Lessons Learned in Software Testing

Rating:
Summary: A Book About The Stuff That Keeps You Up At Night
Review: "Lessons Learned in Software Testing" is a great book for the experienced tester or test manager. The book is structured as a series of bite-sized lessons, with a few longer essays on the authors' favorite test techniques thrown in. In the lessons, the authors share their opinions (frankly presented as such), and then explain the reasoning behind those opinions. They concentrate on explaining how to apply the same sort of reasoning to your own situation. In a few spots, the authors actually present contradicting opinions and proceed to defend both.

The lessons cover a wide range of subjects vital to testing and test management - everything from test planning to career guidance to the role of the test group in the organization. I found lessons that presented new (and promising) ways to think about my current knotty problems, and a few that made me question practices that I'd considered tried-and-true for years. If you're faced with problems that are puzzling, hard to describe, vague and inchoate, there's probably a lesson in this book that will bring the problem into focus for you. You may walk away with more questions than answers, but they'll be good, crisp, probing questions.

I consider this book a "must-have" for anyone who's been in testing long enough to realize that the books aren't always right.

Rating:
Summary: A Book About The Stuff That Keeps You Up At Night
Review: "Lessons Learned in Software Testing" is a great book for the experienced tester or test manager. The book is structured as a series of bite-sized lessons, with a few longer essays on the authors' favorite test techniques thrown in. In the lessons, the authors share their opinions (frankly presented as such), and then explain the reasoning behind those opinions. They concentrate on explaining how to apply the same sort of reasoning to your own situation. In a few spots, the authors actually present contradicting opinions and proceed to defend both.

The lessons cover a wide range of subjects vital to testing and test management - everything from test planning to career guidance to the role of the test group in the organization. I found lessons that presented new (and promising) ways to think about my current knotty problems, and a few that made me question practices that I'd considered tried-and-true for years. If you're faced with problems that are puzzling, hard to describe, vague and inchoate, there's probably a lesson in this book that will bring the problem into focus for you. You may walk away with more questions than answers, but they'll be good, crisp, probing questions.

I consider this book a "must-have" for anyone who's been in testing long enough to realize that the books aren't always right.

Rating:
Summary: Great book
Review: A great book if you have some experience in software testing and would like more real life hints and tips.

Rating:
Summary: A treasure trove of suggestions
Review: As an experienced software tester, I expected to find a few helpful tidbits in this book. What a surprise! This book has literally hundreds of suggestions that I have used in my own testing projects as well as terrific tips for training my staff. I am definitely a better tester for having read this book. I would recommend it to anyone involved in software testing, no matter what your experience level.

Rating:
Summary: Thoughts Worth Pondering
Review: I had the good fortune to be asked by Dr. Cem Kaner, James Bach, and Bret Pettichord to review this book while they were working on it. It was a real pleasure to read, full of good ideas and insights, clearly expressed, pithy, and provocative. I agree with much of what the authors have to say. If you've read my book or some of my articles, you'll probably notice when you read this book that I also have a few disagreements. Those disagreements made this book even more worth reading for me, because I had to ask myself, "Why DO I do things the way I do?" That's a question practitioners should ask themselves, and this book helped me ask it.

People starting out in the field of software testing will probably help themselves avoid a good two or three dozen--if not gross--headaches by reading this book first. The authors do a great job of talking about the people issues. As software testers, our job is to effectively communicate an assessment of quality to the project team. This book will give you more than a few ideas about communicating with coworkers, peers, and managers.

As for the political correctness issue raised by another reviewer, as an author and speaker I understand the lengths that one must go to to avoid such problems. During the review process, I saw the diligent effort the authors made to be evenhanded in terms of gender and other bias issues. It would be unfortunate for this book to get passed over by anyone because of such concerns. I know the gentlemen who wrote this book personally, and I can say without hesitation that you would be hard-pressed to find a more unbiased, fair-minded, and thoughtful bunch. This book is a great book, brimming with wisdom on tap in the sphere of software testing.

Rex Black, Principal
Rex Black Consulting Services, Inc.
[e-mail]

Rating:
Summary: A Fast Forward for Your Career
Review: I had the pleasure of reviewing this book as it was being written. It is a real gem.

This book is a tool that will be valuable throughout your career. It is filled with practical suggestions and observations based on decades of experience. You will not find religious wars here, just real-world experience with wide application.

This book will pay for itself very quickly. I have used the weekly status report format on page 183 for several projects and found it to be much more effective than any previous formats.

If you use pairwise testing, pages 52-60, the book has paid for itself. I've used pairwise testing to reduce an impossible number of combinations (864) to a small number of test cases that effectively covered what needed to be tested.

If you want to get the bugs you find fixed, read Chapter 4. If you do automated testing, you can climb way up the learning curve by reading Chapter 5. If you're making decisions about how much test documentation to write, read Chapter 6. If you're involved in management, read Chapter 9. If you're interested in managing your career, read Chapter 10. I could go on.

I've worked in diverse environments on wildly different products. This book has something for every work situation and test problem I've faced. On a scale of 10, I would give it 100 for greatly exceeding my expectations.

Rating:
Summary: Good book, but not a tutorial
Review: I noticed that many of the reviewers listed above are noted SW testing professionals that have published books themselves. I also noticed that these same professionals tend to supply glowing reviews for each other. I think this might lead to a bit of a bias that could mislead ordinary folks looking for a good reference tool to help them do their job.

I've been in the SW test business for several years and have used Cem Kaner's "Testing Computer Software 2nd Edition" as a bible for many years. Mr. Kaner's "Lessons Learned in Software Testing" is a great help for both rookies and seasoned veterans alike, but mainly for anecdotal wisdom. I wish I had the opportunity to read this book early in my career, it would have prevented some of the painful lessons I've learned about the testing business. At the same time, portions of this book are opinions and observations, and should be read with an open mind, but not read as gospel. I often read sections of this book to reassure myself that my actions/decisions/processes are sound.

This book is not a "how to" guide with sample forms and processes to follow, but a very useful collection of wisdom from some of the best minds in testing. Think of this book as three wise people sharing their knowledge with anyone willing to listen (or ante up the bucks to buy the book).

Rating:
Summary: Good book, but not a tutorial
Review: I noticed that many of the reviewers listed above are noted SW testing professionals that have published books themselves. I also noticed that these same professionals tend to supply glowing reviews for each other. I think this might lead to a bit of a bias that could mislead ordinary folks looking for a good reference tool to help them do their job.

I've been in the SW test business for several years and have used Cem Kaner's "Testing Computer Software 2nd Edition" as a bible for many years. Mr. Kaner's "Lessons Learned in Software Testing" is a great help for both rookies and seasoned veterans alike, but mainly for anecdotal wisdom. I wish I had the opportunity to read this book early in my career, it would have prevented some of the painful lessons I've learned about the testing business. At the same time, portions of this book are opinions and observations, and should be read with an open mind, but not read as gospel. I often read sections of this book to reassure myself that my actions/decisions/processes are sound.

This book is not a "how to" guide with sample forms and processes to follow, but a very useful collection of wisdom from some of the best minds in testing. Think of this book as three wise people sharing their knowledge with anyone willing to listen (or ante up the bucks to buy the book).

Rating:
Summary: Enjoy, learn and use
Review: I received my copy of "Lessons Learned in Software Testing" last week. Although, I had seen parts of it before, I have now really enjoyed having this fantastic information source available.

The book contains a lot of lessons learned that I never thought about before, and for all the lessons I had thought about the write-up and examples are very useful.

Like the other day when I was preparing some course material about testing techniques, I had a pile of software testing books in front of me on my desk. After scanning them all, I turned to "Lessons Learned" and found the information I was looking for! I found a classification scheme of testing techniques and a lot of information useful to me while I was thinking about how to present this to other people. The same thing goes for test automation, bug reporting, test documentation and all the other sections in this book. It is not replacing the other testing books that I have, but it is a very useful supplement!

I might not agree with all the lessons in the book, but this is a book to enjoy, learn from and use!

Rating:
Summary: A must-have for the professional tester or test manager
Review: If you test software, or depend on people who do, then read this book. Each page effervesces with hard-won advice for handling the practical problems you encounter every day.

Software testing is an increasingly complicated discipline that suffers from too much liturgy, too little experience and too many conflicting theories. Kaner, Bach, and Pettichord balance this with a wealth of practical, empirical knowledge. In particular, their emphasis on the contextual factors of software testing brings out the value in understanding conflicting points of view.

This book will help you be a better tester or test manager. I expect to refer to it every week.