In this episode Matthew and Federico sit down with James Bach to talk about everything to do with testing. James ideas were very influential in shaping the test methodologies that our team practices, especially around the use of exploratory testing, and he shares his views and passion about becoming a test ninja with us.

• How did James got started in the test discipline?
• Exploratory testing
  • Exploratory testing as an approach instead of a technique.
  • Some of the misconceptions about exploratory testing.
  • Difference between exploratory testing and ad-hoc
  • Teach exploratory testing by creating a test culture around developing mental skills
  • How to know when testing is done?
  • How to evaluate good exploratory testing notes.
  • Using a screen recorder as a supplement to note taking.
• Scripted tests
  • Strengths and weaknesses of scripted tests.
  • Automation as simple product checks.
• Testing as a profession
  • How to get really good at testing?
  • Study and define the test activities until they are clear and no longer intuition.
  • Example: how to know if something is a bug
• Management
  • Work to get rid of bureaucracy that stands in the way of the tester.
  • Good leads will sit with testers to guide and evaluate them.
  • Use sessions as a way to manage a team of exploratory testers.
• Challenges of testing in Microsoft.

Links and Plugs

• James’ Website
• James’ Blog
• James on twitter
• Lessons Learned in Software Testing
• Buccaneer-Scholar

In this episode Matthew and Federico sit with fellow team member Brad Wilson to talk about Unit Testing. Brad is a developer in the ASP.NET team, he has a lot of experience developing using Test Driven Development and is one of the creators of the xUnit testing framework.

• What is Unit Testing?
• What is the difference between Unit Testing and Test Driven Development (TDD)?
• Unit Testing in practice
  • How does the MVC team uses unit testing?
  • How do you arrange your tests?
  • How do you name your tests?
  • What about using internal to be able to test something?
  • What if I inherited code that didn't had unit tests?
  • How can I convince my team to adopt unit tests as a development practice
• Addressing common concerns about Unit Testing
  • It feels like a lot of work for little value.
  • Having to rewrite a lot of tests if something in the design changes is a pain.
  • Code ends up being a lot of very small methods and I don’t like that.
• Common pitfalls
  • Writing very big tests.
  • Testing to internal implementation.
• Mocking
  • What does mocking mean and why is it useful?
  • What is your favorite mocking framework?
• Resources
  • Brad's Blog
  • xUnit Framework