Additional information
by William E. Perry (Author), Randall W. Rice (Author)
Dirty systems are systems which lack documentation, have few or no defined requirements, have no standardized design or architecture, and have unknown levels of defects. These systems are very difficult to maintain and test due to high complexity and low understanding. People are often afraid to make any changes to this type of software because of the high risk of breaking things that currently work correctly. In many cases, these systems are legacy systems and were never tested well originally. After years of maintenance, these systems often are in disarray due to the lack of control. The object of this book is to assist software testers in how to approach testing a system, which in many instances appears as a "black-box" to them. The testing process is heavily focused on a diagnostic step, which scopes the test problem, and assists the tester in building an effective test plan. The process proposed in this book should significantly improve the effectiveness and efficiency of the software testing. There are two main objectives for the reader: 1) learn how to test these complex and large legacy systems, and 2) use the information gained from testing to clean the system and improve maintenance and testing processes.
Author Biography
Randy Rice is a leading author, speaker and consultant in the field of software testing and software quality. Rice, a Certified Software Quality Analyst, Certified Software Tester, Certified Software Test Manager and an ASTQB Certified Tester - Advanced Level (Full), and a Fellow of the Life Office Management Association, has worked with organizations worldwide to improve the quality of their information systems and optimize their testing processes. Mr. Rice has over 33 years experience building and testing mission-critical projects in a variety of environments. Randy is a director of the American Software Testing Qualifications Board and has been published by the Journal of the Quality Assurance Institute, Crosstalk, Client/Server Computing, Powersoft Applications Developer and Enterprise Systems Journal. He is a regular speaker at international conferences on software testing in North America and Europe, and is also publisher of The Software Quality Advisor. He is co-author with William E. Perry of the books, Surviving the Top Ten Challenges of Software Testing published by Dorset House Publishing Co., and Testing Dirty Systems self-published by CreateSpace. Randy serves as Treasurer for the American Software Testing Qualifications Board (ASTQB). He also served as chair of the Quality Assurance Institute's International Software Testing Conference from 1995 - 2000 and was a founding member of the Certified Software Test Engineer (CSTE) certification program. As author and trainer of many software testing training courses, Randy has had the privilege of training thousands of software testers throughout North America. Randy is a frequent speaker at major testing conferences, including EuroStar, StarEast, StarWest, QAI's International Software Testing Conference, Practical Software Quality Techniques, and the Software Technology Conference sponsored by the U.S. Dept. of Defense.
