The Hidden Requirements: Exploring Emotions with Placebos

The Hidden Requirements: Exploring Emotions with Placebos

A placebo is designed and used primarily for psychological benefit. Things like sugar pills, elevator door close buttons, and office thermostats aim “to please”, rather than have any other, “real” effects. Now, consider a placebo in the context of software and testing. What if “pleasing” is the only intended and expected result? How can it be tested? What does a bug look like? And, do these ideas also apply to non-placebos that have other, “real” effects? In this workshop, we’ll explore placebos, nocebos, the placebo/nocebo response, illusion and locus of control, relativism, wants, needs, and expectations, and will connect it all to testing.

Managing Quality within Budget and Schedule Constraints: Successful and Unsuccessful Techniques

Managing Quality within Budget and Schedule Constraints: Successful and Unsuccessful Techniques

In this webinar, Rex will discuss ways that test professionals can help their project teams resolve that quandary.  First, it’s important to recognize the trade-offs being made, and then test professionals can promote the five elements of making successful trade-offs: shared vision; disciplined management; quality in, and bugs out, throughout; focused testing; and, sending the right message.  Rex will illustrate these five elements with a variety of case studies and examples.

Beautiful Testing Satisfies Stakeholders

Beautiful Testing Satisfies Stakeholders

This article, contributed by STP guest editor Rex Black, is reprinted from “Beautiful Testing: Leading Professionals Reveal How They Improve Software” (O’Reilly, October 2009). The book, edited by Tim Riley and Adam Goucher, is a compilation of essays from 27...