Software Testing Series: Organizing a Test Suite with Tags Part One

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This post is a follow-up to our previous case study on incorporating unit testing into an existing team’s development environment. The case study is based on a real solution that has already started reaping rewards for our client, and is gaining momentum. We’re now looking at making it easier for the development team to maintain this test suite, and proposing some extensions – including a form of tagging.

iRise – software prototyping tool

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We received a comment from Tom Humbarger at iRise on an earlier post, which led us to take a look at their site. iRise provides a tool for rapid prototyping of web-based applications, and there’s an overview of the products available. They have iRise Studio which allows people to create […]

Describing the Software Development Process

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Software development involves determining what to develop, documenting this decision, determining how to develop it, and actually developing it.We present a framework for describing this process in terms of layers of activity. Many people use pyramid analogies, which show the magnitude of effort in each layer (lines of code versus lines of requirements, for example). Many other people use inverted pyramids to reflect the importance (or impact) of work done at different layers (a sentance defining a strategy has more impact than a line of code). Some people show PERT diagrams of waterfalls or pretty circular arrows charts showing iterative lifecycles, or any of many good analogies.

Where Bugs Come From

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In the Foundation series article on software processes we introduce a definition of software process as three steps – (decide, develop, deliver). That article will provide some contextfor this discussion, which dives more deeply into the three steps (decide, develop, deliver).

CRUDdy use cases and Shakespeare

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CRUD (Create, Retrieve, Update, Delete) is an acronym used to refer to a set of mundane, important, and indirect (if not implicit) requirements or use cases. To create a report on orders, you have to first create the orders and retrieve them. Further, the ability to update (edit) and delete […]

Use case series: UML 2.0 use case diagrams

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The UML way to organize and manage use cases. Pros Provides a high level view of the use cases in a system, solution, or application. Clearly shows which actors perform which use cases, and how use cases combine to form business processes Cons Presents an “inside-out” view of the sytem. […]