TestToTester

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 ...

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 12:00...

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 tri...

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 ” ?

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, w...

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...

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.