August 2012
Beginner
228 pages
5h 45m
English
Content preview from Shipping GreatnessBecome an O’Reilly member and get unlimited access to this title plus top books and audiobooks from O’Reilly and nearly 200 top publishers, thousands of courses curated by job role, 150+ live events each month,
O’Reilly covers everything we've got, with content to help us build a world-class technology community, upgrade the capabilities and competencies of our teams, and improve overall team performance as well as their engagement.I wanted to learn C and C++, but it didn't click for me until I picked up an O'Reilly book. When I went on the O’Reilly platform, I was astonished to find all the books there, plus live events and sandboxes so you could play around with the technology.I’ve been on the O’Reilly platform for more than eight years. I use a couple of learning platforms, but I'm on O'Reilly more than anybody else. When you're there, you start learning. I'm never disappointed.I'm always learning. So when I got on to O'Reilly, I was like a kid in a candy store. There are playlists. There are answers. There's on-demand training. It's worth its weight in gold, in terms of what it allows me to do.
Chapter 5. How to Do a Great Job Testing
IF YOUR SOFTWARE DOESN’T work, you won’t sell it. Worse, you’ll be embarrassed by it. This is why I apply the High School Embarrassment Test (HSET™) to any product I want to ship. The HSET works because high school did deep psychological damage to most of us and left behind hormone-based scars that industries like Hollywood have mined to great effect. You can leverage these scars as well. All you need to do is ask yourself: am I sure I won’t be embarrassed when an old high school friend sees my product? That’s all there is to the HSET.
The HSET helps ensure that your team is happy. Tom DeMarco and Timothy Lister point out in their book Peopleware: Productive Projects and Teams (Dorset House) that one of the best ways to destroy your team is to ask them to ship something they aren’t proud of. Remember, your engineering team members have old high school buddies too. You need to ensure that your team isn’t embarrassed.
So, how do you ensure that the software you ship does not embarrass you? There are eight major steps you can take that will have a substantial impact on the quality of your shipping product:
Insist on test-driven development.
Build a testing team around a great test lead.
Review your test plan and test cases personally.
Automate testing.
Dogfood religiously.
Have a big bug bash.
Triage your bugs diligently.
Establish trusted testers as a last line of defense.
If you do these eight things, you’ll be well on your way to shipping a great product. ...
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O’Reilly covers everything we've got, with content to help us build a world-class technology community, upgrade the capabilities and competencies of our teams, and improve overall team performance as well as their engagement.Julian F.
I wanted to learn C and C++, but it didn't click for me until I picked up an O'Reilly book. When I went on the O’Reilly platform, I was astonished to find all the books there, plus live events and sandboxes so you could play around with the technology.Addison B.
I’ve been on the O’Reilly platform for more than eight years. I use a couple of learning platforms, but I'm on O'Reilly more than anybody else. When you're there, you start learning. I'm never disappointed.Amir M.
I'm always learning. So when I got on to O'Reilly, I was like a kid in a candy store. There are playlists. There are answers. There's on-demand training. It's worth its weight in gold, in terms of what it allows me to do.