Testing Complex and Embedded Systems What set of conditions could cause this event to occur? When we have elicited all we can from the customer about fault information, it is time to proceed further in our analysis. This next step requires investigation of the design to understand how the symptom of failure described could happen […]

Project Closure and Team Disband One of my favorites and often poorly executed part of a project is the project closure.  Project closure is not just a simple wipe our hands together and smile, then proclaim that we are finished with the project. It is not even handing the customer our results and patting everybody […]

The Emissions Tango There is so much to learn from this case for those who develop products for a living and automotive products in particular.  Understanding the impact of concept selection and testing of the product on the project’s success and product quality is important.  The early decisions we make regarding the development of the […]

Poor Excuse for Not Automating Testing Recently I came across and participated in a social media exchange that proposed that automating product testing (software) was not helpful.  Their assertion was backed with comments about personnel new to testing who cannot learn how to test. Testing and System Complexity System and software complexity, the number of […]

We have recently posted how assumptions, left unquestioned can damage a project. It is similarly true for the product when we use models and simulation to generate our product.  In the course of building these models, we will know some things for certain.  Some attributes of the model we may think we know for certain […]

By Jon M Quigley We have discussed the Failure Mode Effects technique a few times in the past.  Though Failure Mode Effects and analysis seems to be a powerful tool, the problem is you do not know if the FMEA is effective and perhaps you will never know.  The Failure Mode Effects Analysis tool, theoretically, allows […]

Business Imperative There was a discussion going on LinkedIn and Twitter about technical debt, and management decisions. Sometimes business imperative trumps technical debt, but you must acknowledge the technical debt, and compare the business positives against the technical debt negatives. Technical Debt We should probably start by giving a definition of technical debt.  Technical debt […]

Register for the free introduction to product (hardware and software) testing in a course online that covers the topics: Stakeholders / Sponsors Project Scope Configuration Management Static Testing Techniques (inspections) Dynamic techniques Approaches to testing Regression , Re-test and Human Interactions Evaluation Putting it together with TIEMPO Test Management This course includes the creation of […]

We have created an online introduction to product testing course. The course is free, and highly interactive. It consists of ten modules on topics listed below with some of the attributes per module.       1.)  Stakeholders and Sponsors   2.) Scope and Requirements   3.) Configuration Management and Testing   4.)  Static Testing Techniques   5.)  Dynamic Testing […]