Driving an Agile Peg in a CMMI hole

September 21st, 2009

While we were sitting around the breakfast table this morning, my wife asked me what I had to do today. I replied that I needed to write an article on “Agile Testing”. Overhearing this conversation, one of my daughters quipped:

“Agile testing??? You mean as opposed to clumsy testing? “ Read the rest of this entry »

Behavior in the code that is Not in the Requirements

August 7th, 2009

For most commercial applications, fifty percent or more of the shipped code cannot be traced directly to the corresponding requirements document. This is true because:

There are requirements that should have been documented but weren’t. All requirements are imperfect and incomplete. Given this fact, programmers make assumptions, add behavior, get informal, undocumented clarification of requirements, and write a lot of code to implement business requirements that never made it to the requirements document. Read the rest of this entry »

Code coverage for system testers

July 16th, 2009

I am often asked why I teach that system testers should use code coverage tools when in most organizations, system testers don’t have access to the code. Read the rest of this entry »

An agile process is not just a series of mini waterfalls

July 16th, 2009

One of the common problems I encounter with teams new to agile is that they try to keep using the old over-the-wall hand-off methods they were used to in the waterfall world. Read the rest of this entry »