Publications

This is a list of my non-fiction computer software-related publications.

Beautiful Testing is a collection of essays from different authors. I wrote a chapter in the book. My chapter is titled “Software in Use.” See Beautiful Testing by O’Reilly Media. You can also find the book on Amazon.

You can read the chapter.

Beautiful Testing

Articles


“Business Storytelling in an Agile Context”
Agile Connection, May 2019

“Benefits of Public Speaking”
Women Testers
October 2018

“Navigating Dotted and Solid Line Reporting Structures”
November 2017

“7 Practical Ways Testers Can Help Developers”
Testing Circus, September 2015

“Applying the Agile Manifesto as a Tester”
Testing Trapeze, August 2014
Newsletter can be downloaded for free.

“26 Ways Testers Work with UX Designers”
Women Testers, July 2014
Newsletter can be downloaded for free.

“How a Software Tester Helps During Product Discovery”
StickyMinds.com, April 2014

“The Mobile Environment”
The Testing Planet, November 2011
– See The Testing Planet website for more newsletters

“What If” in Mobile Testing
Tea-Time with Testers, July 2011
– See the Tea-Time with Testers website for more newsletters

“Strategic Test Planning for International Websites”
STP Test&QA Report, November 2010

“Special considerations for testing applications using Right to Left languages (RTL)”
Search Software Quality, October 2010
– Registration is required to access content but registration is free.

“Mobile testing: Three vulnerable areas to test”
Testing a website on a mobile device? Here’s three areas to begin testing.
SearchSoftwareQuality, July 2010

“How to Build a Strong Virtual Team”
Establishing and maintaining virtual relationships with project team members
InformIT, May 2010

“Improve Your Testing and Your Testers with Paired Testing”
Ideas and stories on paired testing
InformIT, April 2010

“Insights from Running UAT Sessions”
Four insights you can gain from user acceptance test (UAT) sessions.
SearchSoftwareQuality, April 2010

“A Heuristic for Regression Testing”
A heuristic for regression testing.
SearchSoftwareQuality, March 2010

“Women of Influence: A Diverse Group of the World’s Top Women Software Testers Share Career Highlights And Insights Into the Profession, Past, Present and Future”
Interviews with thirteen women in software testing from around the world.
Software Test & Performance Magazine, January 2010

“Testing SMS Texting Applications”
A heuristic for testing SMS texting.
SearchSoftwareQuality, January 2010

“Manipulating Business Intelligence to solve dense data warehouse testing issues”
Understanding the testing challenges associated with data reconciliation on a Business Intelligence (BI) project. Part I.
SearchSoftwareQuality, January 2010

“Testing data fields in business Intelligence projects”
Testing data reconciliation on a Business Intelligence (BI) project. Part II.
SearchSoftwareQuality, January 2010

“Tips for Better User Acceptance Testing”
InformIT, December 2009

“Outsourcing Confidential”
Insights and stories about outsourcing locally and out of country.
Software Test and Performance Magazine, September 2009

“Building Alliances Between Testing and Other Teams”
Suggestions and stories about building relationships across teams.
InformIT, June 2009

“Budget-friendly web application performance testing and monitoring tips”
Economical tips for performance testing and monitoring.
Tech Target’s Software Quality Tips, June 2009

“Agile testing strategies: Evolving with the product”
Seizing iterations as a chance to learn and evolve test ideas.
Tech Target’s Software Testing magazine, May/June 2009

“Multi-User Methods in Test Designs”
Identifying Race Conditions and Deadlocks In Your Application.
Software Test & Performance magazine, February 2008

“Using Questions to Design Software Test Plans”
How asking questions can help you formulate test plans.
InformIT, January 2008

“Building a Software Test Strategy”
Ideas on building a test strategy.
InformIT, December 2007

“Are Your Passwords Strong Enough? Advice from a Software Tester”
Learn about testing passwords.
InformIT, November 2007

“Navigating the Installation:A Charter for Effective Install Testing”
Insights on testing a software installation.
Better Software Magazine, September 2007

“Working Through Language, Time, and Cultural Differences”
Time tools and insights on bridging the gaps across time, language, and cultural differences.
FT Press, December 2006

“Delivering Unwelcome News to a Developer”
Suggestions on reporting defects in a professional manner.
STQE magazine, September 2002

“Ghost Bug Busters”
Ideas on replicating defects that are difficult to reproduce.
STQE magazine, June 2002

“The 11th Hour”
Testing Before the Release Goes Live.
StickyMinds.com, November 2001

“Mining Gold from your Server Logs”
Web server logs can help in planning realistic testing.
STQE magazine, January 2001

Test Database

Here be dragons! As referenced on my blog, I’ve created a test database with a small set of data. This database is solely for software testers and others who wish to practice SQL. Also as stated on my blog and on the associated files, I make no warranties for the files. I recommend reviewing the information before running the scripts. These scripts were built to work in a MySQL 5.x environment; you made need to make alterations for other versions and you will need to make alterations for other database platforms.

Creating the SQL sandbox:

1. Download the two files. This is the create script. This is the insert data script.
2. Both scripts are designed to work with a MySQL database version 5.x.
3. Copy and paste the text from each file to a Notepad file; save the file with a dot sql extension.
4. Run the create script.
5. Run the insert script.
6. Enjoy.

In choosing what tables and data to build, I decided (which is similar to what I do in my classes) to reference a few authors and books. Both the authors and the books listed in this little test database, not surprisingly, are five SQL books (and authors) whose work I admire. This test data also answers the question: if I had to buy a SQL book, what would you recommend? So even if you don’t want to create a database, you can review the insert file for a short list of SQL books.

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