workflow what's actually needed by the various teams involved to be successful. This might include: What documents do we need to create? What sections ... http://www.quicktestingtips.com/tips/2011/10/make-sure-everyone-understands-whats-actually-needed/