TestToTester

- 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 i...

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...

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, ...

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 an...

“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 addre...

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 Ke...

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...