tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10773078598472680862024-03-12T17:51:56.307-07:00Adventures in I.T.Tales (and occasional useful advice) from a soldier in the army-to-revolutionize-I.T.Cliffhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11519087029775402295noreply@blogger.comBlogger3125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1077307859847268086.post-79465867037890621172008-06-12T14:44:00.000-07:002008-06-12T14:57:31.266-07:00Miscellanea: IT Famous(?) and the Programmable Web<span style="font-weight: bold; font-family: arial;">IT Famous(?)<br /><br /></span><span style="font-family: arial;">I'm walking down the street in San Francisco the other day and happened to be wearing a t-shirt emblazoned with the name of my </span><a style="font-family: arial;" href="http://www.thoughtworks.com/">employer</a><span style="font-family: arial;">. As I passed a group of people on the sidewalk, one them noticed the t-shirt and asked, with particular interest, "You work for </span><employer style="font-family: arial;">?" Now, there's nothing particularly special about my employer having some name recognition (and this person knew about us via one of our <a href="http://www.martinfowler.com/">IT-famous-dudes</a>), but it's the first time that has happened to me. I felt ever so slightly like a celebrity. Maybe I should go down to LA and try to be famous-famous :-)<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">The Programmable Web<br /><br /></span>I usually reserve the adjective "dope" for hip-hop songs (I also show my hip-hop age by using that particular adjective). But... <a href="http://www.jott.com/">Jott</a> to <a href="http://www.rememberthemilk.com/">Remember The Milk</a> integration is dope, very dope indeed.<span style="font-weight: bold;"><br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;"></span><br /></span><span style="text-decoration: underline;"></span></employer>Cliffhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11519087029775402295noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1077307859847268086.post-86986379325949660292008-05-13T07:05:00.000-07:002008-05-13T16:48:34.849-07:00Test Coverage, some rules of thumb<span style="font-weight: bold;"><span style="font-family:arial;">Summary: </span></span><span style="font-family:arial;">Quick rules to keep in mind when thinking about test coverage</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:arial;">As a tester, are you ever asked by a stakeholder to describe what tests you have and how they cover the application?</span> <span style="font-family:arial;">Here are some rules-of-thumb to think about </span><span style="font-style: italic;font-family:arial;" >before </span><span style="font-family:arial;">you get the questions.</span><span style="font-weight: bold;"><br /><br /><span style="font-family:arial;">Find out what matters: </span></span><span style="font-family:arial;">Start by asking questions of the stakeholders. Listen, listen, listen to their answers.<br /></span><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;font-family:arial;" >Report on coverage in terms of what matters</span><span style="font-family:arial;">: The CIO may not care about unit-level coverage metrics (lines of code, classes, etc...) She probably will care about whether key business processes supported by the system have been tested. Your report to this audience should probably orient coverage towards business processes.<br /><br /></span><span style="font-family:arial;"><span style="font-weight: bold;">There may be different view of what matters:</span></span><span style="font-family:arial;"><span style="font-weight: bold;"> </span> I mentioned things the CIO may care about, but the network security organization will probably care greatly about access control and other types of security testing. Can your coverage reporting mechanism accommodate different views of coverage?<br /><br /></span><span style="font-family:arial;"><span style="font-weight: bold;">What matters changes:</span> The things that are important at the outset of a development effort may not stay important. Things that are unknown at the outset may wind up being very important. How easy is it to modify information about what tests cover?<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Talk about what matters at the highest (useful) level: </span>If we're doing things c</span><span style="font-family:arial;">orrectly, we're probably tracking coverage information at very fine-grained levels. There is a temptation to show <span style="font-style: italic;">all </span>the details up front. Resist this....not because you don't want to share the details, but because details can confuse the bigger picture. A picture like this should not start discussions about coverage.<br /></span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;"><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgqn9zmb_WV0VkD7HvU9VHykBT_s8JVbvlc-uOEFeuJDlFu37LQtsqeAZnhdu9uA1hPpn8DdV-PBPELxatr2hCHIpHvk76P-0JqZCZvcqPOT-GyhIT38ClYCG9awL3OdC0rE8FEegq1j-T4/s1600-h/treemap-nba_scaled.gif"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgqn9zmb_WV0VkD7HvU9VHykBT_s8JVbvlc-uOEFeuJDlFu37LQtsqeAZnhdu9uA1hPpn8DdV-PBPELxatr2hCHIpHvk76P-0JqZCZvcqPOT-GyhIT38ClYCG9awL3OdC0rE8FEegq1j-T4/s320/treemap-nba_scaled.gif" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5199871387441036498" border="0" /></a></span><span style="font-family:arial;"><br />This is a better choice:<br /><br /></span><div style="text-align: center;"><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjOZPRqeYFD95jjbegcXVVA3nvTikapFEtFEyFDuINV78CIIxCiZIIwykE0GTwpOEH13nSG7IXsVuqCr7mPJ6WHbPVtOUAnGzl3sYK7NiqeeVsk2TPLvUDGIqA0JuvF60Weys5FY-2vaJzb/s1600-h/simple_picture.gif"><img style="cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjOZPRqeYFD95jjbegcXVVA3nvTikapFEtFEyFDuINV78CIIxCiZIIwykE0GTwpOEH13nSG7IXsVuqCr7mPJ6WHbPVtOUAnGzl3sYK7NiqeeVsk2TPLvUDGIqA0JuvF60Weys5FY-2vaJzb/s320/simple_picture.gif" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5199873367420959970" border="0" /></a><br /></div><span style="font-family:arial;"><br />With that said, you want to be able to drill down easily into greater detail.<br /><br /><br />Future posts will dive into the nitty-gritty of following these rules-of-thumb.<br /><br /></span>Cliffhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11519087029775402295noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1077307859847268086.post-30247612325246151662008-04-25T21:08:00.000-07:002008-04-25T21:13:33.186-07:00a blogging empire begins...Subscribe now, so you can say you prefer the "early" <span style="color: rgb(51, 51, 255); font-style: italic;">Adventures in IT</span> blog posts, before it sold out to the man.Cliffhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11519087029775402295noreply@blogger.com2