The Tester's Pocketbook
$7.99
Minimum price
$7.99
Suggested price

The Tester's Pocketbook

About the Book

The first aim of this book is to provide a brief introduction to the discipline called testing. 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 testing 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 might be of help. It will prompt you to ask some germane questions of yourself, your team, your management, stakeholder or supplier.

About the Author

Paul Gerrard
Paul Gerrard

Paul Gerrard is a consultant, teacher, author, webmaster, programmer, tester, conference speaker, rowing coach and publisher. He has conducted consulting assignments in all aspects of software testing and quality assurance, specialising in test assurance. He has presented keynote talks and tutorials at testing conferences across Europe, the USA, Australia, South Africa and occasionally won awards for them.

Educated at the universities of Oxford and Imperial College London, he is a Principal of Gerrard Consulting Limited, the host of the UK Test Management Forum and the Programme Chair for the 2014 EuroSTAR testing conference.

In 2010 he won the EuroSTAR Testing Excellence Award and in 2013 he won the inaugural TESTA Lifetime Achievement Award.

He's the author of several books including "Risk-Based E-Business Testing" with Neil Thompson, "The Business Story Method" with Susan Windsor and "Lean Python".

Table of Contents

  • Preface
    • Aims of the Pocketbook
    • Testing is easy, isn’t it?
    • Context-neutral
    • Test Axioms
    • Stakeholder obsessed
    • Structure
    • Acknowledgements
  • 1. What do we Mean by Testing?
    • We Test Systems
    • We are all Testers; We are all Tested
    • The Purpose of Testing
    • The Definition of Test
    • The definition of testing
  • 2. The Equation of Testing
    • Deriving a Test Approach
    • Fundamental Development Process
    • The First Equation of Testing
  • 3. Stakeholder Axioms
    • Stakeholder
    • Value
    • Scope Management
    • Good-Enough
  • 4. Test Design Axioms
    • Test Model
    • Test Basis
    • Oracle
    • Coverage
    • Prioritisation
    • Fallibility
  • 5. Test Delivery Axioms
    • Confidence
    • Repeat-Test
    • Execution Sequencing
    • Environment
    • Event
    • Never-Finished
  • 6. Evaluating and Improving Testing
    • Process-model-based improvement
    • Goal-directed improvement
    • Using the axioms to evaluate testing
    • Test assessment by enquiry
    • Making change happen
  • 7. Conducting a Test Assessment
    • Stakeholder
    • Value
    • Scope Management
    • Good-Enough
    • Test Model
    • Test Basis
    • Oracle
    • Coverage
    • Prioritisation
    • Fallibility
    • Confidence
    • Repeat-Test
    • Execution Sequencing
    • Environment
    • Event
    • Never-Finished
  • 8. A Final Word
  • Gerrard Consulting
  • Further Information
    • Contacting the Author
    • Ordering copies of the Tester’s Pocketbook
    • Custom versions of The Tester’s Pocketbooks

The Leanpub 60 Day 100% Happiness Guarantee

Within 60 days of purchase you can get a 100% refund on any Leanpub purchase, in two clicks.

Now, this is technically risky for us, since you'll have the book or course files either way. But we're so confident in our products and services, and in our authors and readers, that we're happy to offer a full money back guarantee for everything we sell.

You can only find out how good something is by trying it, and because of our 100% money back guarantee there's literally no risk to do so!

So, there's no reason not to click the Add to Cart button, is there?

See full terms...

80% Royalties. Earn $16 on a $20 book.

We pay 80% royalties. That's not a typo: you earn $16 on a $20 sale. If we sell 5000 non-refunded copies of your book or course for $20, you'll earn $80,000.

(Yes, some authors have already earned much more than that on Leanpub.)

In fact, authors have earnedover $13 millionwriting, publishing and selling on Leanpub.

Learn more about writing on Leanpub

Free Updates. DRM Free.

If you buy a Leanpub book, you get free updates for as long as the author updates the book! Many authors use Leanpub to publish their books in-progress, while they are writing them. All readers get free updates, regardless of when they bought the book or how much they paid (including free).

Most Leanpub books are available in PDF (for computers) and EPUB (for phones, tablets and Kindle). The formats that a book includes are shown at the top right corner of this page.

Finally, Leanpub books don't have any DRM copy-protection nonsense, so you can easily read them on any supported device.

Learn more about Leanpub's ebook formats and where to read them

Write and Publish on Leanpub

You can use Leanpub to easily write, publish and sell in-progress and completed ebooks and online courses!

Leanpub is a powerful platform for serious authors, combining a simple, elegant writing and publishing workflow with a store focused on selling in-progress ebooks.

Leanpub is a magical typewriter for authors: just write in plain text, and to publish your ebook, just click a button. (Or, if you are producing your ebook your own way, you can even upload your own PDF and/or EPUB files and then publish with one click!) It really is that easy.

Learn more about writing on Leanpub