Dave Whalen's Page

For those of you who have been following my rants on A..., take a look at the cover article I wrote recently that has been published in T.E.S.T. magazine. Here's the link...

http://www.testmagazine.co.uk/

As always, I welcome either supporting or discenting opinions.

Personal note to the publishers and editors of T.E.S.T. - Thanks for the opportunity to voice my minority opinion.

Cap'n Dave

P.S. - The cover picture is kinda cool too. That's the D… Continue

It looks like in spite of the attempts of "A" purists to force a strict adherance to their idea of what "A" should be, most companies are following the true spirit of "A" valuing "cherry picking" of those concepts that apply to each individual development team and process. Carry on you rebelious majority. I will continue my efforts to destroy the strict adherance to any pundit's interpretation of "A". Maybe in the future I will be able to actually utter the "A" word.

Here's the article:… Continue

In my on-going effort to create Dave's Perfect Defect Tracking System (DPDTS). One of my goals is to include actual testers in the project. So as I begin the Project Definition phase I'd like to hear from you - real testers.

What is the value of a tool to you?
What do you look for in a Defect Management tool?
What elements do you see as "required"?
What pieces have you been missing or limitations have you experienced with current tools?
What have you seen in current tools that you really like?… Continue

People often ask me what I think is the best “Test Tool”. I typically give them a less than concrete answer- “It depends.” There are some – a few – that I personally like. Sadly, there are a lot of bad ones. In my opinion, there are more bad than good. I recently finished a project with an exceptionally bad one. I won’t name names here. Sometimes I wonder if they have ever talked to an actual tester. I’m hearing and seeing good things about the new test tools in Microsoft’s Visual Studio 2010, b… Continue

Software Testing Rule #1: We can't test everything!

Well I guess in theory we could. But is it practical or feasible? Typically not. We rarely have the time or resources needed to do it. Even if we did, the product would be so expensive that no one could afford it. So how do we strike that delicate balance of testing "enough"?

Using Equivalence Class Testing or Equivalency Class Partitioning is one technique we can implement to reduce test times, and the number of test cases needed, to a more… Continue