Podcast Episodes

Software quality, for the most part, sucks. It still sucks, seventy-five years since the advent of the programmable computer. Software bugs are a constant fact of life, thanks to the ubiquity of software and the ubiquity of software bugs. Sometimes the bugs costs millions of dollars or kill people. Why is the reaction so muted? Rather than just accept software bugs as unavoidable, let’s ask the obvious question: Given that manufacturing is able to achieve six sigma levels of quality—i.e., only three defective items per million manufactured—why does software quality still suck? In this webinar, Rex will address some of the real barriers to achieving six sigma quality in software, while at the same time holding software engineering as a profession accountable for not doing nearly as much as we can.

In software engineering, there have been many controversies, fads, and techniques recently. One that has created a lot of noise—but perhaps a lot less signal—has been test-driven development. Does this mean that the testers tell the developers what to do? Hardly. Is it even testing? Kind of, sort of, but it’s not testing as we know it, Jim. Who does TDD? Isn’t it the same as ATDD? Does it have a place outside of Agile development? In this webinar, Rex will expose what every tester needs to know about test-driven development, including giving a small, simple example of how it’s done. Come confused; leave enlightened.

Exploratory testing is a name given for a technique of using knowledge, experience, and skills to test software in a non-linear, investigatory fashion. Is it a powerful and important part of each professional tester’s repertoire or actually magic quality pixie dust? Is this the only real way of testing, or is there room other forms of validation as well as verification? What are the origins of exploratory testing, and who actually invented the technique (as opposed to coining the current name)? Does it always degrade into an unmanageable, unaccountable, random bug hunt, or are there ways to instill order, measure coverage, and build confidence with it? In this webinar, Rex will explore and burst some of the myths of exploratory testing.

Testing is an interesting part of the software engineering process, in that we are engage in a voyage into the unknown. After all, if we could predict the results of our tests in advance, we wouldn’t need to run them. However, if testing delivers only an incoherent, confusing, and possibly even contradictory mass of raw findings in the form of the status of hundreds or even thousands of test cases and bug reports, then what value has testing created? In order to deliver value, testing must deliver insight and confidence to the other project participants and stakeholders. In this presentation, Rex will talk about the problems with most approaches to test results reporting and how to transcend those problems, so that everyone understands the test results and can make good decisions based on them.

How long will testing take? Estimating testing effort and duration is a common challenge on projects small, medium, and large. In this session, Rex will cover techniques that work in both traditional and agile lifecycles.  How many testers do we need? How many test cases do we need?  How many bugs will testing find?  How long will testing take?  Those are good questions, but those questions are often hard to answer.  In this webinar, drawn from three decades of industry experience and materials in his best-selling book Managing the Testing Process, 3^rd edition, Rex will discuss fundamental techniques for test estimation.  

With the prevalence of continuous integration, many people are now incorporating code coverage tools to measure how thoroughly they’ve tested the code. However, few people really understand what these tools do, how they work, and what exactly all the metrics mean. In this webinar, Rex will discuss the use of sophisticated code coverage techniques.  By the end of this hour-long session, you’ll be ready to work with your developer colleagues on enhancing your tests via better white-box coverage. Join this webinar, illustrated with examples throughout, to learn these useful techniques—and why not bring a developer with you.

Our industry is focused on developing software, and, for the last 20 years or so, we’ve been obsessed by the process by which software is developed.  However, since software is still built mostly by hand, are we talking too much about how we develop software and not enough about how we develop the teams that develop the software? Here at RBCS, we think there’s been entirely too much religious warfare about SDLCs, and not enough healthy discussion of how to develop, build, and nurture our people. So, in this webinar, Rex will describe a solid, proven process for determining the skills your team needs, assessing which of those skills your team already has, and putting in place a plan to grow the skills that are lacking. Through this process, you can develop a test team that has the skills and experience needed to succeed—regardless of the chosen lifecycle.

Why do you test? Have you asked yourself that question before? Try it. Then take the next step: Identify two or three colleagues with different roles and ask them why they think you test. Typically, the lists won’t match up very well, and many times the lists include completely unrealistic objectives like, “Make sure the software works right before we put it into production,” or, “Find all the bugs before we ship.” Instead, in this webinar, Rex will explain a process that will allow you to create a set of clearly defined, achievable, measurable set of objectives. This process will also build consensus on those objectives within your team and across teams. Tune in to this free webinar to step out of the confusion and into clarity on this important topic.

How long will testing take? Estimating testing effort and duration is a common challenge on projects small, medium, and large. In this session, Rex will cover techniques that work in both traditional and agile lifecycles. How many testers do we need? How many test cases do we need? How many bugs will testing find? How long will testing take? Those are good questions, but those questions are often hard to answer. In this keynote, drawn from three decades of industry experience and materials in his best-selling book Managing the Testing Process, 3rd edition, Rex will discuss fundamental techniques for test estimation.

You hear people talk about “coverage” a lot in testing, but what exactly do they mean? Three different people could mean three—or more—different things when they use this word. It’s not that those different meanings are wrong, they’re just—different. Test coverage is a powerful and important topic, and it’s time we all got clear on what it means and how to use it. So, in this free webinar, Rex will explore the various dimensions of test coverage and how you can make those dimensions work for you on your next testing project.