Recommend a Good QA Book

Question

What books are people reading that you would recommend.

I've just finished up "Beautiful Testing" (which I would highly recommend) and need to pick up another book.

I'm looking for something fairly current. The content should be somewhat generic to testing. I don't want a "how to" on scripting or coding or a particular tool. I've read the James Whittaker "How To...." books, so unless he has a new one out I'm unaware of I've read those all. If it were inexpensive, or available used on Amazon all the better.

So what do folks suggest?

Answer 1

Lessons Learned In Software Testing - Cem Kaner, James Bach, Bret Pettichord.

293 short lessons on various aspects of software testing, you're bound to find something useful in it.

Answer 2

"Perfect Software and other illusions about testing" by Gerald Weinberg should be on your "to read" list.

Here's an interesting example that will give you a flavor of the book.

In chapter 3 "Why Not Just Test Everything?", Weinberg has a section called "There are an infinite number of possible tests." He talks about a backdoor placed into a highly secure program whereby the ordinary password protection could be bypassed by typing W followed by three spaces, then M followed by three spaces, then J followed by exactly 168 more keystrokes without once using the letter L. Then he writes:

"Do you get the point by now? If you didn't guess that the number of tests required to exhaustively test software is infinite, or at least "a number greater than I could run in my lifetime", you didn't understand the point of this chapter. Now you do."

If you are looking for a "how to" book, you should look elsewhere. If you are looking for a "why" (and sometimes "why not") book, this might be for you.

Another really good one is "How We Test Software at Microsoft" by Alan Page, Ken Johnston, and Bj Rollison.

The excellent explanations of Equivalence Class Partitioning and Boundary Value Analysis are among the best I have ever read.

Answer 3

One book that I would recommend is Debugging by Thinking by Robert Charles Metzger

This is a very unique book in that it approaches how to do testing the way Sherlock Holmes and other fictional detectives might of done it, looking at logic, psychology, engineering, etc.

The book is pretty comprehensive and would be useful for a wide range of engineers both SW quality and SW developers.

Good luck, hoping this question get a lot of answers

PS. I know that "Testing" (Debugging) and "Quality Assurance" are not the same. But good testing skills are paramount to becoming a great SW Quality Engineer!

Answer 4

A number of expert testers like James Bach have put their bookshelves online and I talked about them here: http://sqa.stackexchange.com/a/2685/1455.

Basically what I said was software testing expert James Bach has a growing list of books on his Tester's Bookshelf that are worth looking at: http://www.librarything.com/catalog/satisfice/testersbookshelf

James Whittaker has a new book coming out How Google Tests Software but that won't be available for another month or so.

I'm in the middle of reading a few books: Amplifying your Effectiveness by Gerald Weinberg, James Bach, Naomi Karten and An Introduction to General Systems Thinking by Gerald Weinberg. Looks like as of 3/8/12 the Kindle version of Introduction to General Systems Thinking is less than $4.

Answer 5

Try this one Agile Testing: A Practical Guide for Testers and Agile Teams by Lisa Crispan

Answer 6

Others have already listed many books that I would have listed. To add some more recent books that I have liked:

Specification by example: How successful teams deliver the right software by Gojko Adzic
This book introduces one way for specifying a product and making sure that the intended product was actually built. Many of the ideas are usable in any environment and will make communication between team members better.

Security and usability by Lorrie Faith Cranor and Simson Garfinkel
I have not finished this book yet, but it is an interesting take on how to think of combining usability and security which are often seen as opposites of each other.

From more classical books I could still mention
Testing Computer Software by Cem Kaner, Jack Falk, and Hung Quoc Nguyen.
This is a good book for learning all the basics of testing.

Answer 7

Already mentioned Lessons Learned In Software Testing plus two relatively new ones: How Google Tests Software and Exploratory Software Testing: Tips, Tricks, Tours, and Techniques to Guide Test Design by James A. Whittaker

Answer 8

Any book is a good book if you can apply it to QA and testing. It depends on if you're trying to be a better tester, or trying to understand the domain language better, or you want a new perspective on problems, or you're trying to get a certification.

I recently wrote about the board game Zendo being great for understanding elements of exploratory testing. I believe James Bach reads anything BUT testing books! (Great talk by him on the subject of what to read, amongst other things: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MKFqwKSon-E)

Saying that I won a copy of How to Reduce the Cost of Software Testing that I particularly enjoyed. A collection of various long articles on how to reduce "costs", with many different authors and many different perspectives on reducing cost, what "cost" means, and even if we should be focusing on reducing cost. I like books that inspire me to a way of thinking, and this had many ways of thinking to be inspired to.