In a recent blog post, Erik Petersen mentioned using Fake Name Generator to create test data. From Erik's post:

"The fascinating feature is the ability to create real looking names from various ethnic groups, resulting in a great variety of Anglo-saxon, Arabic, Asian, Scandanavian, Southern, Eastern and Western European names with personal data that seems real (and with fake real email as well!).

On the Fake Name Generator site, they also link to some other cool test data tools.

Recently, I've devised a mnemonic for regression testing: RCRCRC

Susan Cramm recently wrote an article on best practices on the HBR website. In the article, she points out that:

In reality, "best practice"...
...isn't always the "best"
...often isn't feasible
...is sometimes unachievable

Instead she recommends focusing on...

Adapting best practices...
Defining quality processes...
Having experienced people...

Checkout the full article for details.

When I'm managing session-based exploratory testing, I spend a lot of time measuring charter velocity. There are a couple of key dynamics I look at:

• charters executed per day


• new charters created per day (broken down by charter priority level)

I typically capture these by tester, but I often look at them as a team aggregate. While I'm interested in individual trends for coaching, for a team of more than two testers, it's more interesting from a team perspective when it comes to creating trendlines. I show an example of how I use these numbers in a recent SSQ article.

Not to be confused with user stories, stories about users can help testers develop an understanding of what users of the software they're testing will value. In a recent IWST, Brett Leonard shared his experience of using stories of users to help develop empathy for when he's doing his exploratory testing:

"Our knowledge of stories of users is key to understanding how people derive value from our applications. [...] Stories of users make up the narrative of an application."

By having (and using) stories of users, Brett is able to better focus on value to the end user when he's doing his testing. Value for Brett, not only means more actionable bugs, but also means more focused test ideas.

During his talk, I was reminded of Atomic Object's announcement of hiring a full time artist to sketch personas.