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Beautiful Testing: Leading Professionals Reveal How They Improve Software 1st Edition

by Tim Riley (Author), Adam Goucher (Author)
4.1 4.1 out of 5 stars 20 ratings
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Successful software depends as much on scrupulous testing as it does on solid architecture or elegant code. But testing is not a routine process, it's a constant exploration of methods and an evolution of good ideas.

Beautiful Testing offers 23 essays from 27 leading testers and developers that illustrate the qualities and techniques that make testing an art. Through personal anecdotes, you'll learn how each of these professionals developed beautiful ways of testing a wide range of products -- valuable knowledge that you can apply to your own projects.

Here's a sample of what you'll find inside:

  • Microsoft's Alan Page knows a lot about large-scale test automation, and shares some of his secrets on how to make it beautiful
  • Scott Barber explains why performance testing needs to be a collaborative process, rather than simply an exercise in measuring speed
  • Karen Johnson describes how her professional experience intersected her personal life while testing medical software
  • Rex Black reveals how satisfying stakeholders for 25 years is a beautiful thing
  • Mathematician John D. Cook applies a classic definition of beauty, based on complexity and unity, to testing random number generators

    All author royalties will be donated to the Nothing But Nets campaign to save lives by preventing malaria, a disease that kills millions of children in Africa each year.

    This book includes contributions from:

    • Adam Goucher
    • Linda Wilkinson
    • Rex Black
    • Martin Schröder
    • Clint Talbert
    • Scott Barber
    • Kamran Khan
    • Emily Chen
    • Brian Nitz
    • Remko Tronçon
    • Alan Page
    • Neal Norwitz
    • Michelle Levesque
    • Jeffrey Yasskin
    • John D. Cook
    • Murali Nandigama
    • Karen N. Johnson
    • Chris McMahon
    • Jennitta Andrea
    • Lisa Crispin
    • Matt Heusser
    • Andreas Zeller
    • David Schuler
    • Tomasz Kojm
    • Adam Christian
    • Tim Riley
    • Isaac Clerencia

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  1. ISBN-10
    0596159811
  2. ISBN-13
    978-0596159818
  3. Edition
    1st
  4. Publisher
    O'Reilly Media
  5. Publication date
    December 1, 2009
  6. Part of series
    Theory in Practice (O'Reilly)
  7. Language
    English
  8. Dimensions
    7 x 0.82 x 9.19 inches
  9. Print length
    347 pages
  10. See all details
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Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Tim Riley is the Director of Quality Assurance at Mozilla. He has tested software for 18 years including everything from spacecraft simulators, ground control systems, high security operating systems, language platforms, application servers, hosted services and open source web applications. He has managed software testing teams in startups to large corporations consisting of 3 to 120 people in size and in up to 6 countries. He has a software patent for a testing execution framework which matches test suites to available test systems. He enjoys being a breeder caretaker for Canine Companions for Independence (cci.org) along with live and studio sound engineering.

Adam Goucher has been testing software professionally for over ten years. In that time he has worked with start-ups, large multi-nationals and ones in between in both traditional and agile testing environments. A believer in the communication of ideas big and small, he writes frequently at http://adam.goucher.ca and teaches testing skills at a Toronto area technical college. In his off hours he can be found either playing or coaching box lacrosse - and then promptly applying lessons learned to testing. He is also an active member of the Association for Software Testing.

Product details

  • Publisher ‏ : ‎ O'Reilly Media; 1st edition (December 1, 2009)
  • Language ‏ : ‎ English
  • Paperback ‏ : ‎ 347 pages
  • ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0596159811
  • ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0596159818
  • Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 1.36 pounds
  • Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 7 x 0.82 x 9.19 inches
  • Customer Reviews:
    4.1 4.1 out of 5 stars 20 ratings

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    Adam Goucher

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  2. Tim Riley

    Tim Riley

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    Director of Quality Assurance at Mozilla, Tim Riley has tested everything from spacecraft simulators, ground control systems, high security operating systems, language platforms, application servers, hosted services, and open source Web applications. He has managed international software-testing teams from startups to large corporations. Tim holds a software patent for a test execution framework that matches test suites to available test systems. His new book Beautiful Testing is a collaboration with twenty-seven leading testers and developers. In addition to his interest in software testing, Tim enjoys live/studio sound engineering and being a breeder-caretaker for Canine Companions for Independence cci.org.

    See more on the author's page
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Customer reviews

4.1 out of 5 stars
20 global ratings

Top reviews from the United States

DigiKiwam
5.0 out of 5 stars If you are serious about testing software, you HAVE to get this book.
Reviewed in the United States on March 9, 2017
Verified Purchase
If you are serious about testing software, you HAVE to get this book.
Written in an easy to read format -once you get past the foreword you just can't put it down.
I have and will continue to recommend this book to my colleagues
I am about 1/2 way through and it's pretty cool.
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Yuriy Zubarev
4.0 out of 5 stars Understanding testers and testing
Reviewed in the United States on August 24, 2011
The book features 23 essays from leading testers, all providing different takes on what it means for testing to be beautiful. It was especially beneficial for me in these 3 areas:

1) Understanding a mindset of a tester. The first essay "Was it Good for You?" was revealing and brilliant. After reading the book I'm in a much better position to find and recognize great testers to work with, and also be more helpful to them.

2) "Test-Driven Development: Driving New Standards of Beauty" essay went beyond red-green-refactor cycle and exposed TDD in much broader context. The end result and organizational benefits associated with TDD were really transformational and beautiful as shown in this chapter.

3) I'm interested in software architecture theory and practice, and reading "Peeling the Glass Onion at Socialtext" came as a pleasant surprise. Among many other things, the author presented an argument that the "... testing group has the capability of serving - in the best possible way - as architects of the product." It's an angle on architecture that I never encountered before, and it made sense in a given context.

Overall, I learned some really useful insights about testing and testers and I'm glad I picked up this book.
2 people found this helpful
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Stephen Chapman
3.0 out of 5 stars Ask Felgall - Book Review
Reviewed in the United States on December 15, 2011
I found this book to be a rather interesting mix of chapters that were exteremely interesting an enlightening as well as some that were of no interest whatever. Of course which chapters I found interesting and which chapters others find interesting could be completely different. The book should have something in it of interest to anyone who has any sort of interest in the testing process.

The one theme that does run throughout the book is how testing is an art rather than a science (but then so is coding). For those who haven't had much exposure to testing it will demonstrate how there is much more to testing than just defining a few basic tests and running them.

This book isn't going to teach someone how to test but it may help expand your view of testing. While those who wrote the chapters do not all agree on exactly what testing is they all consider it to be of much wider scope than some people from outside of testing have considered it to be (a lot of people think testing and debugging are the same - which is completely false). That much is clear from some of the chapters that talk about where testers have become more involved earlier in the process than they had been previously and the impact that had on how they were able to handle the testing.
3 people found this helpful
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Georgia Zhu
5.0 out of 5 stars It's fantastic that the reader can have a deep look of ...
Reviewed in the United States on February 25, 2015
Verified Purchase
It's fantastic that the reader can have a deep look of how other top testers do in their daily work. Many good test methodologies and guidelines that we can apply to our own product.
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Allele Dev
5.0 out of 5 stars Thoughtful Testing
Reviewed in the United States on February 9, 2013
Disclaimer: I've read portions of the book, not all of it. I'll specify these sections as I review. I'm reviewing the eBook version. (The PDF is great!)

To begin with, I found that this book is very friendly to jump into any chapter at any time - there are no ordering dependencies. This is very nice, since at times I'll be more interested in the business aspect and at others I want to do a technical deep dive. The quality of the writing has also been mostly solid so far. The author's passions shine through in most cases, and there has only been one section where it felt like the writing was too dry.

There are three parts to this book: Beautiful Testers, Beautiful Process, and Beautiful Tools. I found this division into tracks to be very effective, and further facilitates jumping in depending on one's mood and needs.

In preparation to review this book, I read the following chapters:
1. Was It Good For You?
3. Building Open Source QA Communities
4. Collaboration is the Cornerstone of Beautiful Performance Testing
14. Test-Driven Development: Driving New Standards of Beauty
15. Beautiful Testing as the Cornerstone of Business Success
17. Beautiful Testing is Efficient Testing

"Was It Good For You?" is an opinionated and energizing introduction to this book. In this chapter, Linda Wilkinson attempts to define what a tester is and what value a tester brings to the table. It felt like a keynote at a major conference, and left me feeling a little inspired after I read through it. Even though there are no ordering dependencies, I highly recommend starting at this chapter. It adds a lot to the book.

"Building Open Source QA Communities" is an interesting tale of what it takes to get volunteers involved and engaged, and what it takes to lose them. It was a memorable read.

"...Beautiful Performance Testing" is all about working with others. It tells a story about how difficult things can be when miscommunication arises, and how a little effort in collaboration goes a long way towards really understanding the requirements. The back-and-forth dynamics detailed in the chapter make for an entertaining read.

The three chapters in the Beautiful Processes part of the book dove in. Chapter 17 was particularly pleasant to read. It was concise and humorous, and presented a neat mnemonic for determining testing priority (SLIME).

I've not read any part of the Beautiful Tools section of the book, but the chapter on "Testing Network Services in Multimachine Scenarios" looks particularly interesting.

Another note about the book overall: there are many great diagrams throughout, in full color. These make for convenient print-outs that summarize the knowledge in a chapter!

What could be better? I feel like the balance between parts could have been a bit better. I would have appreciated a little more on the side of Beautiful Tools. The landscape of testing tools only continues to grow. In fact, if another edition of this book is ever released, that would be at the top of my wishlist for new content!
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