The Hexawise Software Testing blog carnival focuses on sharing interesting and useful blog posts related to software testing.

• T-Shaped Testers and their role in a team by Rob Lambert - "I believe that testers, actually – anyone, can contribute a lot more to the business than their standard role traditionally dictates. The tester’s critical and skeptical thinking can be used earlier in the process. Their other skills can be used to solve other problems within the business. Their role can stretch to include other aspects that intrigue them and keep them interested."

• Testing triangles, pyramids and circles, and UAT (the link was broken so it was removed) by Allan Kelly - "Thus: UAT and Beta testing can only truly be performed by USERS (yes I am shouting). If you have professional testers performing it then it is in effect a form of System Testing.
  This also means UAT/Beta cannot be automated because it is about getting real life users to user the software and get their feedback. If users delegate the task to a machine then it is some other form of testing."

• Software Testing in Distributed Teams by Lisa Crispin - "Remote pairing is a great way to promote constant communication among multiple offices and to keep people working from home 'in the loop'.
  I often remote pair with a developer to specify test scenarios, do exploratory testing, or write automated test scripts. We use screen-sharing software that allows either person to control the mouse and keyboard. Video chat is best, but if bandwidth is a problem, audio will do. Make sure everyone has good quality headphones and microphone, and camera if possible."

• Seven Kinds of Testers by James Bach - "I propose that there are at least seven different types of testers: administrative tester, technical tester, analytical tester, social tester, empathic tester, user, and developer. As I explain each type, I want you to understand this: These types are patterns, not prisons. They are clusters of heuristics; or in some cases, roles. Your style or situation may fit more than one of these patterns."

• Which is Better, Orthogonal Array or Pairwise Software Testing? by John Hunter and Justin Hunter - "After more study I have concluded that: Pairwise is more efficient and effective than orthogonal arrays for software testing. Orthogonal Arrays are more efficient and effective for manufacturing, and agriculture, and advertising, and many other settings."

• Experience Report: Pairing with a Programmer by Erik Brickarp - "We have different investigation methods. The programmer did low level investigations really well adding debug printouts, investigating code etc. while I did high level investigations really well checking general patterns, running additional scenarios etc. Not only did this make us avoid getting stuck by changing 'method' but also, my high level investigations benefited from his low level additions and vice versa."

• I decided to evolve a faster test case by Ben Tilly - "I first wrote a script to run the program twice, and report how many things it found wrong on the second run. I wrote a second script that would take a record set, sample half of it randomly, and then run the first script.
  I wrote a third script that would take all records, run 4 copies of my test program, and then save the smaller record set that best demonstrated the bug. Wash, rinse, and repeat..."

• Tacit and Explicit Knowledge and Exploratory Testing by John Stevenson - "It is time we started to recognise that testing is a tacit activity and requires testers to think both creativity and critically."

• Tear Down the Wall by Alan Page - "There will always be a place for people who know testing to be valuable contributors to software development – but perhaps it’s time for all testing titles to go away?"