| Editorial calendar and themes
In 2012 Professional Tester will continue its mission to provide practical help and inspiration to software testers everywhere.
That requires coverage of complex and challenging testing themes. In order to achieve that more effectively, we issue a uniquely flexible editorial calendar. The themes of forthcoming issues are detailed below, but are not in order of publication. This means that:
each theme can be covered more effectively, because contributors can be given more time if needed
issue sponsors and advertisers will have more opportunity to appear in an issue especially relevant to them at the most appropriate time
As always, PT invites all its readers to:
influence future issues by commenting on these themes
suggest any other topics Professional Tester should tackle
contribute to one of these themes or on any other subject of interest to testers
- all by emailing editor@professionaltester.com.
Publication calendar 2012
| Issue 13 | 15 December 2011 | 31 January 2012 |
| Issue 14 | 15 February 2012 | 30 March 2012 |
| Issue 15 | 15 April 2012 | 31 May 2012 |
| Issue 16 | 15 June 2012 | 31 July 2012 |
| Issue 17 | 15 August 2012 | 28 September 2012 |
| Issue 18 | 15 October 2012 | 30 November 2012 |
Themes for 2012
Not in order of publication
Development testing
All testing should be done during rather than after development, but the definition of the term 'development testing' is specific: it is testing done during the writing of code. This does not refer to the 'unit testing' done by developers in order to make code work, using automated frameworks or not, which is a development not a testing activity. Objective, independent testing is needed to assure code quality before it is integrated, by which time finding defects is more difficult and fixing them is more expensive. This issue of Professional Tester will present the latest thinking on how testers should interact with developers to provide it and the state of the art in manual and automated techniques including code review and static and dynamic analysis.
The campaign for real requirements
Producing adequate requirements documentation is difficult and that has led to countless disastrous attempts to produce software without it. That can work when developers are the only stakeholders but it is extremely irresponsible for leadership figures to advocate it in projects that spend other people's, especially public, money. Thankfully requirements, and testing based on them, are making an overdue comeback. Those attempting to stem the flow of atrocious waste are realizing at last what seems obvious to testers: that the right time to do the hardest work is early, before complication and pressure set in, and that investment needs to be protected by keeping its deliverable correct throughout the lifecycle. New training, certification and tool features are supporting the movement by influencing current theoretical thinking. In this issue Professional Tester will make its contribution by sharing practical and applicable knowledge.
Simulation in test environments
Virtualization can make simulators, previously testing's weakest link, easy to create and manage and very realistic. Better simulation enables earlier empirical functional testing of mixed architecture systems and better client and device compatibility testing. This issue of Professional Tester will demonstrate examples in several domains.
New functional testing techniques
Professional Tester has argued before that the commonly-used functional test design techniques are insufficiently defined and leave too much to interpretation and arbitrary choice. The quest for better instructions raises another question: are these really the only techniques conceivable, or indeed needed? Why do no new usable techniques seem to have emerged in the last two decades - a period during which system development methods have improved beyond recognition? This issue will challenge its contributors either to find a new way to detect defects, or explain why there just isn't one.
TestDevOps
In a continuous delivery environment developers are driven by implementing new functionality, system administrators by maintaining dependability. Obviously, to achieve both independent testing is needed. Testers are used to supporting, guiding and validating the work of developers. To be part of the DevOps movement we now need to do the same for sysadmins. Contributors to this issue of Professional Tester will discuss how we can.
Deep integration of testing
For most of its history it has been assumed that testing should adapt to business and development practices. That orthodoxy is now being challenged because while testing has matured, those practices are changing and fragmenting faster than ever: they are the true obstacle to success. Testing has proven its worth and should now have the authority to insist that all other relevant tasks, however they are done, serve rather than hinder effective quality assurance. Contributors to this issue of Professional Tester will consider approaches to enlarging test management procedures and tools to control and enhance the entire application delivery process.
Test data creation and management
Availability of realistic and workable data is on the critical path of a testing project, is often a weak point in test effectiveness and repeatability, and is often so hard to achieve and maintain that testers must rely on (and wait for) the typically opaque co-operation of developers and DBAs, undermining their independence. Consultancies and tool vendors, knowing that this is a real barrier to test automation take-up, have done much excellent work and today's open standard data structures can help too. Test organizations should now be taking advantage of both to ensure sufficient data that is aligned accurately with continuous business analysis work is available to testing whenever needed throughout the lifecycle. This issue of Professional Tester will aim to provide readers with understanding and ideas to take control of test data as an integral part of test design, and seek innovative test-oriented solutions to obstacles such as data protection compliance.
Integrating third-party tools
The idea that all tools used, even in a single project, can be from a single vendor is long dead. Testers and programmers rightly demand choice and that is provided by the continuing explosion in Open Source, domain-and-platform-specific and methodology-related products. Yet, an integrated toolset is still very desirable: keeping assets (and problems) in silos helps nobody. The key is collaboration, the one tool that everyone should use, and modern ALM tools need to be able to interoperate not with a defined group of third-party tools, but with anything. Innovation is needed, perhaps even a new standard protocol. This issue of Professional Tester will examine the challenge and the work on it so far.
Incidentally…
There are few tasks more critical to good testing than incident reporting but it remains a problem. Doing it formally consumes a lot of testers' time. Done informally, it leads to confusion, argument, waste of both testers' and developers' time and worst of all 'escaped' defects that go unfixed. In this issue of Professional Tester contributors will seek ways to communicate defects in the most appropriate way for the current immediate needs of developers efficiently yet retaining traceability, auditability and management visibility.
Web testing 1.0
The best pure web applications continue to improve fast. Superb developers own and direct them. They perceive testers wrongly: as a type of developer. Meanwhile real-world applications operated by other business types have stalled. Many banking, financial services, etail and egovernment sites leave a great deal to be desired in multiple areas including most notably usability, compatibility, reliability and performance. Web accessibility has moved slowly too: the long-wanted standards have not materialized and the advice released by nontechnical organizations such as government and campaigning bodies is unusable. This issue of Professional Tester will propose, technically and realistically, how testing, in its real role acting to protect business and users, can contribute more.
Renewing review techniques
The review is the best of all testing techniques. It has detected countless defects that would otherwise have led to unbearable cost. Unfortunately it has also missed some it should have detected and which have then done exactly that. Too many people still think their review role consists of reading a document and noting the issues that happen to occur to them. That misconception wastes the only opportunity to detect some defects including the worst. Reviews need not only to be done, but to be done well, with systematic defect detection techniques applied rigorously both by individuals and groups. This has been a neglected area for too many years. Professional Tester will aim to help move it on fast.
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