By Fernando Cremer (Originally posted July 15, 2009)

One of the key strengths of Seapine’s suite of tools is that they can adapt to many methodologies. One of the tasks that I am often faced with is adapting our tools to a client’s methodology. Some clients use the tried and true waterfall method, others use Scrum, others use a combination of various methodologies, while other clients don’t use a specific methodology (which is why they asked for our help in the first place).

Which one is the most popular? Does it depend on the size of the team? Does it depend on the industry?

By Fernando Cremer (Originally posted May 27, 2009)

Before I worked for Seapine Software, I was employed by a now defunct software company in the Cincinnati area. It was a small company, with about twenty-five employees or so. I did many jobs at this company. My main duty was customer support, but I also did things like testing, managing our bug tracking system, putting together our releases, and other things.

Reading Matt’s post on his co-op where he tracked tests on a spreadsheet made me reminisce about my old employer. You see, our defects were written down on paper. Screenshots were physically attached (I mean we used a stapler) and notes, comments, and anything else were usually handwritten all over the place.

My company has a new SQA manager. It isn't me. I was sad for a few seconds, then I was over it. The fact is, I told my manager I'm having fun doing what I'm doing. I'm solving problems customers are having. I fix problems in some of the software, collaborate on the design of other parts. I send leads to the sales department when a customer mentions something else they want. And I'm developing a training course that has everyone excited.

You know how I'm learning the parts of the system I'm developing the training for? Exploratory testing, of course. And oh, the bug reports are flying. For any bugs that aren't fixed before the training (most of them), I'll be prepared to show people how to dance around them.

Both customers and co-workers tell me they appreciate my work. That means a lot.

So again I've semi-willingly turned away from testing. But yet it's still with me every day.

Read More »

The life of a software product is a continual stream of feature additions, enhancements, and even removals. But a great product doesn’t (usually) outshine its competitors because of the sheer number of features, it’s because those features are really useful or work well together. It’s a difficult balance that requires a lot of iteration and experimentation.

For advice on tackling this difficult problem, you might try looking to Batman.
 

By Pete Vasiliauskas (Originally posted July 30, 2009)

Perhaps you have looked at how you manually test your application and sorted through all of your tests to select some good candidates for automation. You’ve selected an automated testing tool and have started converting some of your manual tests to scripts. But is the extent of automated testing just to change manual tests into automated ones? Now that you’ve embraced automated testing, what can you do now that you couldn’t do before?

The Gartner technology research firm broke some conversational ice earlier this week when, at the Gartner Symposium in Orlando, analysts told attendees that their corporations should stop with the heavy-handed restrictions on social networks in the workplace. "Banning access to social media from the corporate network is futile. The world we live in is digitally enabled and socially connected," CNET News quotes Gartner vice president Carol Rozwell as saying.

Welcome to the first in a series of crossover posts from The Seapine View, brought to you by Seapine Software. In this series, the support engineers, solutions consultants, developers, and other Seapine employees offer their perspectives on application lifecycle management tools and resources.

By Fernando Cremer (Originally posted June 08, 2009)

Recently I had some computer issues that forced me to change computers. I’m sure most of you have gone through something like this and, let’s face it, it’s not fun. IT was able to put the hard drive from my old computer on an external enclosure so I could transfer my files.

Tedious work.

I decided to make the best of it. This was a chance for me to only bring in files that I really need.

As a frequent flier, I’ve had that dreaded experience in which I go to Point A and my luggage goes to Point B. Once, my luggage went to a more exotic destination than I did. On one trip, though....

Automated unit tests verify that a component is working as expected.  They also serve as a way to understand how code works, though this doesn't always happen by reading tests.  Sometimes understanding comes from tweaking the tests to observe new failures, or rewriting the tests themselves.

When is a thank you not a thank you? Consider these situations: