When I first read this book over eight years ago I was less than enthusiastic. At the time I felt that the approach was not rigorous enough. Over time I came to appreciate the pragmatism and how the approach in this book reflects the realities of software testing instead of a rigid, purist view as an unattainable ideal.

Everything the new or intermediate test professional needs to know is covered. The practices and techniques provided will foster sound QA practices and will step you through developing test strategies, and from those, developing and executing test cases. These are the real essence of testing, and this book covers them exceptionally well.

I like the coverage of testing systems and artifacts that are not software - documentation, hardware, and localization testing advice shows that testing is not limited to software. As importantly, the chapter on legal consequences of software defects will show testing in a perspective that is often overlooked, even by seasoned test professionals.

If you are new to software testing, or have some experience, but no formal training, this book will provide you with the right way to approach software testing, and will give insights that would take years to learn on your own.

Great book, tons of practicals, step-by-step instructions, full listing of resources and reading lists...Plus, I love how the authors start fairly basic initially, and then slowly build onto the previously covered topics with more and more depth per subsequent chapter. all-in-all an excellent find!

One note though, pick your vendor wisely. I bought this used in "good" condition with "some notes and highlighting." Well..I haven't really noticed much highlighting because I've been so preoccupied with keeping the pages together! My book came completely un-bound for the first 60-70 pages, which subsequently led to the remainder of the book coming apart too. No matter how carefully (read-Uncomfortably and Awkwardly) I used it. UNACCEPTABLE

What's even more irksome, is that this is more so a textbook--something I would like to be able to refer to every now and then..

Guess I'll just have to buy another NEW copy now..

My advice--be careful about buyng USED books online. And just steer clear entirely when the books you'll be byung are reference/text-books.

I am a QA manager for a major software company. I got ahold of this book and ended up buying a copy for all of my crew!

I highly recommend this book to testers of all levels! Covers it all, positive, negative, boundary, stress etc.

I love the first chapters easy program breakdown. The authors came up with some fantastic sample tests both inside and outside the box.

Get this book!

EXCELLENT resource on computer testing. This is written in such an easy and straightforward manner. The book is written for anyone - regardless of any previous programming experience. It's great. This book is a main resource recommended to new hires at the company that I work.

A friend recently suggested I get into Software testing and honestly I never thought about it as a career choice. She suggested this and one other book as informative sources to get me started. Finding books on the subject alone was hard enough!

I haven't finished the book yet, but here's what I like

- Information is simply written and easy to understand so far. Not all text books do that and I appreciate when it is.

- This book isn't just geared to the subject matter experts or even people new to the subject. The preface addresses this and offers suggestions

- Each chapter starts by the writers telling you why that section is necessary, a brief summary and sometimes even outside references to follow up with.

The only bad thing I can say so far about this book is that there doesn't seem to be any updated versions. While I'm assuming that methodology doesn't really change, the book is already ten years old. I'm hoping that my opinions don't change as I get more in-depth, but if they do I'll come back and update this review.

Very thorough and complete. I don't have a QA background, and this book really helped me to expand my expertise in this area. I continue to refer to it.

Testing Computer Software, 2nd EditionThe content of the book is just what I was looking for. I have 30 years in software development (SW Engineer), have done all phases of the s/w life cycle, and recently am having to step up verification (testing) efforts at the mid-size company where I work, which is too small to have a formal verification team. I found the author's opinions on how to go about doing things to be straight-forward, eliminating unnecessary tasks (I loved the suggestion to have people bring work to mandatory status meetings--I'm required to hold these types of meetings and find them disruptive to my people, who are trying to get work done), and well organized. It's very clear, easy to find things, easy to understand, with a wonderful list at the back that they graciously give permission to use, a checklist of common errors. I really recommend the book as a "primer" for someone starting in test.

My beef comes from the business that I bought the book from, which this may not be the right forum to present my complaint, but here we go. I ordered this book from motor_city_books. I was very disappointed in the book that I received. Its condition was listed as Very Good, yet a yellow highlighter had been used on sections of the text, a section of 10 pages was missing, and another 30 pages were completely loose (they fell out when I opened the book). Since I can't recover the shipping charges even if I return the book, I'll keep it. The book should never have been put up for sale, listed in any condition. I have another used book I ordered from them that I'm waiting to come in--I'll see what kind of shape that's in. This may be an isolated incident. I've always had a great experience ordering used books through Amazon sellers, never thought to wonder whether I could get my shipping fee back when a product is flawed in the way this is (I don't see anything saying I can have a refund), so I wanted to warn anyone who might read my review.

This will be an authoritative source on testing for someone like me that needs to understand the concepts and lacks the experience needed. I can't imagine any title being more useful for someone in my new role.

Great seller and a smooth experience, product exactly as described and also dispatch was smooth. I will surely buy from seller and also recommend too as well

Great book, however the formatting of the Kindle version is diabolical … to the point where it’s impossible to read.

The principles this book illustrates are good, but it's very difficult to focus on what it's trying to say without being distracted/put off by the outdated examples.

Large portions of the book constantly refer to driving hardware devices (e.g. handling keyboard input, refreshing the screen in error recovery procedures, observing the [text] console while it's being updated in order to spot any irregularities, and one of the tips given is that if the screen is updated too quickly for you to be able to see an irregularity you should try running the program on a slower computer!)

Is it necessary to advise the reader about the design of a bug tracking system? (there are so many commercial and even free products available). Once again there is useful information in this chapter - you just need to apply it in *selecting* one of the available bug tracking systems.

If you're willing to put in some hard work [distilling the principles] then you might get something out of this book, but for most people my advice would be to give this one a miss.

This book was not what I thought it would be and is more appropriate for someone who is involved in the QA process.

As someone doing a course in software development, I was hoping for a book that explained all different types of testing, how to carry out these tests and how to document the tests. While this book achieved some of that, much of its content was not suited to me and it was sometimes hard to find what I was looking for. Another problem I had with the book was that it was very dated with the examples it used.

My recommendation would be only get this book if you are involved in QA.

Contains some useful ideas and comments on the theory and practice behind software testing but as previous reviews have noted, it is maybe starting to show its age a little bit and is probably due a revised edition. Not everyone will find all chapters of this book interesting or relevant with seemingly unecessarily large volumes of text on things like; the in and outs of testing printers, creating in-house bug tracking and reporting processes, managing testing teams and legal aspects of software testing (based almost entirely in US law). Overall, if you are interested in all aspects of the testing process you could do worse than buy this book but there are probably better texts available.