The Black Box Testing Song

Cem Kaner and James Bach presented a course on Black Box Software Testing that I took circa 2003. I performed this song, Black Box, to wrap up the training. The reference to “underwear and dirty socks”, besides making a pleasant rhyme with “black box”, refers to Cem’s comment that once you get to know a particular developer’s personal developmental hygiene, you can start rummaging around their code looking for their characteristic errors – their dirty laundry, as it were. We spent a little time learning to make test data that is easy to grow to gigantic size and then shrink as needed, and how to recognize when this type of attack might be useful. We also discussed how to turn any statement about the software into a testable requirement, including marketing claims, hence the comment about the Marketing Department, and spent quite a bit of time going over good ways to review specification documents for ambiguity and raise questions that may save confusion later on. Especially if the developers are as frazzled as the ones in the song.

The most important lessons that I learned, though were these: when in doubt, start testing. And notice when you are running across the same bugs as before, stop retracing your own footsteps and try something new. I tried to capture these ideas in the song as well.

I had a lot of fun writing and recording this, and I hope you enjoy it. In case you couldn’t quite tell, it was ripped off from “Smooth” by Rob Thomas and Santana. See the page about it on the Audible Stuff blog for more music notes.