RBCS Podcast

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, 3rd 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.

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 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. 

“Schools of Testing”: Useful Paradigm or Negative Influence? Are there really four different “schools of testing”?  Do you have to belong to one? Or are there just different testing strategies, to be selected and blended as appropriate?  Has the concept of “schools of testing” promoted clearer thinking about testing, or has this concept actually created a useless schism, sowing conflict and slowing growth of the profession?  In this debate, Rex Black argued the negative side of the case, being one of the leading critics of the concept of “schools of testing.”  One the other side, you’ll hear one of the originators of the concept, Cem Kaner, argue for its benefits.   Love it or hate it, you can hear both sides and make up your own mind.

Free tools are great, because they are always in budget, right?  Well, not always, because your time is valuable. You can waste a lot of time if you misuse free tools. However, with commercial tool vendors pounding down your doors, trying to convince you to buy their gee-whiz test tool (often with a gee-whiz price tag to match), you might forget to look at the open-source test tool options available to you. In this talk, drawn from three decades of industry experience including recent consulting work with many clients, Rex will provide some case studies—and the lessons we can learn from them—in successful use of free tools. He’ll also give some cautionary tales of free tool usage gone astray.

Mark Twain once wrote, “It ain’t what you don’t know that gets you into trouble. It’s what you know for sure that just ain’t so.”  In logic, that thing you know that just ain’t so is called a fallacy.  Fallacies abound in software testing, and risk-based testing especially suffers from a number of misconceptions.  Are you laboring under such delusions?  If so, what damage is that doing to your ability to implement the most effective and efficient way to manage the risk to the quality of your software and systems?  In this free webinar, Rex will identify and dispel these fallacies, and take your questions about risk-based testing fallacies that are affecting you.  

Did you ever wonder why your colleagues sometimes look at you funny when you’re explaining your test results, or ask you strange questions like, “Why don’t you find all the bugs in testing?”  Maybe they don’t understand what you do or even why you do what you do.  In this free webinar, Rex will reveal ten common misunderstandings that your fellow software professionals have about testing, and discuss ways to resolve those misunderstandings to promote better communication.

In many ways, leading a test team is like leading any other team. After all, people are people, no matter what work they do or where they live. Of course, there are some aspects that are specific to managing technical teams. And there are a few aspects that are specific to managing a test team. Given a good team, which you’ve developed carefully, how can you get the best work from them and keep them engaged and motivated? Rex will explore some ideas, and take your questions, in this free webinar.

What would John Connor, son of Sarah Connor, hero of the resistance in the “Terminator” movie series, say about the Internet of things, the ubiquity of mobile devices, the fact that we almost ran out of IP addresses, software that updates itself, and other signs of the coming computer apocalypse?  He’d probably tell us to pull the plug, quickly!  Beyond the nightmare scenario of the “Terminator” films, what are the implications of quality, and lack of quality, for the now-real situation that everything is connected to everything else?  Will it be Neuromancer, “Terminator,” androids dreaming of electric sheep, or something more benign?  Join us for some fun and interesting speculation and prediction on the future of limitless connectivity.

This is an encore presentation of one of our most popular webinars.  If you missed it the first time, you can catch it now. Did you know that dealing with a single problem employee can consume as much as 50% of his or her manager’s time?  Imagine how that reduces the manager’s effectiveness!  This is why making smart hiring decisions is one of the most important and central roles for test leads and test managers.  However, it’s also one of the hardest roles we face.  In this webinar, Rex Black, having hired dozens of testers and coached managers around the world on how to improve their hiring practices, will share some of the techniques you can use to ensure that your next hiring decision is the best one you’ve made—so far.

This is a third presentation of one of our most popular webinars, which had almost 2,500 registrants.  If you missed it the first time, you can catch it now, and hear about how test estimation is done, using 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, 3rd edition, Rex will discuss fundamental techniques for test estimation.  Join in the discussion after the initial presentation, and ask Rex about the challenges you face with test estimation.