Bonnie Bailey

Bonnie Bailey is a software test engineer for a health care information technology company. Bonnie is an avid reader of fiction and non-fiction, including software design, testing and development, disruptive and emerging technologies, business leadership, science, and medicine. She also enjoys writing.

All Stories by Bonnie Bailey

The Test Automation Hunger Games

The life of an automated test, whether it acts like it or not, is a game of survival—à la "The Hunger Games." Thrust into the arena of continuous integration, tests must constantly prove their worth and their usefulness. They must fight for their right to exist and be heard.

How Exhaustive Testing Ensured a Successful Voyage for the Mars Rover

Bonnie Bailey writes on the software testing that took place to ensure that NASA's Curiosity rover would have a successful voyage to Mars. NASA's Mars Science Laboratory handled the myriad risks through well-planned software architecture, tight coding standards, and exhaustive testing.

Identify the Essence of the Test to Reduce Automation Costs

Do you want to improve the readability of automation tests and make them easier to maintain when code or requirements change? Then you need to take a step back from the automation code itself and focus on what software consultant Dale Emery calls the “essence of the test.”

Ask Questions and Observe Language to Find State Transitions

Bugs that peek out during a window of vulnerability can make us think we’ve been outsmarted. But in their sleuthing bag testers have a powerful tool that can surface such issues: state modeling. Bonnie Bailey describes how to ask the right questions and observe language to find state transitions.

Do Software Testers Have Special Ethical Obligations?

Some might argue that the same basic ethical rules apply in both professional and nonprofessional contexts—ethics is ethics. Other ethicists believe that all professionals, regardless of their practice, have special moral obligations. So, do software testers have special moral obligations?

Why Testers Need to Tune Out the Noise and Focus on Value

How do brand new testers—and experienced testers—make sense of their role in light of the myriad opinions about what testers are supposed to do? One simple way is this: Tune out the noise. Testers should use their own minds to focus on how people might obtain value from the program they’re testing.

Why You Must Depersonalize Feedback to Become a More Valuable Tester

Welcoming feedback isn’t as easy as it sounds, especially when you’re in a testing role and potentially getting constant feedback from numerous sources. If you don’t depersonalize feedback and you react defensively, the people around you will likely start to disengage, check out, and move away.

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