testing

Creativity, innovation, and pushing the edge on what's possible

Poka-Yoke Your Code

Mary Poppendieck tells this great story about when the manufacturing plant she worked for transitioned to Lean. When they started, she says, they had this separate QA group whose job it was to find defects in the products after they were already made (sound familiar?). But then they took these QA folks and moved them […]

Where Does Developer Testing End and Tester Testing Begin?

Thanks so much to all of the awesome people who attended Nate Oster & I’s workshop at Agile 2009. We used games and ideas to look at how testers and programmers can really work together on agile projects in ways that makes sense on our teams. [Click Read More….. to view the slides]

Where Do the Testers Go in Agile?

While I love to write, I occasionally prefer the role of reviewer or editor. I find it a nice break to sit on the other side and evaluate someone else’s work for a change. How much more comfortable to critique someone else’s product then to summon the courage to create something myself! But how much […]

Your Unit Tests Should Mind Their Own Business

As the unit testing debates continue on my project, I can’t help but noticing that people are spending all sorts of time pontificating over the right way to unit test, without stepping back to consider what they’re trying to achieve with unit testing. And because they don’t know where they’re going, they’re not able to […]

TDD SmackDown!

Software development gurus Bob Martin and Jim Coplien go head to head on the virtues (or lack thereof) of Test-Driven Development. And in this corner, we have Robert “Uncle Bob” Martin, who throws the first punch with the bold: “it has become infeasible for a software developer to consider himself professional if he does not […]

My Unit Tests Are Purer Than Yours

There is a hot debate on my project about whether or not our JUnit tests are pure unit tests. What the heck does that mean, pure unit tests? Our tests are JUnit tests. Doesn’t that, by definition, make them unit tests? Actually, no. Unit testing does actually refer to a very specific type of test […]

Waiting for the Internets

Abby Fichtner is The Hacker Chick. She helps people build amazing technology and push the edge on what's possible.

She's taught classes for MIT and Harvard on innovation and entrepreneurship, worked with hundreds of entrepreneurs, and been named an Innovation Amplifier by the Boston Globe, one of the Top 25 Women in Boston Tech, and Boston's Startup Gaurdian Angel.

After 3 years at Harvard Innovation Lab, Abby now helps individuals to create their own products and businesses so they can bring in additional money, become their own boss, gain financial freedom, and do work they feel proud of.

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