Wednesday, June 17, 2009

Nielsen's Heuristics for Software Testing

I had a quick conversation today with Dustin, of DGP and MSR fame, and he asked me if there was anything similar to Nielsen's heuristics for usability that might be used when looking for errors in code. There wasn't anything that jumped to my mind, but that certainly doesn't mean that nothing in fact exists. However, the first 10 hits for "software testing heuristics", "nielsen heuristics code", "nielsen heuristics software testing errors" didn't contain what I was looking for, either. It makes me think that the imagined output from my research study could be a valid contribution to knowledge. I think the list would probably contain things like:

  • always try negative numbered parameters
  • always try null values
  • how well does the .equals() method work?
  • add-remove-add to/from the collection, is it the same semantically?
  • always check date-based roll-overs

3 comments:

Unknown said...

http://testobsessed.com/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2007/02/testheuristicscheatsheetv1.pdf

Webplore said...

Really informative post. helped me alot. thanks.

Tania said...

I was looking for something on this topic. Nice to come across your great post. Thanks!