Mashups are ubiquitous these days. Over the last ten years music mashups have gone from underground clubs to prime-time TV, the rise of web 2.0 saw software mashups bring together disparate data and functionality in meaningful ways, bookshops are now full of literary mashups with crazy titles like “Sense and Sensibility and Sea Monsters”. But have you ever tried to mashup your tests?

Why not take your testing artifacts and mix them together in new and thought provoking ways. It doesn’t matter if they are scripts, automated tests, heuristics, checklists or whatever.

What happens when you:
Splice together your performance tests with your UAT?
Cut your smoke tests in two at random and test your upgrade process in the middle?
Pair with a tester in another team, with a different product and mix your tests together?
Do it with someone from a different company, in a different timezone?
Go completely crazy and run your automated test suite in the “wrong” order!
Just be creative and have fun, the possibilities are vast. If anyone tells you your testing the wrong thing, your doing it right.

I don’t know what will happen, but I can guarantee you’ll learn something new about testing and your application.

I often hear about “Rockstar Developers” but what praise for the great testers?

Superstar DJs.
Here we go.