We've got a person from the business side on our team 1 day a week to assist with the UI testing. This is basic testing if the application works to as per requirements and what can we improve for the users.
Obviously we want to get as much out of her as we can, so we're looking for a good introduction document to help her ramp up ASAP. Ideally, something she could read in an afternoon ... something very basic.
Can anybody recommend a good source for a layperson to ramp up with software testing?
Look into Exploratory Testing. Here's another article by James Bach.
I think this is a technique which can be picked up rather quickly and should be especially fitting for a person on the business side, rather someone who knows the internals of the program.
For one example of a fully defined and articulated process of exploratory testing, see the General Functionality and Stability Test Procedure for Microsoft’s Windows 2000 Compatibility Certification program. This document is publicly available on Microsoft’s Web site, or on my site at http://www.satisfice.com/tools/procedure.pdf.
Take a look at http://www.agilemodeling.com/essays/agileUsability.htm
Covers a lot of the aspects of user testing...
Here's a reasonably comprehensive article covering the topic of software testing. It's targeted at beginners, but it's quite lengthy:
http://kuldeepse.wordpress.com/category/beginners-guide-to-software-testing/
This is the same answer that I gave to someone who was going on their first testing interview; copied and pasted here to save time while preserving its value, I hope.
If you've never done software testing before, it would be a good idea to learn some things quickly.
I'd recommend checking out the Black Box Software Testing course, available free (without an instructor) at http://www.testingeducation.org/BBST, or in an instructor-led version that is free to members of the Association for Software Testing (http://www.associationforsoftwaretesting.org). This is a university-level course, hours and hours of video, supplementary materials, quizzes, self-tests, and pointers to other information.
James Bach and I co-author and teach a course called Rapid Software Testing (http://www.developsense.com/courses.html). The course notes for that are available for free at James' Web site, http://www.satisfice.com/rst.pdf.
I've written a lot of articles on testing for Better Software magazine. They're available free at http://www.developsense.com/publications.html.
In addition, there's a blog post for you: http://www.developsense.com/2009/02/how-can-trainee-improve-his-her-skills.html
There are several testing communities online where you can ask questions and get mentorship. http://www.softwaretestingclub.com and http://www.testrepublic.com are two of them.
Best of luck.
---Michael B.