Author Archives: Robert Rose-Coutré

“Binary Is Always and Never” — A better binaryesque statement would be “Binary is Always OR Never” but it would be less accurate. Many functions, thoughts, events, behaviors, appear stream-like, flowing, complicated, with millions of molecular, intellectual and motivational subtleties.

A Use Case is not a substitute for a Test Case. I start with this point because there is a growing trend of organizations using Use Cases as Test Cases. Writing Use Cases takes a lot less time, requires fewer … Continue reading →

Where there’s smoke, there’s fire. We smoketest a new build for a quickie reassurance that new fixes basically worked, and did not introduce new side-effect errors. Failing a smoketest tells us the code still has a fire to put out.

Don’t you hate it when people say that you “should do this” and “shouldn’t do that”? I do, especially when they are saying it in a Requirements Document. “Should” can mean a lot of things, but it doesn’t mean “require.”

There are several “schools of thought” in software testing. People who rigidly adhere to one school are very idealistic about a theory of software testing. Older and wiser testers mix and match schools, styles, systems, theories, practices, to fit each … Continue reading →