How Google Tests Software

2012 Jolt Award finalist! Pioneering the Future of Software Test Do you need to get it right, too? Then, learn from Google. Legendary testing expert James Whittaker, until recently a Google testing leader, and two top Google experts reveal exactly how Google tests software, offering brand-new best practices you can use even if you're not quite Google's size...yet! Breakthrough Techniques You Can Actually Use Discover 100% practical, amazingly scalable techniques for analyzing risk and planning tests...thinking like real users...implementing exploratory, black box, white box, and acceptance testing...getting usable feedback...tracking issues...choosing and creating tools...testing "Docs & Mocks," interfaces, classes, modules, libraries, binaries, services, and infrastructure...reviewing code and refactoring...using test hooks, presubmit scripts, queues, continuous builds, and more. With these techniques, you can transform testing from a bottleneck into an accelerator-and make your whole organization more productive!

As one of the leading technology companies in the world, Google produces a ton of software. From Web-based products like Google Search and Google Translate to Desktop Applications like Google Chrome and Google Drive, software plays a very crucial role in Google's existence as a company. As a result, Google pays a lot of attention to the quality of software it produces. Considering the sheer amount of software built by Google, however, one question that is often asked from engineers and employees at Google is "How does Google test software?" How does a company as large as company undergo the testing of its various software products to make sure that every software program and application released out to the public is of the best quality and standard?This book will offer readers insight into the Google software testing process, including the various stages of the process, the aspects Google considers to be essential, and what exactly software quality means to Google.

With the advent of agile methodologies, testing is becoming the responsibility of more and more team members. In this new book, noted testing expert Dustin imparts the best of her collected wisdom. She presents 50 specific tips for a better testing program. These 50 tips are divided into ten sections, and presented so as to mirror the chronology of a software project.

Rely on this robust and thorough guide to build and maintain successful test automation. As the software industry shifts from traditional waterfall paradigms into more agile ones, test automation becomes a highly important tools that allows your development teams to deliver software at an ever-increasing pace without compromising quality. Even though it may seem trivial to automate the repetitive tester's work, using test automation efficiently and properly is not trivial. Many test automation endeavors end up in the "graveyard" of software projects. There are many things that affect the value of test automation, and also its costs. This book aims to cover all of these aspects in great detail so you can make decisions to create the best test automation solutuion that will not only help your test automation project to succeed, but also allow the entire software project to thrive. One of the most important details that affects the success of the test automation is how easy it is to maintain the automated tests. "Complete guide to test automation" provides a detailed hands-on guide to writing highly maintainable test code. What you'll learn: Know the real value to be expected from test automation ; Discover the key traits that will make your test automation project succeed ; Be aware of the different considerations to take into account when planning automated tests vs. manual tests ; Determine who should implement the tests and the implications of this decision ; Architect the test project and fit it to the architecture of the tested application ; Design and implement highly reliable automated tests ; Begin gaining value from test automation earlier ; Integrate test automation into the business processes of the development team ; Leverage test automation to improve your organization's performance and quality, even without formal authority ; Understand how different types of automated tests will fit into your testing strategy, including unit testing, load and performance testing, visual testing, and more.

How to Find and Fix the Killer Software Bugs that Evade Conventional Testing In Exploratory Software Testing, renowned software testing expert James Whittaker reveals the real causes of today’s most serious, well-hidden software bugs--and introduces powerful new “exploratory” techniques for finding and correcting them. Drawing on nearly two decades of experience working at the cutting edge of testing with Google, Microsoft, and other top software organizations, Whittaker introduces innovative new processes for manual testing that are repeatable, prescriptive, teachable, and extremely effective. Whittaker defines both in-the-small techniques for individual testers and in-the-large techniques to supercharge test teams. He also introduces a hybrid strategy for injecting exploratory concepts into traditional scripted testing. You’ll learn when to use each, and how to use them all successfully. Concise, entertaining, and actionable, this book introduces robust techniques that have been used extensively by real testers on shipping software, illuminating their actual experiences with these techniques, and the results they’ve achieved. Writing for testers, QA specialists, developers, program managers, and architects alike, Whittaker answers crucial questions such as: • Why do some bugs remain invisible to automated testing--and how can I uncover them? • What techniques will help me consistently discover and eliminate “show stopper” bugs? • How do I make manual testing more effective--and less boring and unpleasant? • What’s the most effective high-level test strategy for each project? • Which inputs should I test when I can’t test them all? • Which test cases will provide the best feature coverage? • How can I get better results by combining exploratory testing with traditional script or scenario-based testing? • How do I reflect feedback from the development process, such as code changes?