SOFTWARE TESTING, VERIFICATION AND RELIABILITY Softw. Test. Verif. Reliab.

2009; 19:335 Published online in Wiley InterScience (www.interscience.wiley.com)

Book Review

PRAGMATIC SOFTWARE TESTING. By Rex Black. Published by Wiley. ISBN: 978-0-47012790-2, 366 pages. Price: 31.99, Soft Cover. The rst thing and obvious comment to make about this book is that I found the title, Pragmatic Software Testing, to be misleading. Being pragmatic is about making decisions and taking actions that are useful in practice, and not just in theory. The title page also contains the phrases Timely, Practical & Reliable and Becoming an Efcient & Effective Test Professional. In some ways these are actually contradictions to a pragmatic approach. As the author describes in the forward the book has been developed, with encouragement from colleagues and friends, from the authors previously self-published work on Efcient and Effective Software Testing. The author then goes on to dene Pragmatic Software Testing as . . . involves being effective and efcient when testing software. So why is the title and denition important? Well if you buy this book expecting to read pragmatic solutions to common testing problems, which is a large part of the day-to-day role of many testers and test managers, then you will not nd them. It also takes time and concerted effort to establish and develop an efcient and effective testing process, which is not addressed by this book. And these processes are sometimes (or often) implemented in a way that is not well suited to pragmatic change. Sometimes pragmatic decisions may actually lead to inefcient and ineffective testing. The book takes a rmly structured view of the testing world. There is mention of other approaches, such as iterative and agile. These are covered in just calls Reactive Testing is discussed in only 11 pages,

over a page in the strategy chapter. What the author with fully two pages of caveats. Out of 366 pages this is hardly a ringing endorsement, and will be a disappointment to those who would look to the book for wider coverage of the testing world, and limits its appeal to the classic structured approach. The book describes a number of test case design techniques, with training exercises, but I did not nd them easy to work through. The diagrams have a style that is busy and difcult to read. Another criticism of the examples is that it isnt clear as to how some of the lengthy tables are populated. It is worth noting that there are other and better techniques books available. I have read the authors previous work Managing the Testing Process, and found that although an easy read, it was set at an introductory level. This book has more depth, is more rounded, and the benet is that the reader will take more away from this work. It is common in book reviews of this type to say that this book might be suitable for beginners as a reference work covering many techniques. In fact the book does offer advice to what it calls beginning testers. And there are doubtless many who would benet from reading this book and sharing the authors experience. I am though left thinking that there is still a need for a book that covers Pragmatic Software Testing. GRAHAM THOMAS Independent Consultant, Hillside House, 2-6 Friern Park, North Finchley, London N12 9BT, U.K. E-mail: graham@badgerscroft.com (DOI: 10.1002/stvr.397)

Copyright 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.