TestToTester

Regression Checks + Regression testing = Regression testing?!

2012-01-28T13:28:00.005+05:30

One of the questions I find hard to answer when I use exploratory test techniques in my project is,”How do you run regression tests? How do you prioritise them? Do you automate them? Do you document regression test cases?” And then a bunch of questions follow.

Let me define the context. I work closely with developers; we use either Scrum or Kanban - which ever best suits our project, product owner, business. We do not believe in individual metrics, blame games, stringent processes, and heavy documentation. All we care about is to deliver high quality software. This does not mean that there is no process, metrics or documentation. We have them all, but they are there to meet our needs and to help those who will come onboard to support/maintain the software.

Regression Checks

At the start of a story, testers pair up with developers to develop feature files using SpecFlow. Some call it Acceptance Test Driven Development and others Behaviour Driven Development [I am yet to figure out the difference between the two] This exercise helps us think better and ask more questions to the product owner and business people. It also bridges the gap between testers and developers in understanding requirements and developing test ideas. To me, this is not just an activity of developing feature files, it’s that phase when testers and developers together learn a lot from one another. Developers start to appreciate test ideas from a tester, his/her thoughts, strategies etc. Testers learn a lot technically about design, logic, memory management and tons of other stuff. I strongly believe that this pairing up helps in bug prevention as well. These feature files developed in Gherkin Syntax are now binded to the code a layer below UI and checked in. The team can decide if these tests have to be run automatically every time a build is made or manually as needed.

This is one of my answers to regression checks. Its brilliant, isn’t it? All tests are automated at the start of a story. Even before a code of line is developed? It’s great, but it does come at a cost – what these tests can do is checking and not testing. Also it takes time for both developers and testers to learn to develop feature files together. We did fall into trap of developing bulky, long and hard to maintain feature files initially. However, we put in a lot of effort to make it light, maintainable and stable.

To me regression testing is regression checks & regression testing. I am not trying to bring in my own terminology here. I am just extending the idea from Michael Bolton ‘Testing v/s Checking’. With feature files we now have automated regression checks. I think it’s very important for a team to recognize the value in anything they have invested their time on. We discern the limitations of feature files and the value it brings. So we started documenting regression test ideas using mind maps.

Regression Testing

We develop checklists in mind maps before we move a story to “done”. We call it ‘regression map’. As I write this, I think we need to have a better name for this document. Doesn’t the word ‘regression’ means decay, weak? A bit of investigation might help here.For now, let me stick to ‘regression maps’.

Regression maps can have one liners, couple words, screen shots etc which aid memorability when one looks at it. The regression map also includes paths, tests, ideas, risks and heuristics documented when we move a story to “done”. All this, when it’s fresh in our minds. At the end of a sprint or prior to a demo or when we need to run regression tests quickly, we refer to regression maps to drive our time boxed exploratory sessions.

This simple exercise of recording test ideas in a mind map helps us focus on critical tests and requirements when exploring a feature for regression. It is also the easiest document I have ever maintained. I do not want to get into more detail on how we report or maintain versioning among testers here. In addition to aiding regressing testing, regression maps help in “show and tell” demos. It’s also a great document to pass to support/maintenance team during handover.

With the regression checks and regression testing in place, our team now has a convincing story to share with our management. There is still a long way to go, however I think this is a good first step to move forward. What do you think?

Further Reading: http://www.developsense.com/blog/2009/11/merely-checking-or-merely-testing/

What do you do when you find a bug?

2011-07-28T04:17:00.001+05:30

What do you do when you find a bug?

Hold on do not answer it right now. Let me first set the context.

You are part of an agile team. The developers sit opposite to you. You are testing a feature in a session. You are time bound and have the good habit of capturing notes when you test. When you now find a bug what do you do? Assuming that you have taken enough notes you go on to write a good bug description and may capture a screen shot, video of the bug and continue with your session. At the end of the session do you

Open the defect tracking tool (wait for it to load), enter all the fields for a bug, upload necessary evidence and have the tool share the defects with your dev team?

Or

Open the defect tracking tool (wait for it to load), enter all fields for a bug, upload necessary evidence and then compose an email to the dev team with the bug id’s/descriptions?

Or

Walk to the developer share your notes; reproduce it if required, work together to identify the problem?

I work in an agile team; we collaborate together with the dev team to deliver our stories and in turn the product. When we find a bug we walk up to the developer, share our test notes and bugs with them. If the developer have more questions we work together for may be 30 min to try identify the root cause together. We then attach the session sheet to the task in mingle (project tracking tool) and update our coverage sheet. If we identify a bug as “out of sprint” we log it in mingle.

I have seen that this process is much quicker. It takes approx 1 min to ask if the developer is free for an update and the next 10 min to update the session notes and bugs.

Apart from a quick feedback, this process has also helped in bridging good communication between testers and dev team. Dev team are amazed by the scenarios, test notes captured during testing and this has lead to admiration of the test team. Testers understand and learn more about the system every time they pair up with the dev team to discuss test notes.

This process has made me wonder if it’s time we need newer, lighter, interactive defect tracking tools? Or do we need it all? I might write a series about this.

But, for now it would really help me if you answer -> what do you do when you find a bug?

Puzzle - Help the captain

2011-05-23T02:01:00.000+05:30

In the year 2050 Captain Morgan and his crew are stuck midway development/testing for the next huge OSv5.1 release for their spaceship Jatayu.

The problem they are stuck at is:

To verify correctness of the results returned from a black box calculator
Procedure the crew follows:

1. Answer close to 40 questions [Please note: The questionnaire can have drop down menus, radio buttons, and relationships within questions (some questions will be displayed if a specific question is answered)]
The captain of the ship has signed an NDA and cannot share the questions
2. The answers are fed into a Black Box (Calculator)
3. The results are displayed on the screen

Assistance offered:
Black illusionists have agreed to verify if the values fed into their Black Box are correct or not. But they will check only 25 combinations (we supply inputs to each question and the actual results). They will annihilate us if we exceed the magic figure of 25.

Strategies suggested by Problem Squealers in the crew team:

1. Pick 25 random values returned by answering the questions to the Black illusionists and verify the results.
2. Discuss with the merchants and prioritize the most common 25 scenarios with realistic answers to the questions, and then have them verified by the Black illusionists.
3. Invest time to mechanize all possible combinations. Run the automation suite. Choose 25 weird values and get them verified by the Black illusionists.
4. Broadcast the risks to the Kingdom and follow idea 2.

Captain Morgan, though happy, is not assured with ideas from his crew. He now invites citizens of Planet Earth for help.

Can you help Captain Morgan?

Next Event - Speaking @ TMF

2011-04-19T14:46:00.003+05:30

Hi All,

Francis Balfe and I will be at the UK Test Management Forum to talk about recent challenges, test strategy and methods which worked for us in our recent project.

We hope to get loads of feedback from the audience :)

I also look forward to a lot of other great sessions lined up at the forum especially the talk from Mark Crowther. So, if you are a tester in UK and have no plans for the holidays walk into TMF.

Cheers

WeekNight Testing Goes LIVE

2011-03-21T17:08:00.007+05:30

Hi All,

Announcement:

We are launching WeekNight testing, a chapter of Weekned Testing LIVE in Central London on Mar 23rd and Markus Gartner is launching it in Germany at the same time. We will also have our regular Weeknight Session over Skype. An exciting day to meet and test with loads of testers around the globe. Don’t miss out on the opportunity. For more details check the link http://skillsmatter.com/podcast/agile-testing/weeknight-testing-live

To register thru Skype ping SKYPEID: weeknighttesting

See ya All on 23rd MARCH

UPDATE: For all testers who missed the fun, there is a video capture of the event available @ http://skillsmatter.com/podcast/agile-testing/weeknight-testing-live/

Confessions of a blogger – Episode 1

2011-03-05T16:30:00.004+05:30

I guess we all try and want to be better in whatever we do and one such aspiration led me stay away from my blog for a long time now. I wanted my blog articles to be written in better English, talk about stuff very new or something that no one else (well, at least the people I know) had even thought of, better than the previous ones, longer, attract more readers and more comments, etc. The result: It has been more than 6 months and not even a single article in it. The pressure I put on myself to make my next article better than my previous ones have only made me feel awful about myself. The last 6 months have been one of the most exciting times in my life and career but I have missed to write about any one of them.

Anyways as the proverb goes "It's no use crying over spilt milk" – let me try summarizing the last 6 months in a series of posts or may be just one. I guess there are times a blogger has to realize the reasons why he/she started the blog and I guess I have.

Episode 1: Moved from Bangalore to London: I was happy, relaxed, having fun with my friends, wife, family and my favourite testers in Bangalore. As they say good thing do not last long – something popped into my mind and I kind of felt my life is getting redundant. I wanted a change not just in terms of the job or company I worked in but also the environment I lived in. Hoping for a change is one thing but to embrace a change is a daunting task. I realized this as I started planning step by step. Which country do I move to? Which visa can I get quickly? Who have active test communities? Where are my skills required? How long will I be without a job? What can I do when I am not in a job? How much money do I need? Where will I stay? Should I sell all my stuff? How long do I have to be away from my wife, friends and parents? And most importantly is it worth all this effort? To make things more complicated I got two exciting job offers – one I would call a dream offer and the other an offer I could not refuse. It was something I was looking for a long time. I knew who my boss would be and I respected Caroline Shekar a lot for her thoughts about testing and testers. She is one of those rare Indian testers in the top hierarchy of a reputed firm who not only is interested to see a better testing community but is actually putting efforts to help testers realize their potential, priorities, challenges ahead and also educate the big bosses around on the realistic expectations from a testing team. I would have really loved to work with her. Unfortunately things around me were changing rapidly, my wife now had an assignment in the US and this added more confusion to where I am heading. By this time I had work visa from 2 countries. With a heavy heart I turned down the offer and started focusing on the country. I chose UK over US because at that moment I felt UK was right for me. Also I came across a lot of gathering events for testers, conferences, workshops in London area which made me stick to UK. This choice in country meant I had long talks with my wife (very long), friends, mentors, gurus and family to convince them and myself for the reasons behind my decision. Just when I thought I am thru with the hard task the dream offer came in. My mentor had plans of starting one of a kind exploratory testing service company in Bangalore and wanted to know if I am interested to be part of the team. Why would any sane tester let go of such an offer? I the insane tester did. I guess it's the most difficult decision I have taken after proposing to my girlfriend now my wife about 11 years back. Being the great mentor he has always been, Pradeep respected my decision and wished me all the luck in the new country. Finally, I landed in the UK last week of Oct last year.

Did this episode teach me anything?

Move out of your comfort zone and you will be surprised what you could learn - the days leading to my day of departure from India to London were some of the most intense days I have ever been thru. The pressure of leaving behind and heading to an unknown country with a lot of uncertainty does take a toll on the mind and body.

This only meant that I need to keep my emotions controlled and run thru loads of checklists and tasks. I had to get stuff sorted in banks, insurance firms, government offices, talk to different customer care departments, potential buyers, run thru medical check-ups, etc and had to sync up with my personal tasks of visiting friends, family, shopping, commuting, etc. There were many times when I had to change priorities on the run and make quick decisions. To summarize I guess this little period taught me a lot in planning, executing, negotiating, decision making, handling stress, multi-tasking, communicating and manage in one of the most emotionally stressful phase of my life till now. I still recollect the hundreds of threads that ran in my head parallel when I was having a nice dinner or spending time with my friends. I think I was able to lighten up only when I rested my back on seat of the plane to London.

End of Episode - 1

Learning from Collaboration

2010-09-07T01:12:00.001+05:30

How many of us remember the story of “The Wise Pigeon” from Panchatantra? If you do not here is a quick recap. As in the classic we are all aware of the fact that we could learn, focus, share, deliver, and create magic when we learn and work together. Find below some of the events, forums, exer cises I have been to or involved in which demonstrate the power of learning together and why we should have more such platforms.

Zappers Community

This is one such rare event for testers I am aware of where we “test” and not speak about testing. Isn’t that great? It’s fantabulous.

I was looking forward to this event for quite some time. I had missed the inaugural Zappers event at Bangalore but did not want to miss the second one. The event rules were simple and similar to our weekend testing. An application is handed to each team 5-10 minutes before the testing session. ID’s for the bug tracker is created for each team. One hour is provided to test the application and to log bugs in Bugzilla. The team with maximum verified bugs win.

Pradeep Soundararajan and Santhosh Tuppad were my team mates. The testing challenge at Zappers drained the juice off my brain. I still recollect Pradeep cheering us to push ourselves for one more bug at the last minute. The feeling was that of a great workout at the gym – you seem to be tired, drained out but feel that gusto of pushing your body (brain in my case).

Our team had a simple strategy “communicate”. We chose the fastest, clear, easiest way to communicate with one another during our testing session which helped us achieve good test coverage, inspire one another, avoid duplicate bugs, share test ideas and win the competition. HurrayJ! Add to this the free beer, gala dinner, prize money and a chance to meet many more testers.

Why would any tester want to miss it? Beats me.

I thank TCL India for bringing Zappers community to Bangalore and arranging a delightful evening. Thanks again.

LSRG

Many a times when I have tried my hand at learning a testing tool or a scripting language I have failed. Not because it’s complex but because I lost interest in learning them over a period of time. This was my usual routine - scout the internet for tutorials, blogs, books, forums, etc. Start from chapter 1 and practice for minimum 1hr per day. The first chapter is always exciting, and then comes the second, third, fourth. By the time I reach chapter 9 or 10 I am bored. I then look for quizzes, challenges, exercises to practise my learning’s but most often have failed in looking for such information.

With this experience in mind I did not want to take the same track when I decided to learn Selenium. This time around I pinged a few testers if they were interested to learn Selenium together and got a reply from Swetha Ghorp. She used Selenium at her organisation and was excited to share and learn with the group. Swetha also encouraged me to take up Ruby and talked about the potential of ruby with selenium. This is how the study group LSRG (Learning Selenium & Ruby group) was born.

We (currently only 5 of us Allmas, Kavitha TD, Anand, Swetha and I) meet once a week for an hour or two to decide upon the missions and we meet again the next week to discuss on the progress, challenges traps. There have been high tides and low tides but the study group has helped me to focus on selenium and ruby even when there have been low tides.

Mark Crowther has been instrumental in keeping the excitement at LSRG high with his very helpful guides, tips and plans/rewards for the future.

Want to be part of the LSRG? Email me.

Test Ideas in 30 min

Often we search for test puzzles, challenges, exercises in the internet but fail to identify the numerous test exercises around us. Last week posts in STC on “How to test an alarm clock” – had me thinking – why don’t I put some time and think how I would test an alarm clock? Before I could think of a test scenario I questioned myself how much time shall I allot myself to think of the tests 1hr, 2hr? Shall I do this alone or will 2 testers doing this together double the number of test scenarios? Could we think of better test ideas together?

With these questions in mind I looked at my gtalk and saw Santhosh in available status. Asked him if he is game for a 30 min challenge and the answer was YES. The next 30 minutes was fantastic we shared with each other approx 32 test scenarios. For the metrics lovers – we took 0.93 seconds to think of a test idea. The pdf file is available @ http://tuppad.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2010/08/How.pdf

I felt I could use this idea with more testers and so tried this approach with my team at office. The team was astonished with the number and quality of test ideas we could come up with in 30 min for a system we have been testing for couple of months. I plan to extend this idea – will keep you posted more on this may be in the upcoming posts. Until then if any of you want to run a 30 min test idea exercise with me? – email me.

Learningruby.org

Want to learn a scripting language? What if you had the opportunity to learn with 160 participants from 30 different countries for free? Imagine the kind of discussion a forum such as this could have. Well, I would consider myself very fortunate to have found this link on the internet. I thank Satish Talim for providing us an opportunity to learn in such a big platform.

The courses are conducted in similar to BBST and is very interactive. The code samples each participant paste in forum and the discussions that revolve around it have been brilliant. I have completed the first week of the course and I am looking forward to the next week. I shall definitely write a more detailed experience report after completion of the course.

Until then for those who are spending your precious earned money on bogus training institutes here is a place you could learn a share ruby.

Weekend Testing

In one year Weekend Testing has appeared in many magazines, conferences, blogs, etc. If you are still not part of it or wondering what weekend testing. Head to our site http://weekendtesting.com/

Do you see a pattern in all these events, groups, platforms? The one thing I find in common with all of these is that together we are more successful in learning and delivering as humans. Also I see most of these platforms outside an organization and not within organizations. Is there a specific reason to it? I shall explore about it in my next post but if you have seen such successful platforms within an organisation please email me.

Testing and Biking: Part 3 – Importance of investment

2010-07-25T11:27:00.001+05:30

Last week on my way home from office I was cruising at around 80 kmph on my motor bike and then THUD. The next moment I felt severe pain on the left side of my head, my palms felt scalded, and I could not stand properly because my left toe hurt. Got up slowly tried thinking over what happened. The pictures started falling in place and I realized I have met with an accident. I removed my helmet – no bleeding. Good. Next removed the riding gloves – palms looked well. Checked my foot, and my toe was bleeding. I wore a Canvas shoes damn! Tried to lift my bike and it was a mess – a broken mirror, sari guard bent, connecting rod to the rear suspension was cut. Some how managed to ride back home. At home after relaxing a few minutes I started looking at the damage on my helmet and the gloves I wore. The scrapes on my helmet and riding gloves gave me goose bumps. The left side of the helmet was a mess with loads of scratches and when I run my finger over it I could feel the impact the helmet had taken. The gloves well, in simple words I could type today because I wore them. This made me wonder

What if I did not wear a helmet?
What if I did not wear riding gloves?
What if I had invested in a sub-standard helmet or gloves only because it was cheaper?
What if I had stopped wearing them because many made fun of me, since I shelled out a good amount of money on it?

Well, I thanked myself for investing in the best riding gear. The investment just saved my life.

Is there some thing here that could this be related to all aspects of our life?

What about testing? …

I remember the day when I wanted to attend Pradeep Soundararajan’s RST workshop but felt the workshop was expensive. I had a feeling that this workshop could change me for good as a tester after interacting with him once over coffee and reading his blog posts. But I come from a middle class family and to shell out 7k for a 1day workshop on testing looked huge to me.

But, today when I look back at the whole episode, I feel happy that my investment in the workshop has fetched me more than I could ever expect from a one day workshop and I am sure the skills developed from it would continue to take me forward in my career.

There are many times when we think if investing our time and hard earned money in a workshop or conference or training or certification worth it. Well we might not know the answer to this the very day or at the end of the workshop but I am sure there would be a day when the skills developed from such events/workshops will be evident.

So go ahead invest on learning and I am sure you will reap the benefits if not today some time in the near future.

Duplicate bugs

2010-05-26T07:59:00.001+05:30

At a training session with an agenda to update developers the new changes in the bug tracking tool.

A senior developer: with a cunning tone - Do you also teach how to add duplicate bugs?

Tester: This training is to teach you on how to use the bug tracking tool, we could take the issue of duplicate bugs later.

Senior developer: I feel there should be some validation in place in a bug tracking tool to block testers from logging duplicate bugs. Do we have one in this?

Test Manager: If there are duplicate bugs in the bug tracker, please go ahead and mark it as duplicate and reject it. We shall verify the bug and if it is a duplicate we shall close it.

Senior Developer: No, that is not the point – it is easy to increase the number of bugs by adding duplicate bugs so there should be a strict protocol in place.

Test Manager: You are deviating from the training agenda, lets get thru with the training and we could discuss about it later with the project manger.

After this conversation the test team went thru the bug tracker to analyze the number of bugs marked as duplicate. The number of bugs marked duplicate was 4 for a total number of 250 bugs, i.e., in percentage 1.6%. But, the 3 duplicate bugs of the 4 were all submitted in the same test cycle. On further investigation it was found that two testers have logged the bug almost at the same time and the tester at onsite has also raised the bug for it.

Analyzing each of the bug report logged revealed that the first bug provided good summary, description and a log file was attached to it. The second one also provided all the necessary information, but the steps to reproduce was different when compared to the first bug, also this had a screen shot with the log file attached to the bug report. The third bug which was logged by the tester at onsite also had similar description but the equipment (manufacturer) used to test the scenario was different compared to the one available in the lab at offsite.

Though the bugs were duplicate each bug report provided valuable information about the bug, and this could have surely helped the developer.

Then why was the developer so upset? Well, there could be many reasons to this, but my guess is on the kind of metrics the management team is focusing on.

Anyways, I understand that developers might spend some time reading the information in the bug report, marking it as duplicate and then rejecting it. But, then the developers might also find more information, which in turn might help him fix the bug faster. On the contrary if a tester has to go thru all bugs logged in the database just to find out if a certain bug already exists, how much time is required?

To me the time required for a tester to look for duplicate bugs is much more when compared to the time spent by the developer in marking it as duplicate. Also, a tester could use the time to hunt for new bugs rather than scouting for an existing bug.

What do you feel?

BWST – A testers only workshop

2010-04-19T22:39:00.002+05:30

There are many reasons why BWST is very close to me. To start off with

BWST was started by my guru Pradeep Soundararajan.
BWST is a true tester’s meet/conference/workshop organized by the testers for the testers. There is no boring, to fill in presentations or business angle to it.
BWST is one such meet which almost any tester could afford to participate.
BWST uses k-cards which provide an opportunity for all attendees to share their thoughts with the presenter.
BWST is for testers from all ages, experience, designations, geographical locations, etc.

And the list goes on.

Right from the day Pradeep announced BWST-2 on his blog, I had the date marked in my calendar. But as the date to BWST-2 got closer, my schedule at office went haywire. We were working late nights, weekends, holidays. My doubts on attending the BWST-2 grew with each passing day. At some corner of my mind I still felt I might just make it but then every email at office narrowed my chances.

2 days before BWST-2 - I sent an email to Pradeep and Santosh on my current situation and expressing my doubts on attending the BWST-2. I felt miserable as well as annoyed at myself at the thought of not attending BWST-2. As I expressed earlier BWST is very dear to me since there is no such workshop in Bangalore (I am aware of), which could provide so many takeaways for a tester in a day.

Friday a day before BWST 2 - At office I was on a mission to attend BWST-2 the next morning and my team mates wanted their weekend. We were hunters who had not tasted meat for a while now (build postponed again and again). We had clear missions on what to look for and targeted the areas we felt at risk based on the communication we had with our developers and customers.

Friday night - Smsd Pradeep at around 9pm confirming my participation at BWST-2, we had succeeded in our mission. We found very important information which required a lot of effort from our dev team J

Today when I write this post I ask myself was BWST-2 worth it?

I might kill myself for asking this question. Hell YES!

BWST-2 exceeded my expectations from what I had from BWST-1. Check the posts from Parimala and Pradeep on the various presentations and discussions that went on.

I present you the interesting quotes/questions/comments from BWST-2.

Testers talk a different language neither English nor some other language.

If your estimation is right, you might be wrong.

When we say “good things done” its “good things” for “us”.

Go to Gemba.

Your estimate depends on the quality you want.

Are 33 diseases in a human body good enough to be healthy?

Notion of finding vs notion of fixing.

Severity of the bug varies on the context.

3-strikes out – if the product can live with the bugs after 3 strikes, that’s ok to not fix them.

How can we scientifically conclude that a part of application is hardened?

Measurements are good but what is your goal?

No time to analyze the result after automation.

Define metrics which are relevant to individual projects.

Nodding heads for yes or no - Indian style.

Noun and Verb, Q-patterns, unified test design techniques.

Years of Experience in hours.

A reply, that grew long.

2010-03-16T23:20:00.001+05:30

I wanted to post this as a reply to the blog post “I know you'd have a test case for this !!!” by Ajay, but since the reply grew long, I posted it on my blog.

I agree with James Bach stating that this is a platform issue. It’s very clear that the issue reported here is more to do with the platform than the application itself.

This makes me wonder why Windows XP was chosen to run such an application. There could have been many reasons like ease of compatibility, familiarity, db connectivity, interoperability, ease of development, etc. However one needs to keep in mind that Win XP is not designed to just run in the background, it is an end-user interface for applications. So, Win XP should have been customized to meet the needs of deployment.

Now let me try answering the questions posted in the blog.

Is it a bug? How risky is it to ignore such messages?
- If I go by the definition used by James and Michael “A bug is something that bugs somebody who matters” – yes I would call it a bug.
How risky could this be
- Well, if there is a 24/7 support answering the travellers queries I do not feel it is risky, since the affected traveller could get their query answered, also knowing this balloon from Win XP, it hides after 10s or so, I do not feel it a very risky bug.
Is the purpose of the display served?
- Yes, the purpose of display is definitely served, if there is a pop-up marginally blocking the display for a few seconds, I would not go to the extent of questioning the display. I agree that there could be % of customers who might be annoyed, but definitely the display is served.
If the overlapping of the message on the display is a bug, will you fix it?
- To me this is a redundant question apart from “will you fix it” part. Will I fix it – since this issue could be resolved by disabling the informative balloons in Win XP, I would fix it. The cost to fix it very low, so I guess it could be a straight forward decision.
What if it is not fixed?
- If it’s not fixed, it might continue to annoy a % of users.
Which tester will think of these kinds of tests?
- It’s interesting how everything and anything boils down to a tester, may be because he is the one who touches the product last before it’s shipped. I feel issues like this could be minimized when the engineers (dev & testers & deployment) have enough domain knowledge or aware of the deployment or know their exact mission. This check might be of highest priority in the checklist for engineers from SCADA or HMI domain (Well, they might have a test case for this:).
Do you wear the hat of a non-tester and say: Hmmm, there is a workaround. I'll not fix it.
- Who is a non-tester in this context?
I do not know how to fix it.
- Are you kidding me? :)
It might be a bug but it is a limitation of the technology. [Cannot fix]
- WHT? I seriously have no words to say.

On further scouting for similar information over the web, I came across this very informative link on how to turn Win XP to a HMI platform. In the article author writes about different parameters such as performance, security, disabling un-wanted balloons to make Win XP suitable for HMI platform.

Testing and Biking: Part 2 - License plate heuristic

2009-12-24T14:44:00.003+05:30

Last week on the way back home I and my wife Sunitha found us lost in an area which I was not familiar with. It was around 12am. I could hardly see a pedestrian or other vehicles on the road (in our country we still do not use GPS :)). Sunitha was worried since it was getting late and we could hardly position where we were. I thought I shall park my bike on the left side of the road, and try finding some help. When I was about to park I saw a lady rider on her motorbike zip past me. I noticed her license plate and it was of my area KA-XX. I told my wife let’s follow her she might lead us to a road familiar since her license plate is from the same area. We followed her and she rightfully took us to the road we were heading for. Wow! Following the license plate did work.

Later I started thinking more on this license plate heuristic and I chalked out points, why this worked so well at that point.

1. Time: The time I chose to follow the bike with similar license plate was around 12:00am; most of us might be heading home at that time and seldom to other locations.
2. Rider’s gear: She had a helmet, backpack and an jacket on, no gloves, no saddle bags, no gear of her made me think she could be on a long ride, in fact her appearance looked like she was returning home from her office.
3. The bike: She rode a bike which delivered similar power to that of my bike, so following the bike was much easier.

Now, imagine some one using the license plate heuristic at 9AM, when most of us might be heading to office or college, etc. or imagine following a biker who has his touring gear on, or imagine following a bike which is more powerful or slower, when compared to the bike you ride. The probability you might not reach your destination will be high. Or why would one even use this heuristic in the day light when you could ask some one the route (people who speak a different language and those who follow best particle might still use it :)).

So, I feel using heuristics are good but deciding which heuristic to use when is very essential. In other words it again highlights the importance of context in our day to day problem solving or be it in the field of testing.

Testing and Biking

2009-12-07T17:32:00.003+05:30

I love touring on motor bikes, one of the things that fascinates me about it is - it’s very hard to anticipate what the next challenge could be. There is hardly any information available on road conditions, re-fuelling stations, repair/puncture shops, medical facility, etc. Add to it the randomness when riding a bike, a dog could appear from no where, a bus might hit brakes all of a sudden, an auto might turn left without any indication, a villager could be crossing the highway with his cattle’s, etc.

Let me ask you this: Which training school teaches how to respond to such situations?
If it wasn't taught anywhere how did we learn?

There are a number of ways we learnt it and I am trying to list them and draw parallels to testing of why most of us fail to self teach testing?

Get curious about it: I first got curious to learn about it because I wanted to do it. When I read the biking portals and their travelogues, met bikers, heard them share their experiences about their biking trip, it made us imagine the challenges faced, the physical strength required, the concentration to keep reflexes active and most importantly have lots of fun, if we were to do it, too. This kicked some juices to flow within us and made us quiz and question more about the itineraries, ride, etc.

If someone describes their experience of testing software, that makes us think we too should have that kind of an experience, the juices have started to flow.

Listen to people: A most part of what we did when we asked them questions was to listen to them very carefully. We didn't say, "Hey, I went on a ride there and don't think it works that way".

When someone is sharing their testing story with us and if we start concluding the story before they do, we aren't anywhere close to listening.

Prepare: We try making a checklist of things that we need to have or carry like riding gear, equipment, clothing & accessories, first aid kit, etc, preparing our motorcycle, preparing ourselves before we start off a bike riding trip to some place. We ask around the experienced ones and use their ideas + form our own ideas of what we might need. For instance, riding gear with thermal liner might not be needed in certain regions, based on the weather conditions but when we are off to a place like the mighty Himalayas, we definitely need it. We try wearing the stuff that we bought to check how we feel about it or to see if we need to exchange. We may buy maps, search over internet a 100 times +, meet riders who have traveled before to know more about the place. We are happy to know the same information from several sources but never happy to say, "I know it and I don't need to see it"

Preparing to test is essential. Sometimes our testing looks sloppy because our preparation was bad. We probably didn't have a setup close to the customer environment or we don't know about it at all. Learning new things could be a part of our preparation.

Mistakes and Lessons: The human curiosity sometimes makes a biker not listen to what the guide says or try new things that might not be safe. In a rare case it could be fatal but mostly the biker has some bruises or end up choking the bike for a while. After the trip is over and the wounds are healing, the biker thinks over the mistake and learns to be extra cautious. Even if the biker followed the guide there is no assurance that the biker won’t make a mistake.

If we make mistakes, we must find special joy to learn from it and own our mistakes. But rarely with test case execution someone else is the owner and not me.

Best Practice ?!

2009-09-28T18:40:00.002+05:30

Please share best practices for testing team?, testing centralized team?, knowledge sharing for testers?, etc – how many times have we all heard about this or have seen this as a discussion topic in various forums.

I wonder isn’t it a best practice by best practicing testers to share their best practice on Google?

Or should someone write a paper about “Best practices to search in Google for best practices in testing”?

My first talk at a College

2009-09-25T00:40:00.001+05:30

Couple of weeks back, I was invited to provide a career talk on software testing at Don Bosco Institute of technology engineering college in Bangalore. I was sceptical initially since I had never talked in a college and I was not sure if I could even deliver it, but it sounded like a good challenge and so I accepted the invitation.

Friday was the day when I had to deliver the talk and I was occupied the whole week, Thursday I some how managed to leave early to home and was at home by 7:30 pm. luckily my wife was stuck at office and I had the whole house to shout and prepare for the next day session. When I sat down in front of my laptop I did not know where to start, the challenges in front of me were I could not use technical jargons, I cannot assume that they know testing, I cannot assume that they know software development process, what do I explain to them in software testing? How will I build rapport with the audience? Shall I crack some jokes? How will I face the professors, who I was sure would be pretty aged and experienced? Etc,

Loads of questions and I was looking for answers. I thought I shall reach out for Pradeep Soundararajan, my mentor, but decided against it since I felt I wanted to crack this challenge myself I am sure even Pradeep would be much happier to know how I cracked the challenge rather than seeking help from him.

I initially thought of developing slides to assist me in the presentation, but later ruled it out, and planned to prepare a checklist just for my mind. I did prepare a presentation of one slide with my blog address in it.

Friday, sharp 3:30 pm I was at Don Bosco campus and was thrilled to see my posters flashed on the compound walls, well, it made me nervous as well, the expectation I had set for myself raised higher. The overwhelming reception I got on the way to the seminar hall made me more nervous and the professors around me gave me a sort of look, may be because I am much younger.

I stood on the stage and saw more than 100 students looking at me, most of the stuff I planned and had made a checklist of looked like loosing its way. My first words to the audience “Hi All, this is the first time I am addressing such a big gathering, so my legs might shiver or I might miss/loose some words, but I might also get better as the time goes on”. Then I looked at the checklist, I felt I have to first engage the audience and thought the checklist I prepared the previous night might not work here in the same sequence.

My checklist asked me to talk about some of the History’s worst software bugs,but on the stage I did not feel like starting with it. I could hear noise from the back seats, and so I asked one of the students sitting at the back what his name was? He replied to my question nervously may be because everyone else were looking at him. I then came up with a scenario wherein Raju (name changed) had saved his pocket money for over 6 months to gift a mobile phone to his girl friend for valentines, now I felt I had more people listening to me. I went on “raju, the day before valentines walks to the store selects the mobile which he had done a lot of research on and gets it gift wrapped. On the 14^th of Feb he gifts it to his girl, the girl so excited to see a big box, calls her friends over before she unwraps it, she unwraps the box, looks at the mobile and feels top of the world. She removes the mobile phone from the box, try powering it ON and what she hears a nasty noise which almost deafened her and her friend’s ears. – I asked raju how would you feel and I asked the audience how would they feel and this set the tone for my talk.

I was no longer nervous, I then put the same bug in a life critical context and then went on talking about the History’s worst software bugs and in turn justify why we need software testing.

I felt more confident with each minute rolling by and I felt I had more audience listening to me as the talk went on.

At the end of the session I was pretty happy that I could deliver a talk to 100+ students for approx 45 min, but what pleased me more was that there were questions from the audience both the professors and the students.

I liked questions like

How much does a software tester earn?
How can I become a software tester?
Is only software tested?

But one question was fantastic

How can you ensure that there will be no bugs after you test a product?

This experience taught me a lot of lessons.

The first one is never hesitate to take on a new challenge; you might surprise yourself.
Research and homework before a presentation is required, but one should be prepared to alter/modify the flow/content during the presentation if required.
You feel confident on stage when you sense more audience is listening to you, so it’s very important to engage the audience.
No slides for the presentation actually helped me, but I found the checklist very useful.

Weekend Testing

2009-08-10T14:20:00.004+05:30

I went online at around 1130PM Saturday hunting for some challenge to exercise my sleepless mind. Pinged Ajay and Manoj on GTalk and they had plans of testing a product. After around 45 min spent on researching what to test we finally decided upon www.tinyurl.com

The mission was simple hunt for bugs, and so did we. The session was fantastic; bugs started flowing from the first minute, and all three of us had loads of fun. The test techniques varied individually and the discussions we had during the test session been great.

Once we were thru with the session, Manoj and me left and Ajay did almost most of the post production. So, it would be nice to read the full report from his blog @ http://enjoytesting.blogspot.com/2009/08/trio-testing-at-distance-part-1.html

So, next time if you are not feeling sleepy or feel like practicing your test skills with other testers or feel like learning some thing new or feel like sharing your test ideas, or just curious to know what this is all about. Drop a mail to weekendtesting@gmail.com

Thanks Manoj and Ajay for helping me sleep. (This statement is a bit controversial :)

Read On:

Bangalore Weekend Testers: Fun, Learn & Contribute - Pradeep Soundararajan
BWT - Do you wanna Rock? - Parimala Shankaraiah
Are you Ready? Join : Bangalore Weekend Testers - Ajay Balamurugadas
Here comes BWT – Learn, Test and have Fun - M.V.Manoj

BWST-1 Experience Reports

2009-06-23T16:41:00.005+05:30

The rainy season is here in Bangalore and so are the experience reports from BWST-1. WOW!

My small attempt to faction all reports

Pradeep Soundararajan's report

Santhosh S Tuppad’s report

Shikhar K Singh’s report

Rahul Mirakhur’s report

Enjoy reading these fantastic reports, and hope to see more of you in the next BWST.

Thank U All…Context Driven Testers

2009-05-19T11:28:00.002+05:30

Yesterday I felt very happy after reading http://www.developsense.com/2009/05/experience-report-from-india.html from Michael Bolton, so sharing with you all. Thanks Michael, appreciation on your blog means a lot to me and is very inspiring.

The most wonderful thing about context driven testing community I have observed is they are just an email away from you. They love sharing their testing experiences, they love sharing their secrets, and most importantly they love to see a better test community.

“My blog List” lists some of those testers who I respect a lot and have learnt from. The list is nowhere complete, and has been growing the day I started it.

Thank you all.

Are definitions contextual?

2009-05-14T16:07:00.004+05:30

Today when I went thru the latest post from Shrini Kulkarni, Shrini’s question is this a bug? Made me recollect James and Michael's definition of a bug, I had always liked this definition because it’s simple, catchy, crisp and makes a lot of sense “A bug is something that bugs somebody who matters”.

Well,

I have a game in my cell phone called “Krish Cricket PRO Challenge” in the game cricket greats like even Lara, Gilchrist bat right handed – is this is a bug?. Well, I am confused because though they are right handed the game is a lot of fun to play and I do not mind them batting right handed or in other words it does not bug me. So is this a bug?

The game came bundled with other applications when I bought the cell phone. Initially I felt very odd to see Lara play right handed, and I cursed the team who built this game. Could the code be simple if all batsmen in the game are right handed? May be the team who built the game did not invest enough in the software since it would be bundled free? But, what if I had to buy the game and in the demo Lara bats right handed, I would have never bought it. So is this a bug?

Lara batting right handed definitely does threaten the value of the product and so I feel this definition by James Bach and Michael Bolton “A bug is anything about the product that threatens its value” (I came across this definition in Bug Advocacy Slides from BBST) suits this context. So my next question to you all is – are definitions contextual? Or have I have failed in understanding the first definition by James & Michael?

isupport@etifinishingschool.com

2009-04-01T14:06:00.003+05:30

Couple of weeks back when I met Pradeep, Manoj and Mohan at Edista Testing Institute, Pradeep handed me a project/assignment report to glance thru and asked for my observations of the report.

I glanced thru the mission statement, test scenarios, bugs logged, testers own analysis/review of the assignment, the answers to the difficult questions like
• What did I do well?
• What did I not do well?
• What wasn’t I able to do?
• Why wasn’t I able to do whatever I couldn’t do?
• How much time did I pit in on daily basis?
• What did I learn about what I don’t know during these days?
• What tools did I use in this project & what tools did I discover?

I felt very happy; I looked for the author name and asked Pradeep for more information about the author and the reply by Pradeep was a “fresher” who has just completed the Finishing school from Edista.

WOW! I doubt if I might have written such a good report as a fresher for my first testing assignment.

Check out the report for yourselves @ http://www.scribd.com/full/13774644?access_key=key-13o6fneq87daonc2luix

From the report I did not see a trainee documenting some stuff for the sake of a certificate or a trainee not interested in testing, forced into the role going thru the formalities of a course. I felt the report is written by a tester, who is passionate about what he is learning that to me is a great sign for Indian testing.

Jai ho etifinishingschool

If you support such an initiative please e-mail to isupport@etifinishingschool.com with Your Name, Your designation, Your organization name, Your web address and ETI would add you to their current list of supporters and publish it in their website.

Exploratory testing, Session based testing, Scripted testing…concertedly

2009-03-14T01:07:00.002+05:30

In my last assignment a mix of exploratory, session based and scripted testing helped won an award, appreciation by managers & stake holders at our organization. The quotes from our award certificate

“QA team has come up with some intelligent testing techniques to validate the product. The customer test team was not able to find even a single critical bug after delivery”

Though the award was a small one in terms of the award categories our organization have, it meant a lot to me and the team, because this was the first time the team used exploratory approach. The assignment was not pure exploratory or session based, in fact it was supposed to be scripted, but a mix of all three exploratory, session based and scripted testing helped us learn, enjoy, and meet our mission.

The assignment started off with developing test cases. We wrote test cases based on the initial requirement document provided. We did come up with a large number of test cases, of which most were re-written, some ended obsolete, deferred, because of changes in software or hardware or firmware or incorrect requirement or technical limitations or schedule limitations or etc. The test cases as part of the process were then reviewed by the stakeholders and were signed off.

The releases started flowing from the development team to the testing team. In the first 2 releases we executed the test cases found some bugs and were quite happy. After the second build release for testing, the bugs started decreasing and we felt bored to execute the same tests. To add to the misery, our hardware boards got limited and we were 5 testers with 1 board to test on.

This to me was the right time to get in exploratory and session based testing.
• I divided the team into 2 with 2 testers in each team,
• Session time was set to 1.5 hrs per session, mission for the session was provided before the session would start.
• After one team completes the exploratory session, the notes, bugs, issues, data used, tasks performed would be discussed with me, while the other team sets out to meet the mission.
Initially I did observe couple of testers finding it hard to meet the destination (mission) without a GPS (test cases), but observed 2 other testers enjoying their testing, switched the pairs in the team, and the bugs started flowing. This session based testing allowed everyone to be occupied with testing, enjoy testing and also helped me keep track on all the proceedings.

Though exploratory was much more fun and the rate at which bugs were found was huge, after some releases, when we had no new features left to be added to the software the bugs reported by team started dropping, when we sat together, I felt the ideas running out in the team – we initially focused on exploring the system with functional and domain related missions. After the discussion we changed the focus from functional & domain to Flow tests - explained the team on what to be targeted in flow tests and what could be the observations to note running flow tests – and what a change, the energy was back, they liked testing the same module again without any new changes in it.

From then on test case execution was approached as an activity to provide only test case execution report, but there were times wherein a test case would remind us of a requirement we missed in our exploratory, a test scenario in one of the test case we missed to run when we followed only exploratory approach. I feel the reason why we could have missed out a requirement or a scenario, while exploring could be because the missions were not planned as carefully as they should have been. Well, a lesson for the next phase.

We are thru with the release, and are pretty happy on meeting our mission.

Hope this little summary inspires other teams to have a look at exploratory, and how you could fit it in your context.

What shall I call this testing?

2009-01-29T14:35:00.003+05:30

In a recent assignment I was asked to test an application which downloads and displays pictures off the web with minimal features support like slide show, rotate, minimize, maximize etc. (I cannot provide any more information on the product because of NDA)

We knew that our internet connectivity thru LAN is slow, but had to observe and document the result on the same network.

After stating the assumptions about connectivity, speed, throughput available I started testing, in 2-3 min I decided not to use our bug tracker but instead write a story in a word document. What did my story contain – every step (test) performed on the application sequentially. An extract from it would look like

1) Reboot the < >
2) Click on < > for the first time. It takes approximately 13 seconds to display all the images in the < >
3) Click on < > and login to < >. The < > takes approximately 6-7 minutes to load 15 images.
4) When initially started it displayed loading x/37 images but after loading 15 images the message disappears and no other images are downloaded
5) Click on < >. It takes 4 seconds to get enabled

The story was easier to write because the application was terribly slow and I could think myself as the nicest/kindest customer our product could ever find.

Was the story helpful to my development team and the concerned team?

Well, they were surprised the way the story ended “30 button clicks – wait for the functionality to complete – took almost 1.5 hrs”. But liked the way the story was narrated, it helped them analyze each step and know the actual issues.

Now my question is - I initially set out to test the application functionally, but changed my tests based on the performance of the application and almost calculated response time for each function. But the final report (story) I documented after almost 1.5 hrs was helpful to both my development and the concerned department. Also, I could save time by documenting it as a story and not as individual bugs – I also doubt whether individual bugs could have revealed the story the same way the story could.

So, what do you call this testing?

Disclaimer: All the blogs shared by me are my ideas, my thought, my understanding of the subject and does not represent any of my employer’s ideas, thought, plans or strategies.

How do you keep Fresh Ideas Flowing?

2009-01-12T17:23:00.004+05:30

Hi All

Last week at Software Testing Club, I came across a discussion started by Michele Smith on “How do you keep Fresh Ideas Flowing?” for testing.

I felt it is one of the most important questions but sadly very rarely discussed in our community.

This was my take on the question, what’s yours?

I have had team members complaining that it's boring to test the same program with no new features. I have also observed a pattern, testers who complain this way, usually are very enthusiastic when they begin testing but loose their interest may be after 1-2 weeks or so irrespective of the module they test. One of the reason I feel they get bored is because they run out of ideas to test. As a test lead one of my challenges have always been to keep myself and my team on the look out for information always.

Like in a recent assignment I found the number of bugs reported by my team dropping, when we sat together, I felt the ideas running out in the team – we initially focused on exploring the system with functional and domain related missions. After the discussion we changed the focus from functional & domain to Flow tests - explained the team on what to be targeted in flow tests and what could be the observations to note running flow tests – and what a change I observed I felt the energy was back, they liked testing the same module again without any new changes. If they again run out of energy I still have user testing, risk, stress, variability, etc lined up. (I have found The Heuristic Test Strategy Model by James Bach extremely helpful in fact I have a print out of the model posted in my bay along with several others which keeps reminding me of the endless ideas/possibilities to test a product :)

When we feel like we are running out of ideas I feel we should change our approach/thinking a bit and the ideas start rolling.

Disclaimer: All the blogs shared by me are my ideas, my thought, my understanding of the subject and does not represent any of my employer’s ideas, thought, plans or strategies.

I have woken up…have you?

2008-11-29T16:35:00.005+05:30

Yesterday night I reached home from office at around 9PM, I turned on the TV news channels with hope, but could only see Taj burning. Even after approximately 48 hrs our India was burning. I felt angry, I felt annoyed, I felt terrible, I fumed on our leaders and then I felt like slapping myself. Why?

I don’t know my neighbors, I don’t know whose car/bike is parked near my house, I don’t know my area members, I don’t know anything about the community I live in. Why? Maybe I do not have time? (A typical answer by our community) Maybe I don’t see the value in knowing them? Maybe it’s not my job? I work hard from day to night? Or maybe it’s my ego, laziness and carelessness?

I think it’s all of these, that today I see my India burning; I feel I am also responsible for this terrible incident. I assumed I am a good citizen because I vote, but I feel our responsibility as a citizen does not end at voting.

I today have taken the initiative to bring my area people together and to build a better community. Here are the points I would like to address in the community meet probably tomorrow.

• Pay respect to our soldiers, police and all security personnel who rescued us all.

• Wish one another, when you pass by, at least smile; let’s try to build a better community we could all be proud of.

• Please know your neighbors.

• Ensure who you rent your house to, check his background, approach association (area welfare association) or police (area police station) if you seek more information.

• Greet and question strangers on their purpose of visit. If you get suspicious get your neighbors help or approach/call the police or seek associations help.

• Report any unknown vehicle parked near your house.

• Let’s all help ourselves to create a better community for our loved ones. We do not need our leaders to teach us to live in harmony, let’s take the initiative to show the world how united we stand.

Let’s throw our EGO’s out, to live a little longer

I have talked to my father and their association (“our area” welfare association) to spread the message today evening. But I shall pass my comments to our welfare association and from today on I make a promise to myself to be an active member of our welfare association.

I know I might not be able to counter terrorism, by trying to achieve the above, but I feel unity is what we lack in our country and a stronger community could be the starting point towards a better administration, to have better leaders, and to fight back against evil forces.

Hope you all have woken up.

Source of the image: http://blogs.reuters.com/india/2008/11/27/sitting-here-watching-the-taj-burn-down/

Update on Dec 01: On Saturday night I discussed the event with my area welfare association, and they were happy to see young men taking the initiative. They gave me a better idea to communicate with our area members. And so, on Dec 13-14, when we have our area gathering for an event, we shall communicate this message. I and two of my area friends are thinking on the best way to make an impact. I shall update you all after the event.

I hope this catches on, I repeat let's all unite, let us not forget this incident as we normally have, let this fire burn in our heart always.

Update on December 16: The gathering was fantastic and we had a senior citizen in our community (area) announcing the checklist (we could not find a projector and so settled for announcing). I felt extremely happy when I saw most of my community (area) people observe silence as a mark of showing respect.

I hope this catches on in other areas, which could in turn help us counter the evil forces to some extent.

Disclaimer: All the blogs shared by me are my ideas, my thought, my understanding of the subject and does not represent any of my employer’s ideas, thought, plans or strategies.

Award for Best Contributor to Testing Community - Test Republic

2008-11-24T11:01:00.003+05:30

Hi All,

Felt like sharing the good news with you all

I have been chosen for the award “Best Contributor to Testing Community - Test Republic” which shall be presented at the 8th Annual International Software Testing Conference on 24th November at the Leela Palace, Old Airport Road, Bangalore.

Test Republic has truly lived up to it’s name and it’s quote “Meet. Share. Network. @ Global online social networking platform exclusively for Software Testing Professionals.” It has more than 2500 members and close to 200 discussions. I have learnt a lot from the discussions at Test Republic, and I hope to see you all as members and learn from you all.

I thank Edista and Test Republic Team for running such a fantastic testing community and to choose me for the Award.

Disclaimer: All the blogs shared by me are my ideas, my thought, my understanding of the subject and does not represent any of my employer’s ideas, thought, plans or strategies.

How do you measure and appraise testers?

2008-10-31T18:01:00.007+05:30

- Do you use a tool to measure testers?
- Do you measure them based on the number of bugs they find?
- Do you measure them by the number of valid (acknowledged by development/product/ team) bugs they find?
- Do you measure them based on the x% variance with schedule for a testing effort?
- Do you measure them based on the x% adherence to configuration management practices?
- Do you measure them based on the Ratio of defects found during testing (vs) defects found post release?
- Do you measure them based on the x% system test coverage of the assigned functionality as measured through Reviews and Requirement Traceability Matrix?
- Do you measure them based on the Test Environment Utilization Rate?
- Do you measure testers based on how testers improve development teams?(http://blogs.msdn.com/james_whittaker/archive/2008/07/22/measuring-testers.aspx)
- etc

For all those who strive by metrics and incentive plans based on metrics read this fantastic article “Employees will always game incentive plans -- because the geniuses who design them don't anticipate how employees will respond” By Joes Spolsky

I thank Michael Bolton for sharing the above link by Joel in a discussion at Test Republic.

Right now I do not have “the/a” answer for the question of this post.

But, isn’t it also our responsibility to not persist/continue in such a blind system.

Further reading:
- Software Engineering Metrics: What Do They Measure and How Do We Know? by Cem Kaner
- Side Effects of Metrics/Statistics by Shrini Kulkarni
- Remuneration and Punished by Rewards by Jonathan Kohl
- Don’t Use Bug Counts to Measure Testers by Cem Kaner
- The Darker Side of Metrics by Douglas Hoffman

Disclaimer: All the blogs shared by me are my ideas, my thought, my understanding of the subject and does not represent any of my employer’s ideas, thought, plans or strategies.

Testing Interview Questions

2008-10-29T15:29:00.007+05:30

Couple of month’s back I was invited for an interview at one of the big, reputed Indian service based company in Bangalore. This interview turned out to be an eye-opener for me at the state of testing in India.

Let me start with the conversation I had with HR of the company.

Me: When is the interview scheduled?
HR: 12:30 PM
Me: Could you please re-schedule it? Since it is a lunch time and I do not want the interviewers to be hungry.
HR: HaHaHa… no Sharath our interviewers work in shifts, so there will be no such issues.
Me: Ok then, I shall meet you at the location. Thanks.

Date of Interview

12:20 PM I submitted all the required documents to HR, at the interview location
12:50 PM HR informed me that the interview panel will be back after lunch by 2:00 PM.

A lesson taught by the mighty organization – “don’t show up on time for the interview” or “we do not value other’s time”

At around 2:10 PM I am escorted to the interview room by HR.

What followed was an enlightening conversation between me and the 2 interviewers (one of them over tele-con) in the room.

Interviewer 1: When do you do performance testing?
Me: Well, it depends on the context.
Interviewer 2: How can it depend on the context?
Me: If my mission it to test a program stores a minimum x number of packets per minute to help management take a decision on investing development effort - I shall be performance testing early.
If product development team seeks help to test the database for a certain number of transactions in the middle of a project to avoid bottlenecks towards the release – I would be performance testing in the middle of a product time line.
If my mission demands me to record the response time after a specific function – I shall performance test after functional testing.
Interviewer 1: Yes, I understand, but when do you normally do performance testing?
Me: :-)

Interviewer 1: Have you seen a use case?
Me: Hmm… yes, sir
Interviewer 1: How many test cases can you write from a use case?
Me: 0 to n
Interviewer 2: What?
Me: Yes, 0 to n, if a tester does not understand the use case – he might develop 0 test cases, if a tester understands the use case – he might develop “n” number of test cases.
Interviewer 1: Can you think of an average number?
Me: :-)

Interviewer 2: How do you determine the complexity of a test case?
Me: I do not know. I feel complexity of a module/feature under test is more important. Test cases developed for complex module is more important to me, when I compare with test cases developed for a comparatively simple module/feature.
Interviewer 2: Does not number of execution steps in a test case help you identify a complex test case?
Me::-), What if a logo is displayed across 10 different pages. A test case is developed to verify the result at 10 different pages. This test case shall have more steps when compared to other test cases, so does it make the test case more complex?
Interviewer 2: So, how do you know which test case is complex?
Me: :-)

Interviewer 1: Why do you always refer to context? I do not understand how testing is different from any other like development?
Me: Let’s consider an example: Test a program which add integers and returns a value. What will be your test approach? How many test cases will you have to test this?
- What if this program is used to display the number of sms’s in the inbox of a mobile application? Does your test strategy change? Or will it be the same?
- What if this program is used in a ICICI ATM machine? Does your test strategy change? Will you add more test cases? Or will it be the same?
- What if this program is used in a corrective laser eye surgery? Does your test strategy change? Will you add more test cases? Or will it be the same?
- What if this program is used to control a Dam (may be KRS)? Does your test strategy change? Will you add more test cases? Or will it be the same?
Interviewer 1: :-(

Interviewer 1: You use different testing terminologies like para-functional etc, which our customers will not be able to understand.
Me: :-)

Interviewer 2: We always refer Stability in Performance Testing, but you tend to use it for functional as well.
Me: :-)

Well, I was not offered and I acknowledge their decision. May be I did not meet their requirements, or may be I miss-understood their questions or may be my answers were pathetic or may be my attitude wasn’t right or may be....

But, I personally felt the interview was useless. I felt the two interviewers have never tested or understood testing or might have never looked beyond the company process and their campus walls. I might be wrong, but my oracles tell me it was “useless”. I request you all to help me by answering the questions put forward to me by the interviewers.

Further Reading: The (bad) state of Software Testing interviews in India by Pradeep Soundararajan

Disclaimer: All the blogs shared by me are my ideas, my thought, my understanding of the subject and does not represent any of my employer’s ideas, thought, plans or strategies.

Videos on exploratory testing with Pradeep Soundararajan

2008-09-09T08:59:00.009+05:30

Hi All,

Creating good videos on testing is a hard job. A lesson learnt when Pradeep Soundararajan and I got together to create couple of videos on Testing. The experience made us wonder the effort Cem Kaner might have put in to create tons of fantastic videos for BBST, which are all available for FREE. I thank Cem Kaner and all test experts across the globe for sharing their videos for FREE, with sole intention of helping to build a better testing community.

On a Sunday afternoon we met at Edista Testing Institute in Bangalore to create some videos. The first challenge we faced was to decide upon a tool to record our videos. Pradeep had already spent hours together on tools that claims to do the stuff we want but actually didn't. We decided to use "Windows Media Encoder", but then we still had to explore the tool to understand how it might be working, and how we want it to work in order to achieve the desired results. After around one hour of investigating, exploring, testing we were all set to record the first video - The (bad) state of software testing interviews in India prepared by Pradeep.

We explored ways to record the video based on our expectations. It’s interesting to note that as exploratory testers we ran a short session of quick learning of the tool. Our mission was to learn things that matter to us for recording a video.

After we completed the video, we tested the video and it appeared absolutely fine.

With some hope and excitement, we took a quick bite and jumped back for the next video.

While taking a quick bite we had planned for our second video - to demonstrate exploratory testing. The roles we chose - Pradeep, the tester and me - the stakeholder.

I suggest you to watch the videos to unveil how Pradeep avoided traps that came on his way as a tester, uses tools (brain) to help him do manual testing, and importance of making notes, etc.

You can find both the videos @
The bad state of software testing video
Exploratory testing session demonstration – 1

You can also find the above videos + loads of other testing videos by testing experts @ Test Republic

Pradeep also teamed up with Ajay to produce another demonstration of exploratory testing and here is the link to it:
Exploratory testing session demonstration – 2

And the energy looks like we are going to have plenty of video demonstration of testing from Pradeep.

When Pradeep uploaded the videos, we got a surprise that the video was resized to 320X 240 instead of its original size 1024 X 768. This could be because Google Videos is resizing it when encoding certain format and resolution.

You could shoot questions on the video and we will be glad to address it at the comments section.

Update: As promised, Ajay Balamurugadas, Pradeep Soundararajan and I met on Friday 12th night to record our next video. Link: http://testertested.blogspot.com/2008/09/exploratory-software-testing.html

Disclaimer: The videos by Pradeep and me were created with the sole intention to help testers. All the blogs shared by me are my ideas, my thought, my understanding of the subject and does not represent any of my employer’s ideas, thought, plans or strategies.

Why “For those who think Test Automation is easy, saves time, converts manual tests, etc,”? page element

2008-08-21T12:09:00.001+05:30

Me: Why did you add the new page element “For those who think Test Automation is easy, saves time, converts manual tests, etc,”? in your blog?

Me: I have been asked questions like

# I am planning to change my job, which tool shall I learn?
# Will only manual testing experience fetch me a job?
# Shall I learn some scripting language? Will it improve my chances of getting a job?
# What will I say if the interviewer asks “Haven’t you done any automation”?
# Why don’t you automate the program? I have previously seen a test group do that, they run the tests and next day morning they have the results?
# How hard is it to automate? All you have to record it right?
# Let’s build a test framework; it will surely reduce testing time?
# You should not be stuck with manual testing, you should start automating?

And many more, so I felt the papers by legendary test gurus could help us understand “Test Automation” better.

Second reason why I added the new page element would be

When I was answering to a discussion at Test republic, I quoted “During regression testing, if you currently run the same test cases over and over again, go ahead and automate, atleast it shall save time. But, during regression if you hunt for new bugs, note observations, verify the fix doesnot do something it was not supposed to do, then stick to manual (exploratory) testing. Iam sure this would be more challenging and will have better learning.”

Observe the first 2 lines - I made an assumption that automating repeated tests is easy; I also made an assumption that running automated tests will take less time.

Why did I make such an assumption? Well, in one of my previous projects we had written a script in python for build acceptance test. But then the script was not dynamic because we only intend to verify the program at a very high level, to qualify the build for testing.

So, I assumed the same would work here, well it might, but did I consider the other risks? No, did I evaluate the product before suggesting automation? No, did I have enough information before suggesting? No,

I feel this is exactly what is happening in most of the places. We feel we could automate some thing because it worked some where else. The papers listed gave me an insight on the pitfalls, traps I was not aware of, and I hope it helps other testers the same way.

Me: The papers you have posted have been available for public from a very long time (one of them 10 years back); so, how will it help if you post it on your blog?

Me: Good question, the second reason I have quoted happened last week, Pradeep forwarded me the links, which in turn helped me understand Test Automation better. I am trying to do the same.

Me: Well, all the best I hope more people read this learn and understand Test Automation

Me: Thanks:-), I hope more people read this, learn, think, understand Test Automation from legendary tester’s experiences, rather than blindly fall for advertisements.

Disclaimer: All the blogs shared by me are my ideas, my thought, my understanding of the subject and does not represent any of my employer’s ideas, thought, plans or strategies.

Bugs… with a human touch

2008-08-14T17:04:00.003+05:30

“Dealing with yesterday’s bugs keeps part of our attention away from today’s bugs” – This statement from http://blogs.msdn.com/james_whittaker/archive/2008/08/11/if-microsoft-is-so-good-at-testing-why-does-your-software-suck.aspx by james whittaker grabbed my attention since I previously remember similar words from one of my manger before.

In today’s software projects I feel bugs are treated humanlike. Last week my colleague asked me “What is the life of a bug?” To which my answer was - the bug is born when you find one in the program under test, the bug is issued a birth-certificate when it’s logged in the bug tracker.

A developer who listened to our conversation expressed to torture it (bug). To which my reply was – the bug might die of a heart attack, or might have a slow death or might live in the dark stomaching your torture, until a day when he breaks loose, forms an army of his own or even better becomes a gladiator and takes down your empire.

My previous manager used to address bugs as – “yesterdays”, “todays” and so on. When bugs were categorized to set priorities, he used to question us “why are you finding yesterday’s bugs?” To which – I had no reply since, yesterday I was not in the project, and I was assigned to the project today.

Today when I read the above statement from James, I wonder are bugs bugs or we have newborns, infants, teenagers, adults, married, divorced, old age, sick, happy, ……, today’s, yesterday’s, tomorrow’s, bugs.

I thought harder what yesterday bug could mean

:-) Does it mean bug in previous version of the program which broke the prison?
:-) Does it mean bug reported by customer when he was just born?
:-) Does it mean bug found after formal release of the product?
:-) Does it mean bug reported by client in previous phase?
:-) Does it mean bug found today which was not unearthed yesterday, but was supposed to be found yesterday?
:-) Does it mean bug in previous version which today is well settled with family and leading a happy life with humans?
:-) Does it mean bug was caught yesterday, but let loose after counseling to wear the seat belt?
:-) Does it mean bug found today is the daughter of yesterday’s bug?

After making the above points I re looked at the quote “Dealing with yesterday’s bugs keeps part of our attention away from today’s bugs” and I felt may be I got carried away what if my mission was “Find today’s bugs”. Well, how do I do it?

Guys please help…

Disclaimer: All the blogs shared by me are my ideas, my thought, my understanding of the subject and does not represent any of my employer’s ideas, thought, plans or strategies.

It’s Time or Never

2008-07-29T18:07:00.003+05:30

Hi All,

My friend on gtalk asked me to find the name for image verification, which is normally seen in web blogs, website registration, etc. This led me to CAPTCHA: Telling Humans and Computers Apart Automatically.

I being a black box tester, who believe testing is dependent on human skills of a tester rather than magical formulas that make human independent, this was a good discovery. Now, there are applications/programs which want to differentiate human from a machine. In the age where people around feel automating all are the solution, CAPTCHA emphasizes on the human skills. It posses a (1)hard AI problem – is a problem which is solvable by humans but not readily solvable by computers.

Off late we see CAPTCHA used in most blogs, web registrations, etc to protect the online polls results, email addresses by spammers, website registrations by bots, spamming of blogs. The recent addition in the ICICI bank website is a virtual keyboard and they quote on their page that (2)The Virtual Keyboard is designed to protect your password from malicious “Spyware” and “Trojan Programs”. Use of Virtual keyboard will reduce the risk of password theft. The latest version of Kaspersky Lab’s security software suite, Internet Security 2009, has introduced a virtual keyboard using which (3)Users can bring it up on screen whenever they wish to input securely and totally bypass using their physical keyboard. (4)“I will only accept an email if I know there is a human behind the other computer” could be the next solution from CAPTCHA.

With more and more applications trying to differentiate humans and computers, for obvious reasons, how do we as testers plan to test these applications or even applications which embed these? I definitely do not feel the automation tools in the market (especially record and playback) could provide us an answer to this. Imagine an automation tool used to test a program which is used to differentiate humans and computers apart. I am definitely not against automation, but the meaning of test automation is different for different testers, managers, nationals. For me automation tools do not test A to Z of a product, or use it only to run regression tests. I feel automation should help a tester test well, like providing me the combinational input I need to feed the program, create xxxxx virtual users to stress test an application, send similar packets at a regular interval for a longer duration of time, etc. Even to write or create good automation tests we need the human skills so isn’t it time we start recognizing, appreciating and developing the human skills required to test our current and future applications?

Or will there be a new buzz word created?

References
(1) http://www.aladdin.cs.cmu.edu/reu/abstracts/humanoracle.ppt#264,8,The CAPTCHA Idea
(2) http://www.icicibank.com/pfsuser/webnews/virtualkeyboad.htm
(3) http://www.kaspersky.com/version2009
(4) http://www.captcha.net/

Disclaimer: All the blogs shared by me are my ideas, my thought, my understanding of the subject and does not represent any of my employer’s ideas, thought, plans or strategies.

I cleared the AST BBST Foundation Class :-)

2008-07-09T11:45:00.004+05:30

Hi All,

I was overjoyed on clearing the AST BBST foundation class, shared the information with few of my friends and colleges the immediate response was “What is AST BBST foundation course?”

Was it surprising? “NO” definitely not. BBST is no match to testing certifications like CSTE, ISTQB in terms of popularity.

Why? Well, you might know by the end of the blog, but I do not guarantee.

Let’s start with some basic fundamental questions. I recommend you all to write the answers for the below questions before you proceed, if you can’t well, continue reading.

- Why are you testing? What are you trying to learn?
- How should you organize your work to achieve your mission?
- How will you know whether the program passed or failed the test?
- What would it take to do a complete testing job?
- How much testing is enough?

Were you able to answer all the above questions, if “yes” that’s great but

How do you know your answer is correct?
How do you arrive at the objective?
How do you choose the strategy to achieve the objective?
How do you decide on the bugs that are less important to bugs that are more important?
How do you decide how much to test?
How do you decide on how much documentation is required?
How do you know whether the information you provide is of value to your stake holder?
How do you know what information is of value to your stake holder?
How do you know metrics you have chosen provides you with the right information?
How do you know whether you have met the objective?
Is your answer good enough to convince your development team to fix the issue?
Is your answer good enough to convince your manager or peers that testing can never be complete?
Is your answer good enough that the program/product under test can never be bug free?
Is your answer good enough to educate your manager, what cannot be tested? Why?
Is your answer good enough to negotiate for more time to strategize your testing?
Is your answer good enough to help your manager understand that running more tests might not fetch you the right results?
Is your answer good enough to argue on the measurement used?
Do you want to discuss, argue, agree, disagree more on the above questions?
Do you want to know how testers from different domains, experience, and country analyze the same questions?
Do you want to know how Cem Kaner, Douglas Hoffman, and other testing greats analyze the same question?
Do you want to learn how to answer the fundamental questions in a better way?

Then join the AST BBST foundation course, it might help you answer the above fundamental questions better AST BBST Courses

For those who could not answer the fundamental questions (I was one among you), try AST BBST foundation course, it might help you answer the above fundamental questions AST BBST Courses

Require more information on my experience with the course, feel free to leave a comment or ping me at sharu.b@gmail.com

Disclaimer: All the blogs shared by me are my ideas, my thought, my understanding of the subject and does not represent any of my employer’s ideas, thought, plans or strategies. The article is only my observation of the course and highlights my learning from the course.

Is Tester|||Doctor?

2008-06-27T12:12:00.004+05:30

I met with an accident one and a half week back, my shoulder was in pain. Guzzled some pain killers, applied Pain relievers on my right shoulder went to sleep, next day I could not move my shoulder.

Next day...

I called my Dad, to enquire if he knew a good orthopaedician. Got the details went to the hospital took an appointment and waited for 1.5 hrs to finally meet the doctor.

The doctor started testing

Doctor started with a set of questions

How did you meet with the accident?
Did you fall on the ground?
Previous troubles with the right shoulder?
Did you do some self medication?
And so on...

Later he examined the shoulder, confirmed where exactly the pain was. But asked me to get the x-ray, and handed a prescription for the X-ray.

After getting the x-ray, doctor looked at the x-ray confirmed that there is no fracture but a ligament tear and required at least 2 weeks of rest.

No it’s not the end it just got interesting

2 weeks no way doc is there a way I could start using my right shoulder in a week? It’s very hard to apply leave for so long? What about my anniversary plans? Who will answer my clients?

The Doc explained the later effects on the shoulder, the risks if required rest not provided. He later put the ball in my court.

After one and half weeks I am still at home resting my right shoulder and typing this blog with my left hand.

This made me wonder how testers and doctors are different. Well, according to me they are not but the way stakeholders acknowledge information from a tester is different to the information received by the doctor.

Or do we as testers miss to highlight the impact in the information we provide?

Comments guys

Disclaimer: All the blogs shared by me are my ideas, my thought, my understanding of the subject and does not represent any of my employer’s ideas, thought, plans or strategies.

How many bugs in the software?

2008-05-07T18:04:00.009+05:30

Hi All,

How many bugs in the software?

Let's read a story of Birbal (Birbal was an advisor in the court of Akbar and is very popular for his sharp intellect and sense of humour)

One day Akbar was strolling in his palace gardens with his dear minister Birbal. Many crows were flying around. The King enjoyed their flying. Just then he thought, that how many crows could be in his kingdom and immediately posed this question to Birbal.

Birbal thought a moment, then said, "They are ninety-five thousand, four hundred and sixty three (95, 463) crows in your kingdom, Huzoor." "How do you know that for sure?" the King asked. "You can get them counted, Huzoor." Birbal said.

The king again said, "If there will be less than that, then?" Birbal replied immediately, "That means that the rest of them have gone on vacation to some neighboring kingdoms." "Or if there were more than that, then?" "Then it means that other crows are visiting your kingdom, Huzoor."

I hope the story answers “How many bugs in the software?”

For more stories and to know more about Birbal Stories about Birbal

Please feel free to disagree with me, challenge me, discuss with me, by posting your comments. Also, feel free to reach me at sharu.b@gmail.com.

Disclaimer: All the blogs shared by me are my ideas, my thought, my understanding of the subject and does not represent any of my employer’s ideas, thought, plans or strategies.

Welcome, the Specialists

2008-04-22T23:14:00.003+05:30

Hi All,

Read this astounding article The Surprising Right Fit for Software Testing to know about people with Asperger syndrome or some form of ASD, who are now considered best in class testers.

I thank my college Vinod K for sharing this fantastic information.

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia Autism spectrum: The autism spectrum, also called autism spectrum disorders (ASD) or autism spectrum conditions (ASC), with the word autistic sometimes replacing autism, is a spectrum of psychological conditions characterized by widespread abnormalities of social interactions and communication, as well as severely restricted interests and highly repetitive behavior.

Behaviorally, certain characteristics identify the autism spectrum. The type, severity and/or number of autistic traits present determines the severity of autism in the individual. These autistic traits may be beneficial for some disciplines like science, mathematics, engineering and computer programming. Some autistic individuals might show a marked proficiency in rote memorization which may help learn the foundation of these subjects; however, the exceptionally good aptitude (in these subjects) of high functioning autistic spectrum persons may be due to their ability to readily identify patterns and apply them consistently to new situations outside of established knowledge or teaching. These savant skills, although popularly considered to be a major part of autistic disorders, are evident only in a small fraction of autistic individuals, with estimates of the fraction ranging from 0.5 to 10%.

Disclaimer: All the blogs shared by me are my ideas, my thought, my understanding of the subject and does not represent any of my employer’s ideas, thought, plans or strategies.

Black box test puzzles

2008-04-15T12:04:00.005+05:30

Hi All,

Are you free?
Are you ready to exercise your brain?
Are you ready to learn?
Are you ready to test?

Then join me in exploring the Test Machines by James Lyndsay.

Here is an arrangement, testers interested in solving these, which include me as well:-), shall share personal email id’s(send a test mail to sharu.b@gmail.com or post it in the comment), once we have a pool of testers, could be even 2, never particular about the numbers, shall start investigating these interesting puzzles.

Warning - these machines may change the way you test! – James Lyndsay

Disclaimer: All the blogs shared by me are my ideas, my thought, my understanding of the subject and does not represent any of my employer’s ideas, thought, plans or strategies.

Testers punished for testing...or are they???

2008-04-04T11:33:00.009+05:30

Hi All,

This came up from an interesting discussion I was having with a friend (tester). He was happy because he was able to get the software working so that he could run tests on it the next day. I felt a little awkward with the happiness expressed and so delved into his happiness to find out that

• He was happy because he would not go to work in shifts (night) for testing, because he was able to get it started by EOD.
• He was happy because he shall be able to run the tests as per the schedule defined.
• He was happy because he could start testing.
• He was happy because he could send a report to his manager about the test status as scheduled.
• He was happy because he could find bugs faster, since other members of his team have not got the software to work yet.

Well, there’s more to it and then came an interesting story. Two testers were asked to test 2 different features of a printer. During upgrade of the software, one of the testers removed the n/w cable connected and this crashed the printer. The printer had to be sent for repair. The tester was asked to come in the night shifts, and would share the other tester’s printer to complete his testing.

Fantastic, isn’t it a real motivation for testers, see what this event had impact on the testing team. I couldn’t take this incident out of my head and thought a lot about it.

• Was the tester punished for testing? (Tester could had removed the cable intentionally or not, that’s a different scenario…my friend did not had the information about it)
• Why was the tester not appreciated for crashing the printer?
• Why was the tester viewed as some one who halted testing, wherein he had found one of the most important defect.
• Was there a specific document available to the tester that he was not supposed to remove the cable while upgrading?
• Even if a document specified not to remove the cable, the tester shouldn’t have ever tried it?
• Why do managers feel that running tests are more important than crashing the system?
• Why sufficient number of hardware (printers) not available for testing, this makes me wonder “crashing the printer was never anticipated”?
• Does customer want a tested product which could still crash?

When, I put across some of these questions to my friend and I got loads of excuses like resource crunch (not “human” but “hardware”)/budget/time to deliver/you are not being practical/those are invalid scenarios and finally “you suggest a solution to this”.

Well, testers provide information, what “one” (stake holders) makes out of it is not the tester’s headache. And so “or are they” got added to the title. Hence “Testers punished for testing...or are they???

Please feel free to disagree with me, challenge me, discuss with me, by posting your comments. Also, feel free to reach me at sharu.b@gmail.com.

Disclaimer: All the blogs shared by me are my ideas, my thought, my understanding of the subject and does not represent any of my employer’s ideas, thought, plans or strategies.

Lessons learnt from a phone call

2008-03-30T12:28:00.007+05:30

Can you refer some of your friends for technical training at my college? – sis (sister) asked,
Me: What is it about, why do you need them?
Sis: for assisting my students clear campus interviews and get placed
Me: What language/technology/domain trainers are you looking for?
Sis: C, C++, JAVA.
Well, the answer for this question could have been a “Yes” or a “No”. Let’s analyze both the scenarios….

Scenario “No”

I say “No” to my sis, wish her good night, ask wife/mom to serve dinner, and sleep well on sleep well mattress.

Scenario “Yes”

- Commit to her, that I would refer some of my friends.
- Call a friend who is good at any of them(C/C++/JAVA), or in some cases ‘master of all’, ask him/her to make some money, share my sis number.
- Sis shall get a call from my referrals, invites them to her college, they teach C/C++/JAVA for may be a day. They go back with money, sis goes back happily that she conducted training, students go back with WHAT??? ( Neither I Know)

Let’s analyze the same scenario handled in a different way.

Well, I love questioning and as a tester one of most important skills required (I am still practicing, I am no expert either, but determined to be). I went on and on asking for questions.

- Students from which semester would attend the seminar/workshop? (since sis was not sure what to call it)
(the reason behind the question)Curious to know whether it’s 1st sem or like all other colleges is it 6th or 7th sem
- How long will this seminar/workshop conducted? Will it be on a Sunday??
The longer it is the boring I felt….Sunday…a definite NO NO
- What do you want the technical trainers to teach?
Straightforward what do you want them to teach….nobody knows what the interviewer would ask …right???
- What do they have to prepare before addressing your students?
Dependent on the previous question….calculating how much time it is required for the guy/gal to prepare to address the class
- How are you planning to pay them? Is it hourly?
Most important question…don’t you guys feel so...
- If I am referring my friends from the industry, should they have prior experience in teaching?
A probable question from my friends or co-workers, whom I would have referred…. Good to anticipate their questions in advance right??
- How will you measure whether the training was successful?
How is my sis planning to convince her management that the exercise was successful
- How many of your students do you think will attend? Or will it be compulsory like how we were made to attend during our school/college?
This was a must-know information…the gut feeling my sis has about the program…also if it’s made compulsory remember the days we used to attend those long lectures.

And then the most important question of them all

– What are your expectations from this workshop/seminar?
This was directed at my sis alone…not her management….I wanted to know what is her expectations

Now, my sis could answer some of the questions, some were unanswered (not thought of it yet), and some was partially answered (which also included the most important question “expectations”).

I was able to frame more questions, since I got most of the answers, and could analyze where my sis stands….so the next list…

- Where would you find resources to train your students for the campus recruitment?
Since, I am from the industry and I knew this was a tough task, and wanted my sis to feel “whether she is defining the right procedure”
- If you are looking for one who is very good technically/has great communication skills/ adapts quickly/ thinks on the run. Aren’t they the cream every industry/institution wants?
This was related to my previous question, but here I emphasized that it is tough to find them and wanted to know whether she still wanted to follow the same procedure….
- Will students be really interested to attend workshop/seminar on a Sunday, which is their only holiday since Saturday is no longer a holiday? Will they not have tuitions/friends/girl friends to attend?
Again, questioning the entire process and her confidence level
- Why are you starting the training so late (6th sem), by 6th sem they would had developed a learning pattern of their own?
Again, questioning the entire process and her confidence level
- What are the value-add for your students, would they add it in their resume, that they attended the training and shall attract more questions on the subject during the interview?
Again, questioning the entire process and her confidence level, and this time I was hoping her to drop the current process she has in mind and work on a different, a better procedure.

If I analyze the phone conversation again, I could see that my sis (client) knows her requirement (students to clear campus). But she is not sure of the approach required to meet the requirement.

Let’s dig a little deeper. Initially she was looking for “technical trainers” for the procedure she had in mind(training students), but then she was questioned on the kind of trainers required, the procedure, returns from the procedure or workflow, student’s interest and so on.

Now let’s relate it to our industry. Client is definite on the requirement, but not on the approach. So a requirement spec is drafted, which lists all the requirements, one of these I would relate it as my sis asking for technical trainers.

While testing if we as testers overlook it or consider requirement spec as a rule book we need to act by, I would have had ended referring some of my friend’s.

Some of us (testers) do follow this wonderful pattern of questioning but do not appreciate ourselves for it. And if there are testers who do not follow it and feel questioning could raise few eyebrows “GOD HELP YOU ALL”

For those who by now feel questioning is an essential skill for a tester, please refer to another excellent blog on questioning by Pradeep Soundararajan.

Currently I and my sis are brainstorming on what could be the best approach for the requirement she have. I have also roped in my father (principal) for the brainstorming exercise….I shall post all the outcome of the discussion later.

Please feel free to disagree with me, challenge me, discuss with me, by posting your comments. Also, feel free to reach me at sharu.b@gmail.com . I stay in Bangalore and my phone number is 9845400742

Disclaimer: All the blogs shared by me are my ideas, my thought, my understanding of the subject and does not represent any of my employer’s ideas, thought, plans or strategies.

Why TestToTester????!!!!

2008-03-30T11:27:00.002+05:30

Hi All,

Let's start with the basics. Who AM I?
My name is Sharath Byregowda, a self inspired, passionate software tester with around 4 years of experience in testing. In the 4 years of testing, I have learned/ disagreed/ challenged/agreed/questioned -- the process/managers/co-workers/software/myself.
On the personal front, I am married to a wonderful human being “sunitha”, I thank her for reading all my blogs/listen to my ideas/supported me/and sometimes forgive when I stay late :-).

Why TestToTester??
After 4 yrs in testing, not very satisfied (though appreciated from clients and managers across most projects), the passion to learn more, the urge to prove myself, the urge to prove the industry that testing is not a click-click job (I shall not categorize every one into this, but yes I have come across many) all of these led me to the world of blogging, where I came across many inspiring, thought provoking articles. The blogs which inspired me the most are http://testertested.blogspot.com/, http://shrinik.blogspot.com/, http://www.satisfice.com/blog/, http://www.satisfice.com/kaner/ , http://www.developsense.com/ . I know the list does not end here; I have been going through only these as of now and will surely add to the list.

Pradeep Soundararajan blogs has been the most inspirational for “TestToTester”. The coffee with pradeep changed a lot within me as a tester, which you would know if you continue reading “TestToTester”.

“TestToTester” is about my learning’s, tests to myself(a tester) – hence called “TestToTester”

Please feel free to disagree with me, challenge me, discuss with me, by posting your comments. Also, feel free to reach me at sharu.b@gmail.com . I stay in Bangalore and my phone number is 9845400742

Disclaimer: All the blogs shared by me are my ideas, my thought, my understanding of the subject and does not represent any of my employer’s ideas, thought, plans or strategies.