Paul Gerrard

The Digital phenomenon that is sweeping through business and the IT sector is the biggest thing since the Internet took the world by storm. Unlike the Internet revolution and DotCom madness, Digital is largely business-driven. In that respect, there has been no slow-start — from nowhere to every
organisation in about three years.

The scope of Digital spans all the new technologies including mobile, the Internet of Things, Drones, 3D printing and sensors and actuators of all… Show more

The Digital phenomenon that is sweeping through business and the IT sector is the biggest thing since the Internet took the world by storm. Unlike the Internet revolution and DotCom madness, Digital is largely business-driven. In that respect, there has been no slow-start — from nowhere to every
organisation in about three years.

The scope of Digital spans all the new technologies including mobile, the Internet of Things, Drones, 3D printing and sensors and actuators of all descriptions – it’s everything. This combination of huge scope, business pressure and changing development approaches will pose a huge problem for most testing teams and testers. This book is an attempt to summarise the challenge and make some general recommendations for coping, thriving or surviving a once-in-a-career transformation.

This book is aimed at testers requiring an overview of the challenge and Digital leaders and managers wanting to know how to shape the testing and assurance of their projects. Show less

Python is a widely used general-purpose, high-level programming language. Its design philosophy emphasizes code readability, and its syntax allows programmers to express concepts in fewer lines of code than would be possible in languages such as C. The language provides constructs intended to enable clear programs on both a small and large scale.” – Python entry in Wikipedia

If you choose to learn Python as your first or your fifteenth programming language, you are making an excellent… Show more

Python is a widely used general-purpose, high-level programming language. Its design philosophy emphasizes code readability, and its syntax allows programmers to express concepts in fewer lines of code than would be possible in languages such as C. The language provides constructs intended to enable clear programs on both a small and large scale.” – Python entry in Wikipedia

If you choose to learn Python as your first or your fifteenth programming language, you are making an excellent choice.

This book provides a minimalist introduction that will give you enough knowledge and confidence to create your own programs whether you are a professional
programmer or tester or just want to explore what is becoming the language of
choice of more and more software professionals.

Become a lean “Pythonista”. Show less

As an industry, one thing we have consistently failed to do is meet the software requirements of business in an efficient, timely and cost-effective way. Agile approaches are one way to solve this problem and for certain organisations and some systems, it’s an excellent solution. But the ‘pure Agile’ approach is not for everyone and many organisations who have tried to merge Agile with ‘traditional’ structured approaches have had difficulty.

What lessons can we learn and what practices… Show more

As an industry, one thing we have consistently failed to do is meet the software requirements of business in an efficient, timely and cost-effective way. Agile approaches are one way to solve this problem and for certain organisations and some systems, it’s an excellent solution. But the ‘pure Agile’ approach is not for everyone and many organisations who have tried to merge Agile with ‘traditional’ structured approaches have had difficulty.

What lessons can we learn and what practices can we adopt from Agile to improve the way we build software in all projects?

Agile reminds us that teams are most effective when they are focused on a business goal and communication and feedback are excellent. Business Stories are simple, compact ‘examples’ of the behaviour of software. When placed at the centre of software delivery, these stories close the communication gap between users, developers and testers.

This pocketbook describes the approach to building software devised by Gerrard Consulting that uses Business Stories to enable project participants to communicate in natural language:
Business analysts derive Business Stories from requirements to confirm with stakeholders that requirements can be trusted.

* Developers take the same stories and use them to help design their code and automatically test it.
* Test analysts take the same stories and add detail required for system and acceptance testing as software becomes available.
* Written for business analysts, developers, testers and their managers, this pocketbook describes the core practices you need to manage requirements knowledge and deliver valuable software that works the way users want it, in a more reliable way. Show less

The first aim of this book is to provide a brief-as-possible introduction to the discipline called testing. Have you just been told you are responsible for testing something? Perhaps it is the implementation of a computer system in your business. But you have never done this sort of thing before! Quite a lot of the information and training on testing is technical, bureaucratic, complicated or dated. This Pocketbook presents a set of Test Axioms that will help you determine what your mission… Show more

The first aim of this book is to provide a brief-as-possible introduction to the discipline called testing. Have you just been told you are responsible for testing something? Perhaps it is the implementation of a computer system in your business. But you have never done this sort of thing before! Quite a lot of the information and training on testing is technical, bureaucratic, complicated or dated. This Pocketbook presents a set of Test Axioms that will help you determine what your mission should be and how to gain commitment and understanding from your management. The technical stuff might then make more sense to you.

The second aim of this Pocketbook is to provide a handy reference, an aide memoire or prompter for testing practitioners. But it isn't a pocket dictionary or summary of procedures, techniques or processes. When you are stuck for what to do next, or believe there's something wrong in your own or someone else's testing or you want to understand their testing or improve it, this Pocketbook will prompt you to ask some germane questions of yourself, your team, your management, stakeholder or supplier. Show less

Co-authored with lead author Paul Gerrard, this was and still is the first textbook to specialise in risk-based testing - though it takes a pragmatic approach to the subject which was specifically tailored for the e-business market.