Bonnie Bailey

Member for

13 years 7 months

Bonnie Bailey is a software test engineer for a health care information technology company. Bonnie is an avid reader of fiction and non-fiction, including software design, testing and development, disruptive and emerging technologies, business leadership, science, and medicine. She also enjoys writing.

Job Function

Testing

Country

United States

Bonnie Bailey

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	Reactions Reveal Our Expectations for Software QualityBonnie Bailey explains how our reactions can reveal what our expectations are for software quality. Quality is easier to recognize by our reactions than by what metrics, tools, or automation results tell us—no matter how much stock we put in their reliability.
	Keep Your Friends Close, But Keep Your Users CloserBonnie Bailey writes on the importance of knowing your users and keeping them close to you. The more you live and breathe your users, the more you know what they look like. Keeping your users close also implies making room for their data and their environments.
	What Commit Messages Say about Developers and Test AutomatorsCommit messages say a lot about the developers and test automation professionals who writes them—or who doesn’t write them at all. Trivial on the surface, the presence and substance of a commit message can indicate how forward-thinking a person is, which may indicate bigger things about the code.
	How Toilet Paper Problems Affect Software DevelopmentBonnie Bailey writes on how toilet paper problems, which are problems in which the effort required to resolve them are proportional to their current urgency, affect software development. When dealing with toilet paper problems, you're less likely to prepare for other potential problems.
	How to Get People to Agree with YouIn software development and testing we often encounter situations in which someone just isn't being very agreeable. Sometimes intelligent, reasonable people just don’t get it. The good news is those people probably haven’t gone temporarily stupid, so you can stop banging your head against a wall.
	Expecting One Giant? Bring Five StonesSimilar to the story of David and Goliath, software developers and testers hunt giants too—bugs, that is. Like David, they should believe that where there is one giant, there are probably five nearby, and they should hope to find each one.
	Software Testing: A Hunt for FragilitySoftware testers are hunters. At least, they should be. Their prey: fragility. Like some organizations and people, software can suffer from fragility, and it is the software tester's direct responsibility to sniff out fragility, call it by its name, and work to squeeze the life out of it.
	What Do Software Testing and Poker Have in Common?Software testing and poker have interesting commonalities. Some say there’s no use in either, that both are a waste of money and, at worst, dangerous to the financial health of the poker player or software project. Proponents say that both teach us something valuable and are enjoyable activities.
	Focus on Users' Needs Rather Than on Your Software ProductBonnie Bailey explains that you need to take care of your users’ needs first, and then, just maybe, they will explore the fabulous features of your software. When we focus on our product rather than on what the user is trying to get done, we suffer from marketing myopia.
	What Does It Really Cost to Fix a Software Defect?Bonnie Bailey writes that confirmation bias leads us to throw out the critical thinking needed to determine if the “average cost to fix one defect” metric, which is what we really have to figure out to get the data points for the Boehm curve, is really even a valid metric in the first place.
	Prioritize Testing Tasks by Prioritizing Your AudiencesThe solution to prioritizing work is a matter of prioritizing audiences. A tester’s work has an audience: users, coworkers, and bosses. Testing is a service we provide to each audience, so it is important to know which audience is at the top of the "make happy" list.
	Why Software Testers Should Help Developers DebugBonnie Bailey writes that helping developers debug can be a boon to the team; testers are naturally good at sniffing out problem areas and understanding how seemingly disparate pieces tie together.
	Use A/B Testing to Increase Revenue and User Satisfaction Bonnie Bailey writes that software teams should use split, also called A/B, testing to capitalize on the human subconscious. Just about any software effort can benefit from knowing what increases revenue or user satisfaction, which ultimately boosts the success of the project.
	Advance the Craft of Software Testing with the Best WorkspacesBonnie Bailey writes on the importance of the best workspaces for testers. Making workspaces that enhance a variety of testing tasks—cooperation, collaboration, and concentration—can help the craft of software testing rise to the occasion of today’s challenges in software development.
	The Test Automation Hunger GamesThe life of an automated test, whether it acts like it or not, is a game of survival—à la "The Hunger Games." Thrust into the arena of continuous integration, tests must constantly prove their worth and their usefulness. They must fight for their right to exist and be heard.
	How Exhaustive Testing Ensured a Successful Voyage for the Mars RoverBonnie Bailey writes on the software testing that took place to ensure that NASA's Curiosity rover would have a successful voyage to Mars. NASA's Mars Science Laboratory handled the myriad risks through well-planned software architecture, tight coding standards, and exhaustive testing.
	Identify the Essence of the Test to Reduce Automation CostsDo you want to improve the readability of automation tests and make them easier to maintain when code or requirements change? Then you need to take a step back from the automation code itself and focus on what software consultant Dale Emery calls the “essence of the test.”
	Ask Questions and Observe Language to Find State TransitionsBugs that peek out during a window of vulnerability can make us think we’ve been outsmarted. But in their sleuthing bag testers have a powerful tool that can surface such issues: state modeling. Bonnie Bailey describes how to ask the right questions and observe language to find state transitions.
	Do Software Testers Have Special Ethical Obligations?Some might argue that the same basic ethical rules apply in both professional and nonprofessional contexts—ethics is ethics. Other ethicists believe that all professionals, regardless of their practice, have special moral obligations. So, do software testers have special moral obligations?
	Why Testers Need to Tune Out the Noise and Focus on ValueHow do brand new testers—and experienced testers—make sense of their role in light of the myriad opinions about what testers are supposed to do? One simple way is this: Tune out the noise. Testers should use their own minds to focus on how people might obtain value from the program they’re testing.
	Why You Must Depersonalize Feedback to Become a More Valuable Tester Welcoming feedback isn’t as easy as it sounds, especially when you’re in a testing role and potentially getting constant feedback from numerous sources. If you don’t depersonalize feedback and you react defensively, the people around you will likely start to disengage, check out, and move away.
	Internet Archaeologists Dig Up Websites Stuck in TimeBonnie Bailey writes on the efforts of Internet archaeologists to document old websites in order to preserve the birth of Internet culture. Technology professionals have the rare privilege to wax nostalgic about a history we helped make, while still actively making that history today.
	Target's Website Snafu Suggests More Exploratory TestingTarget recently found itself in the news over a mislabeled product on its website that generated embarrassing results. The website snafu proves the importance of having an exploratory test team that manually tests in a production environment.
	World’s Fastest Supercomputer Goes Obsolete after Five YearsHow’s this for a testament to the transience of modern technology? The world’s fastest supercomputer, fewer than five years ago, was decommissioned on March 31, 2013, and is set to be dismantled because its technology is obsolete.
	Evernote's Security Breach Leads to Leaked PasswordsAnother day, another security breach. Following in the footsteps of popular hacked services Dropbox and LinkedIn, software and service vendor Evernote announced this March that it had suffered a data breach and suspected that usernames, email addresses, and encrypted passwords had been stolen.
	Emergent Database Technologies and the New Platform WarIn the not-so-distant past, there was a war of railroad track gauges, a war of electric power currents, and a war of videotape formats. Now, rumblings of another format war are pealing through a formerly stable platform, and this one could directly impact those who build and test software.
	Why Testers Need to Become More Technical As projects become more technical, testers themselves must adapt and become more technical. With technologies getting more complex each day, testers need to know how to identify risks and find problems deep within the technology stack.
	Four Tips for Assembling a Great Test TeamWhen recruiting new team members, remember that you may not be marrying the folks you hire, but you are tying your success in with theirs. So it’s vital to be thorough in evaluating potential recruits and to hire slowly. Bonnie Bailey presents four tips for assembling a great test team.
	The Challenges of Mobile Testing for Jailbroken DevicesMany of the automation tools for mobile testing on the market today require the use of jailbroken or rooted devices, a controversial condition that some testing advocates believe violates mobile testing best practices. Bonnie Bailey writes of the challenges jailbroken devices present to testers.
	Quantifying the Value of Your TestingCan you put a dollar figure on the value of your testing? While it may be difficult for you to do so, Bonnie Bailey maintains it is important to be able to quantify your worth—no matter how squeamish it makes you feel to put a number on your contributions.