I have a two-part series (one, two) on testing posted on my Software Evangelist blog on the Intel Developer Zone. This is a long piece where I get back to the interesting question of how you test things and the fact that testing is not just the same as development. I call the posts Mindset and Toolset
In terms of mindset, a tester has to look for ways to break a product. I use the famous IBM Black Team as an example – which is also the inspiration for the cover art. To continue on that theme, a couple of years ago I wrote a piece “In Defense of Testing” and I still stand by its conclusion. The world needs more testers, better testers, and testers need to be appreciated for the art that is breaking stuff.
In terms of toolset, we need tools that expand test cases beyond what we can imagine ourselves. One part of this is randomized test generation and fuzzing, and another part is using tools that expand the possible states that you can reach with test. Simulation tools is an important part of this later aspect, since you can drive faults and extreme conditions that just do not work on lab hardware.