31 Days of Testing: Day 1: The Kickoff

I’ve seen a number of blog series over the last year or so along the theme of “31 days of <xxx>” where <xxx> is the technology/framework/whatever of the day. I thought I’d pile on with my own series of “31 Days of Testing” because you may, by now, have an idea about how important I think testing is…
Over the next 31 days I’ll be hitting a broad range of topics. Many of the follow on posts will be general or high level, although I’ll be diving in to some more technical aspects when it comes time to cover things like mocking, data setup, etc. I’m kicking this off somewhat spur of the moment, so the flow of the overall series may be a little disconnected and clunky. Sue me.
Some of the broad themes I’ll be covering include

• Building a culture and team that cherishes testing
• Building testing skills and team collaboration
• Different kinds of automated and manual testing
• Avoiding brittle, unmaintainable tests
• Infrastructure for testing
• Keeping your tests running quickly
• Keeping your tests focused on value
• Deciding what to test and what to automate
• Why *DD isn’t about testing, it’s about development

I’ve had a couple pals offer to write articles for the series, so I’ll be cross-posting or linking to content elsewhere when those posts come up—I’m lucky to have a network of smart folks to leech off of!
I’ll keep updating this specific post with links to follow on articles as I post them.
Do feel free to add in suggestions for topics. I’ll refactor as I go based on customer (reader!) input.
I hope you enjoy the series. I’m looking forward to it!

 

UPDATED: Here’s the index of posts in the series!

1. Day 1: The Kickoff (like, this post)
2. Day 2: Setting Expectations
3. Day 3: More Collaboration, Not Less
4. Day 4: Sustainable Pace, Sensible Flow
5. Day 5: Choosing What To Test
6. Day 6: Types of Automated Testing
7. Day 7: Automated Test Basics
8. Day 8: Pay Attention to Your Tests’ Setup!
9. Day 9: Readable Tests
10. Day 10: Mocking Out Dependencies
11. Day 11: Maintainable Functional Automation
12. Day 12: Functional Test 101
13. Day 13: Functional Test 201 (Common Problems)
14. Day 14: Tests as Specifications
15. Day 15: Cucumber is Not A QA Tool
16. Day 16: Testing Web Services
17. Day 17: Rules for Effective Data-Driven Tests
18. Day 18: Baseline Datasets
19. Day 19: Refactoring a “Monster” Functional Test, Part 1
20. Day 20: Refactoring a “Monster” Functional Test, Part 2
21. Day 21: Data Driving Your Functional Tests
22. Day 22: Why Collaboration Matters (A Real World Example)
23. Day 23: Acceptance Tests & Criteria in the Real World
24. Day 24: Getting Serious About Performance
25. Day 25: Performance Testing, Part 2