Woodpeckers, Pinatas, and Dead Horses

Posted by Ben Simo

Here's some short blurbs of a few things I took away from CAST sessions.

From Lee Copeland's keynote address:

• "It's nonsensical to talk about automated tests as if they were automated human testing."

• Write or speak about something you're knowledgeable and passionate about.

• Combine things from multiple disciplines.

From Harry Robinson's keynote address:

• Weinberg's Second Law: If Builders Built Buildings The Way Programmers Write Programs, Then The First Woodpecker That Came Along Would Destroy Civilization.

From Esther Derby's keynote:

• To successfully coach someone, they must want to be coached and want to be coached by you.

From James Bach's tutorial:

• Pinata Heuristic: Keep beating at it until the candy comes out. ... and stop once the candy drops.

unless ...

• Dead Horse Heuristic: You may be beating a dead horse.

yet beware ...

• If it is a pinata, don't stop beating at it until the candy drops; but if it is a dead horse, your beating is bringing no value. It can be a challenge to determine if its a pinata or a dead horse.

From Antti Kervinen's presentation:

• Separate automation models into high level (behavior) and low level (behavior implementation) components to reuse test models on a variety of platforms and configurations.

More from James Bach's tutorial:

• Testing does not break software. Testing dispels illusions.

• Rational Unified Process is none of the three. (attributed to Jerry Weinberg)

From the tester exhibition:

• Testing what can't be fixed or controlled may be of little value. Some things may not be worth testing.

• There is great value in the diversity of approaches and skills on a test team.

• It may be possible to beat a dead horse and test (and analyze) too much. Sometimes we should just stop testing and act on the information we have.
  

From Doug Hoffman's tutorial:

• Record and playback automation can be very useful for testing for the same behavior with many configurations. And, once the script stops finding errors: throw it out.

From Keith Stobie's keynote:

• Reduce the paths though your system to improve quality. Fewer features may be better.

• Free web sites often have higher quality than subscription sites. This is because it is easy to measure the cost of downtime on ad-supported systems.

From David Gilbert's session:

• People expect hurricanes to blow around and change path. We should expect the same with software development projects. (David has some interesting ideas about forecasting in software development.)

• Numbers tell a story only in context. You must understand the story behind the numbers.

One more from James:

• Keep Notes!

What did you take away from CAST?