Among the several precision disciplines that define our roles as testers, feature confirmation and regression testing stand out as true stalwarts. They anchor our work in structure - feature confirmation acts as a beacon, shining light on the path defined by product requirements, while regression testing is a rigid indoor exercise, guarded by the blueprint of specific instructions dictating the what and the how of our testing.

Yet, there is another technique that seems to dance in the diffused, stimulating glow of the software testing spectrum. Like a swing dancer in a ballroom of waltzes, exploratory testing breaks away from the steady pattern and exhales a breath of fresh air into the otherwise rigorous, often impervious field of testing. Born from the context-driven school of thought, exploratory testing advocates for a hands-on, reflexive approach, allowing testers to tap into their creative reserves. More...

You've been through the process, that complex yet thrilling journey of transforming an abstract concept into a functional system. But as the wheel of time rolls on, the evolution of your product brings on complexities. Not only do you have to build new functionalities, but you also have to ensure they do not disrupt any past ones. Enter the Regression Testing. More...

Software testers have an integral role to play in the software development cycle with their principal task being ensuring that the system's features work as per the specified requirements. If you're engaged in developing fresh software or enhancing an existing one, your testing team will most likely invest considerable time in feature verification.

However, feature testing isn't an exclusive reserve of the development process. When adopting commercial off-the-shelf software, you're likely to undertake a good deal of feature-by-feature testing. Similarly, for software being developed in an iterative manner, testers progressively authenticate each new feature as it becomes part of the deployed environment. More...

In every realm of work, there is a uniqueness that demands recognition. This truth shines brightly in the world of software testing. It is critical to understand that no two software development projects, even those sharing a technological DNA, can truly be considered identical. Various variables - from the environment within which they're created to the team orchestrating their inception – build unique compositions of software ecosystems. And for us, the software testers, it is paramount to understand and consider these peculiar compositions.

Let's dig a little deeper into some specific examples. Picture this - a software product is on your testing radar. You must determine its peculiarities that could significantly influence test execution. First, you have to understand the technology underlying your product. Is it a web application? A mobile application? Perhaps it's a comic mixing of both? You need to understand what languages and software libraries are used, the platforms the product operates on, and the product’s unique architecture. Is there an API serving as a bridge to the client? How does it store data: is it in a relational or a document database? Also, try to grasp how the software is integrated with other systems and the nature of these interactions? Are they real-time integrations, or defined in batches? Finally, ask yourself, is the software custom-built, or is it an off-the-shelf solution being installed? More...

From my more than two decades of expertise in software development, DevOps, and system administration, one lesson I’ve learnt is the importance of software testing. It’s not by chance that this post tackles the significance of learning software testing theory and techniques. In my tenure, testing has proven to be the backbone of software development- for both test specialists and developers.

Software testers often find themselves thrust into the field with little formal training on the same. The lack of structured learning on software testing for testers equates to a missing puzzle piece in the grand scheme of software development. While it might seem to work fine for developers, the long-term impacts are evident. More...

I had to answer this basic question today, so I guess others may have it as well, so I thought it’s worth sharing :)

If you had a chance to play with new Windows 8, you should have noticed that applications do not have a “close” button or even the menu item to exit the application. You still can close the application by pressing Alt + F4, or drag the title of the application to the bottom of the screen to exit it, but that’s not convenient, right?

The reason for that is that you don’t have to do that.

As I’ve illustrated earlier, in Windows 8 the “Metro” application doesn’t get any resources once it loses focus. So when you start another application, press Start button on your device or the keyboard, or browse back from your application – it takes up to five seconds to stop the execution of that application. It may still reside in memory, but only while that memory is not claimed by anyone else, so the performance of the computer doesn’t suffer.

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Once your Team Foundation Server is performing automated UI testing on daily basis, it starts to check your code when needed. When Team Foundation Server finds that your software is doing something unexpected, it automatically creates the bug work item. This time we are going to talk about these bugs, how to get most out of them, and how to use that functionality to boost the effectiveness of your software development. More...

One of the most frequent questions I get as a trainer, is about certifications and their real value. Opinions regarding certifications vary from “useless piece of paper” to “paramount” and the reason for so diverse opinion is either experience or lack of it. In this post I will try to explain modern IT certifications from a more practical point of view.

During my career of Information Technology Trainer, while spending most time training system administrators and software developers in various disciplines, I’ve also got a lot of valuable feedback from HR specialists and business owners. I’ve organized seminars on certifications to explain their value or in some cases – lack of it, and realized that certifications are like Terra Incognita for vast majority of HR specialists and even IT managers. But it shouldn’t be that way, so this post is also for HR and those who aren’t certified yet but think about whether it’s necessary or not. More...

During my career as a Microsoft Certified Trainer, I’ve been training .NET software developers and Windows system administrators – usually they were well established professionals longing for more knowledge and ready to purchase a training course instead of a car.

But there were people, and they still appear regularly, who suddenly make a decision to become a software developer. Either it’s because they were ignited by the idea and believed in own capacity of writing new software, or out of curiosity or any other reason – be it money, prestige or worrying about own future.

So this post is for such people. If you are considering to become a .NET software developer and wondering what should be your first step – I will do my best to explain it right now. If you are seasoned .NET software developer, then perhaps you won’t find much useful information here, but you’ll have a link to give when someone will ask you that question – “I want to become a software developer, what should I do?”. More...