David Christiansen recently published an article on getting along with developers. Some tips from that article:

1. Don't editorialize the bugs you find


2. Stay in sync with the development cadence


3. Isolate bugs effectively


4. Sleep on bug reports

Check out the full article for details on each point.

Today's tip is guest written by Zachary Fisher.

Working as we do, it is easy to let skepticism become our default position on any statement made by any person. At any time. On any subject.

This behavior becomes maladaptive when we see ourselves as the only person who can be trusted. It thrusts the onus of proof onto ourselves and causes us to micro-manage every minute detail of our lives and/or project. This dysfunction reveals itself in subtle ways: we keep details from others while trying to figure it out, preferring to create tools rather than relationships, not delegating crucial tasks because someone else won't do it right; basically seeing ourselves as the hub from which anything done right flows.

As a manager of resources, i.e., people, time, money, etc, we should walk in the light of some truths:

(1) We can be wrong sometimes
(2) We will be wrong sometimes
(3) Other people can forgive
(4) Other people can help
(5) Grace abounds in humility

So if the project is taking on gargantuan proportions and you're being consumed by fears of catastrophic failure - take a step back and ask yourself if the task seems so great because you secretly envision having to do it all yourself. If so, kudos for being a responsible adult. Now, take a step of faith and give other people the opportunity to prove themselves as trustworthy as you've become.

I started using Site24x7 a couple of weeks ago, and this morning I purchased an annual subscription (for about $15). Site24x7 offers easy and fast (and it really is easy and fast) web monitoring services. I'm using them to get alerted when a couple of web apps I'm hosting go down. They send email and text messages. They also provide very nice up-time reports (ad hoc and emailed weekly). I'm sure there are free services/tools out there for this, but this was soooo... easy. I had it up and monitoring in less than three minutes. And the alerts have been timely and effective.

If you have a small buisness montioring need, they might be worth checking out. The price is right, and they offer a wide range of monitoring services. And I just noticed they have a web version for the iPhone. I'm going to have to check it out.

I suspect they don't yet realize it, but Microsoft have just launched a new exploratory testing tool. Its called OneNote and its part of their family of Office products.

OneNote is a new application that is available in the Home and Student edition of 2007 and 2010 beta version.

In Microsoft speak, OneNote is a digital notebook that provides people one place to gather their notes and information, powerful search to find what they are looking for quickly, and easy-to-use shared notebooks so that they can manage information overload and work together effectively.

I see it as a great way of collecting all the information related to a test in one handy area.

For example, you can add snapshots, text, sound direct from the toolbar onto a screen. I like the idea of providing audio notes to a visual snapshot as its a way of simply supplying contextual information thats lacking in a 2 dimensional image.

Unfortunately, it doesn't have a direct button for video, but you can import any video and attach it to the notebook.

You can also create different pages in the notebook, so perhaps you could have one notebook per charter and one page per bug.

OneNote easily integrates with Outlook  making it easy to share information.

They also have plenty of templates to draw from, but I could see no reference to anything on exploratory testing, so I think they haven't yet seen how helpful a tool like this could be in exploratory testing.

Unfortunately, there is always a downside, and that is you have to pay for the Home and Student version of Microsoft Office 2007 as its not available in the 2007 Professional Edition. A bit annoying if you already own Office 2007.

Following up on yesterday's post, another tool from Stoyan Stefanov's recent post on performance testing tools is PageTest.  From the Stoyan's post:

"AOL's PageTest is an IE plugin but also a hosted service which is a great way to show your boss/client performance details without inconveniencing them with challenging download and installation activities. PageTest gives you a waterfall view of the page load and a checklist of things to improve, plus some screenshots of interesting moments during load and even a video - an excellent view of how the page looks like in slow speeds. The hosted service can show you the dial-up experience in 4 different places in the world.

For some other cool tools, checkout Stoyan's full post.