http://oredev.org/2012/sessions/budgeting-reality-a-new-approach-to-mock-objects

Great presentation with great learnings out of controlled experiments

• UX principle: “Don’t make me think”
• Controlled experiments are not the panacea for everything -> see paper
• If you’re going to experiment, try more variants, especially if they’re easy to implement

Great examples of AB testing for user screens.

The presentation
http://www.exp-platform.com/Documents/2012-09%20ACMRecSysNR.pdf

The related paper
http://www.exp-platform.com/Documents/controlledExperimentDMKD.pdf 

Great insights into Elisabeth’s daily troubles. Worth the 30minutes

My favourites (which I see a lot)

• Why doesn’t separation of duties between engineers and testers work?
   (01:49)
• What’s wrong with the approach of writing and executing manual test scripts?
  (07:53)

http://continuousdelivery.com/2012/10/elisabeth-hendrickson-discusses-agile-testing/ 

The article sheds some light on test terminology.

Some important ones are missing like:

• Smoke test
• Black and White Box test
• Penetration test or 
• Sanity Testing

Wow! No wonder we are overwhelmed!

—-> Don’t be afraid to ask if someone throws these terms around!

Full article
http://net.tutsplus.com/tutorials/php/deciphering-testing-jargon/

Great explanation from fellow trainer Ralph Jocham about ATDD + Scrum, where he explains how to approach testing in Scrum with the goal to have a “ATDD Ready Sprint Backlog”

This is one of the topics ATM that I am most excited about

BTW: Steve Freeman has exactly done this with an XP team in London
My recap 

Sustaining an XP team over 7 years
http://gfader.tumblr.com/post/19004526097/qconlondon-recap-sustaining-an-xp-team-over-7-years  

Ralhp’s article here
Creating an ATDD Ready Sprint Backlog in Scrum http://www.methodsandtools.com/archive/atddreadysprintbacklog.php

thinking before debugging is extremely important

Nuff said!

http://www.informit.com/articles/article.aspx?p=1941206

Great article that goes into the details behind testing “SQLite”.

Every project should have these test harnesses as a goal

the project has 1177 times as much test code than production code

How SQLite Is Tested
http://www.sqlite.org/testing.html

Great article that goes into the details of testing Android apps.

• Android is growing -> 850,000 new activations per day 

Key challenges in testing mobile apps

• Amount of different devices, software versions, …
• How to tighten the feedback loop

Good

• Specialty shops handle mobile QA testing now like Testology
• It was harder in the past

So while Android fragmentation seems like a headache, your dad’s mobile app maker was trudging seven miles uphill in the snow QA testing with 400 different phones and dealing with business development people from a hundred carriers.

Full article
http://techcrunch.com/2012/06/02/android-qa-testing-quality-assurance/  

• Defect Reduction
• Faster Feature Time to Market (aka Cycle Time)
• Improved Focus
• Parallel Efforts Without Conflict

Full article:
The ROI of TDD (Test Driven Development)
http://powersoftwo.agileinstitute.com/2012/08/the-roi-of-test-driven-development.html

Heaps of good stuff in this article from Patrick Smacchia about writing tests

Best bits

The tests should be written before the functionality that is being tested’.

I don’t agree with that. Tests for a portion of code should be written at the same time as the code itself.

———-

About Code contracts and assertions (Debug.Assert)

Assertions in tests are not much different than code contract assertions.

Although Code Contracts are way slower on compile time, which is #pain.

————————

It is a good practice to tag a class that has been 100% covered with an arbitrary [FullCovered] attribute, because it documents that the class is, and must remain 100% covered

Great idea. The build should fail if someone is not following that rule (marked by the attribute)

———-

…writing a complete test suite naturally leads to good design, enforcing low coupling and high cohesion.

Great recap!

Full article: On Writing Unit Tests for C#
http://www.simple-talk.com/dotnet/.net-framework/on-writing-unit-tests-for-c/

Best bits from the article by James Grenning

Every iteration, not only does the new functionality have to be tested, but the prior iterations’ working features have to be retested too. No problem, just add some more resources; I mean plug compatible testing units; I mean people with the needed skills and knowledge.

Full article from James Grenning

Manual Test is Unsustainable
http://www.renaissancesoftware.net/blog/archives/206

Best part

ATDD isn’t about a tool like FitNesse, Cucumber, or Robot Framework. ATDD is about making sure that your development team develops the right product

What I was missing in that article is

#1 “Gherkin” as a DSL that helps discuss a specification between shareholders, business people and developers

#2 Distinction between Feature and Scenarios

Getting Started with ATDD: Overcoming the Biggest Mistakes Right from the Start
http://www.informit.com/articles/article.aspx?p=1905549

Great article about detaching your code from 3rd party libraries

In the middle of the article Misko asks: ‘What would an ideal API look like for my application?’

My 2c: TDD helps to answer that question

If you use 3rd party libraries, make sure to be independent from them à Adapter to the rescue

Have I mentioned the value of testing?

Interfacing with hard-to-test third-party code
http://misko.hevery.com/2009/01/04/interfacing-with-hard-to-test-third-party-code/

Don steps through Unit-Testing, TDD and BDD to help us write maintainable high-quality code.
Who doesn’t want that? 

Questions to consider:

• Should you test private methods?
• Should you test every getter/setter?
• What changes when you call your tests, “behaviours”?

Find the recording and many more on the Scrum.org webcast website

Adopting Test-First Development with Don McGreal
http://www.scrum.org/webcast

Great article with the history behind of BDD and the “differences” between ATDD and BDD.

A great statement can be found in the comments:

I also conclude in that video that the difference doesn’t matter – as long as we’re delivering products that matter.

http://lizkeogh.com/2011/06/27/atdd-vs-bdd-and-a-potted-history-of-some-related-stuff/