Our Blog In Software Testing

Bug deBug Chennai

2012-02-21T05:55:00.001Z

Windows Installer Logging

2012-02-01T17:13:00.000Z

Most of the applications do have Installation logs. But not all, few of the applications do not have log generation while installing.Log file creation starts during log in acrivity only. This is fairly common in Windows applications. If you are a tester testing the installation of these kind of windows applications & if you are finding bug in installation wizard, how do you find the log? Here installation logs are crucial, since developers need those logs for debugging purpose.

Here is a simple way of creating those installation logs via windows registry.

Navigate to

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Policies\Microsoft\Windows\Installer

and create a String (Reg_SZ) entry Logging with the value 'voicewarmupx' (each letter stands for various logs, but on the whole, this entry is like verbose mode of logging). You can find the log system's temp directory. (Temp directory can be found at Start->Run-> type %temp%, usually it will be C:\Documents and Users\\Local Settings\Temp). The log file's filename starts with MSI.

Chennai Tester's Meet

2011-11-13T13:20:00.007Z

Finally, we managed to host Chennai Tester's meet at Aspire on October 29th 2011. I had been in touch with some of the RIA-RUI(Rich Internet Application-Rich User Interface) members since June to conduct the event at Aspire premises but unfortunately my travel schedule during the months of July, August and September made us postpone the event to October.

Though 140 Testing members across companies from Chennai had registered for the event, the Diwali weekend combined with heavy rains in Chennai came as dampener. Overall, 50 members came for the event of which close to 15 were from Aspire. The event started with my CTO Mr.Shankar Krishnamoorthy addressing the participants. As part of his speech, Mr.Shankar welcomed the gathering and stressed the importance of Testing in today's context.

My presentation "Knowledge Transfer in New Assignments - Challenges and some tips to overcome them" followed next. I emphasized on the need to extract Tacit Knowledge through various forms, the most important of them being Socializing. The audience connected well with the title and some of them came up with their experience and challenges in acquiring Tacit knowledge.

We had Mr.Murali from Testpro as the guest speaker at the event. Mr.Murali gave a motivational speech to the participants about the external influences that an employee encounters in an organization and how they should handle it. The forum was left open for debate post Mr.Murali's speech. The topic for the debate was "Documentation - Yes or No" in QA assignments. The participants came up with some interesting points. The debate ended with most of the attendees saying "Required and Relevant Documentation" adds value.

Lunch was organized for the attendees and the participants used that opportunity to network with each other.

STARWEST 2011

2011-11-06T03:53:00.002Z

I reached Anaheim around 2a.m on October 2nd from Philadelphia. Downtown Anaheim was lively and bustling with activity. Microsoft Sharepoint conference was happening at the Anaheim Convention Center and Starwest 2011 at Hotel Disneyland. I went to SQE booth the next morning to collect the booth staff badges for me and my colleagues. I was surprised to see the level of professionalism at the conference venue. Clearly written directions helped us to contact the right people for our needs and we were assigned a SQE staff for the duration of the event to help us network with others, setting up our booth etc.

On 3rd morning we went to setup our stall and completed that activity at about 10a.m. James Whittaker and several other leading QA consultants (whose names i have seen only in forums prior to the event ) were giving speeches as part of the industry technical presentations at Starwest 2011. A Test Lab was setup near the entrance area where visitors were asked to solve testing puzzles etc. James and Jonathan Bach, Michael Bolton were present close to the Test Lab showcasing Rapid and Exploratory Testing approaches.

One of the eye catching aspect for visitors was the book stall which was strategically located in the visitors area. The book stall had each author per day sitting there and signing books purchased by the visitors. I happened to see Erik Van Veenendaal on one of the days. As a strategic move in line with out corporate theme, we had a violinist from LA who played in our stall for 2 days that attracted lot of visitors. Dorothy Graham was one of the prominent QA personalities to visit our stall and appreciate the music. I connected with Dorothy during her visit to our stall and mentioned that i am a big fan of her thought inspiring articles in Stickyminds and other forums.

The organizers(SQE) had done so much of planning that everything was so flawless. Breakfast, Lunch and Tea were provided in the location where booths were present and the booth staff had priority access to everything. A bar counter was opened during the evenings and was available for the visitors as well. Wipro, Infosys, Mindtree, Applabs and Aspire were some of the companies from India. Ranorex, SOASTA, HP, Microsoft(showcasing Visual Studio Test Edition) were some of the renowned Global companies at the event. Though i had been part of conferences like STC in India before Starwest 2011 was my first international conference and i should say it helped me broaden my QA perspective. My session on "Test Maturity - Tweens, Teens and Twenties" attracted about 23 attendees and most of them had come for the Amazon Kindle and iPad raffle offer that we had. :-)). I will try to post some snaps soon.

Exploratory Testing and Session Based Test Management

2011-10-23T05:04:00.002+01:00

One of the customers we recently signed had a very tight timeframe for release and was relying on our team to help him deliver the product with good quality. There was not much time for Knowledge Transfer and our team was expected to pitch in for day one. I suggested Exploratory Testing to the customer and to measure the effectiveness of ET recommended SBTM(Session Based Test Management).

Being onsite-offshore model i was not sure how SBTM would work since i had this preconceived image that SBTM works only when our team is sitting with the customer's team at their premises. I prepared a SBTM template to share with the customer which had details of the Charter, Test Notes, Bug Investigation and Reporting, Issues, Opportunity Testing, Charter Vs Opportunity etc.

I shared the template for review with my team before presenting it to the customer. The team felt that such a template is too detailed and the customer may not be interested in that level of detailing. We reworked on the template to include details that would be more relevant to the customer such as Bugs Filed during the day, Clarifications raised etc. Except for the Charter most of the other fields were changed. What started as a SBTM report has now become a Daily status report. :-))

My question to other visitors to this blog are:

Is Session Based Test Management possible in onsite-offshore model or pure offshore model? If yes, how to do it effectively?

Can we convince customers about Charter Vs Opportunity Testing?

I understand that ET(Exploratory Testing) can be effectively performed using skilled testers but unfortunately in many cases you don't get that luxury. How to perform ET using a team that is not very skilled?

How do you show product knowledge acquisition as part of ET to the customer?

Testing for the Cloud

2011-06-25T13:23:00.002+01:00

The buzzword seems to be "Cloud Computing" now.

Steve Jobs spoke about iCloud few weeks back. Infosys CEO Kris Gopalakrishnan says "Take Advantage of Cloud Computing". About an year back Larry Ellison asked "What the hell is cloud computing" but he seems to be eating his own words now. Today, Oracle offers two sets of cloud-enabling products and technologies: some of its core technologies like grid computing and middleware, still bearing their traditional names; and a second and newer group of tools to which Oracle has attached the very term—cloud computing.

So cloud computing seems to be the next big thing and i look forward to people calling themselves Cloud testing experts in the near future. Probably, IV&V companies might come up with test automation frameworks designed exclusively to meet the needs of cloud and there could be lot of focus on Performance and Security testing since data sharing on cloud environments would increase the need for performance and security testing. Let's wait and see what cloud has to offer for the Testing community.

Whats happening to Estimation?

2011-03-18T16:00:00.003Z

There used to be a time when every customer wanted the vendor to give detailed estimates for testing their application. I have seen estimates planned for 2-3 years from the engagement start date and that'll include resource ramp up/down plans, cost planning based on resource plans etc. All this seems to be changing now.

Some of the recent customers we have signed up are not interested in Test Estimation at all. They want us to start with a Proof of Concept, evaluate based on the results of the PoC and if the results are rosy, go ahead and start the engagement. No clear milestones and deliverables defined, no visibility on resource addition/deletion, no Test Plan/Test strategy identified for the application etc. Terms like Function Points, Testcase Points, Cocomo etc are no more heard in the vicinity.

This trend is definitely not good. Test Managers and Leaders must emphasize the need for estimation and planning to prospects/customers.

Point to Ponder

2011-03-01T15:55:00.002Z

This is a list of approaches, styles, and philosophies in software development. It contains also software development processes, software development methodologies and single practices, principles and laws.
Agent-oriented programming
Agile software development
Agile Unified Process (AUP)
Aspect-oriented Programming
Behavior Driven Development (BDD)
Big Design Up Front (BDUF)
Blind Men And Elephant Approach (BMAEA)
Brooks's law
Cathedral and the Bazaar (see also Release early, release often)
Code and fix
Cone of Uncertainty
Constructionist design methodology (CDM)
Continuous integration
Control tables
Conway's Law
Cowboy coding
Crystal Clear
Dependency injection
Design-driven development (D3)
Design Driven Testing (DDT)
Domain-Driven Design (DDD)
Don't Make Me Think (book by Steve Krug about human computer interaction and web usability)
Don't repeat yourself (DRY) or Duplication is Evil (DIE) or Once and Only Once (OAOO), Single Point of Truth (SPoT), Single Source Of Truth (SSOT)
Dynamic Systems Development Method (DSDM)
Evolutionary prototyping
Extreme Programming (XP)
Feature Driven Development
Good Enough For Now (GEFN)
Hollywood Principle
Inversion of control
Iterative and incremental development
Joint application design, aka JAD or "Joint Application Development"
Kaizen
Kanban
KISS principle original (Keep It Simple and Stupid), derogatory (Keep It Simple, Stupid!)
Lean software development
Literate Programming
Microsoft Solutions Framework (MSF)
Model-driven architecture (MDA)
MoSCoW Method
Open source
Open Unified Process
Parkinson's Law
Quick-and-dirty
Rapid application development (RAD)
Rational Unified Process (RUP)
Release early, release often (see also The Cathedral and the Bazaar)
Responsibility-driven design (RDD)
Scrum
Separation of concerns (SoC)
Service-oriented modeling
Software Craftsmanship
Software System Safety
Solid (object-oriented design)
Spiral model
Structured Systems Analysis and Design Method (SSADM)
SUMMIT Ascendant (now IBM Rational SUMMIT Ascendant)
Team Software Process (TSP)
Test-driven development (TDD)
Two Tracks Unified Process (2TUP)
Unified Process (UP)
Unix philosophy
V-Model
Waterfall model
Wheel and spoke model
When it's ready [1]
Win-Win Model
Worse is better (New Jersey style, as contrasted with the MIT approach)
You Ain't Gonna Need It (YAGNI)

Source: Wikipedia

Wonder how testing happens in each of these?

PDF attachment in hotmail.

2011-01-31T13:37:00.000Z

I didn't notice this issue for a long time (albeit I am a long term hotmail user, but I seldom use it for 'serious' purpose (like job, getting bills etc). Of late, I tried hotmail for some of my service billings (like broadband, bank etc.)

Quite interestingly, I am NOT able to open any PDF attachment received via hotmail account. I tried in Firefox 3.6 and I.E 7.I have to forward to my gmail account to open it.

Incredulously, I googled and yep that is expected. You cannot open PDF attachment in hotmail for security purpose! Guyz, this is too bad , may be okay in technical perspective but not in user's perspective, across the globe I strongly believe bills and other important documents are coming in PDF format (with or without encryption) and if those cannot be opened from hotmail....

Height of security & irrationality !

Test(Data,Case,Environment)<==>Bug

2011-01-30T08:55:00.000Z

In my experience, I am repeatedly finding that the proper mapping between
Test Case <==> Test Data <==> Test Environment <==> Bug

acting as a great tool for any tester / test team.

In other words, every bug should have its own test case/test data mapped.
In the same way, every test case (or test run) should have its test environment / test data / bug (if applicable) mapped.

It will help tester / test team in

1.High Rate of Reproducible bugs
2.Making the test process as resource independence
3.Transparency in testing
4.Getting a view on test coverage
5.Getting the Test case coverage ratio (No.of test cases Vs Total number of bugs)

Albeit, it seems to be so naive to read, but one of challenging tasks in any test team (inversely proportional to testing team size).

The problem starts when test team enters into hectic schedule of testing during the project. During and After this high concentrated testing, team gets exhausted for maintaining this mapping and concentrates more on 'after live' issues.

But even after two/three short releases when testing team gets little time for doing this exercise, unless team is highly disciplined, it is very difficult to carry this (mapping) exercise. Test Manager can easily use this mapping as a yardstick to measure the 'discipline' of testing team!

Power of Ticketing

2011-01-29T18:33:00.000Z

I am not sure whether this practice is followed across companies in industry. At least I am sure that few projects are not following this system.

We are aware of filing Bugs against the AUT (Application Under Test). Sometimes the issues filed in Bug tracking system all are not bugs, but some may found to be a Enhancement (Nice to have feature), some are simply 'Task' PR which is assigned against developers.

This Task PR (meaning that particular task has to be done by Assignee of the bug) can be very efficiently used by Test Manager to keep track of the tasks to be done by Testers.

Imagine in a testing module both Manual and Automation testers are working and at the beginning of the testing life cycle many things are discussed as 'to be done' and the way they are tracked is through emails, task requests in Outlook and simply by "Managers". We can use the bug tracking system for this purpose and Manager can raise 'Task' tickets against Testers for all the tasks he wanted tester to do. Or even tester can themselves can create and assign to themselves.

Examples for those task bugs are

(i) Creating new test cases for the new features (and getting sign off from product management and developers). This issue is considered as 'Completed' only when Peer Review/ Product management Review/Developers review/ Second level review is completed. We can create the workflow in our bug tracking system accordingly.

(ii) Select test cases from manual test case repository in order to automate and get sign off from Automation engineer.

(iii) Automate all the selected manual test cases in a feature and get Peer / Client sign off.

(iv) Finish self review for Performance appraisals.

(v) Verify all the bugs for this release.

(vi) Publish the Performance numbers between last release and this release

(vii) Clean the test cases (delete all the obsolete test cases) ..Criteria => Test cases written in past 3 years.

(viii) Complete the knowledge transfer session (this task issue is considered to be completed only if the person who is getting KT has given the reverse presentation and signing off the documents)

(ix) Do 5 interview before 30-Feb

and many more.

All these are treated as open Bugs and considered as important criteria in testing signoff of the particular release.

We can create separate areas in bug tracking systems, such as "Manual Testing Work" , "Automaton Testing work" etc This is analogous to IT help desk ticket but internal to testing team. How diligently we follow this reflect the success.

My 'Building' Experience

2011-01-29T18:09:00.000Z

Few years back, I was working in a project as a single tester. That project was developed from scratch and everything is from India only. One of the additional responsibilities came to me is to 'build' the project through a tool call "Anthill". Since I was relatively new to industry I was excited and began to play with this. Since there was no proper planning,there were major fixes every day and I as a tester (who is having additional responsibility of 'building' with the latest fix) started taking builds on daily basis. In addition, for every bug I filed I started getting calls from programmers to 'check in the latest build..just to ensure..'.I was able to file bugs only after getting the latest code.

Point here is it will take at least one-two hours for me to take the latest build and if I find any showstopper, I stopped testing and started to wait for the fix and after the fix I again started 'building'.

There is no another tester and there is no change in this process, no comment from PM (since I didn't have test manager) and I was surrounded by developers.

After a while, I was finding only few bugs that too show stoppers and concentrating on improving the Anthill's build.xml to make quicker builds , which was lauded as good solution by few developers. In this, around 50% of my time went for running anthill / waiting for build / improving the anthill process.

All went fine until one morning when my client found one 'Critical bug' not 'show stopper' in one of the previous build (few days old), and obviously developers started saying to check in the latest build which he refused and filed the bug. The answer from him is albeit there may be some fix in the coming builds, this bug has been found in 'xyz' build and that is true and so I am filing the bug. Later we can change the status of the bug accordingly.

After this incident, I took the backseat and STOPPED building the code and made a build cycle. I made clearly that I myself as a tester will take the build every Wednesday and I will file bugs based on the build (irrespective of whether they are fixed in the later builds) and then I realized there were many Critical/Major serious bugs are there in the product which should have been caught long long back.

But my actions were taken at the end of the project and as expected our estimation went terribly wrong and blame came to me also as a tester (in fact I got a lion's share...:-( ).

Moral: (i) Decide / Negotiate about the build cycle/ interval between builds at the early stage of the testing and follow the rule religiously (unless its very critical fix).
(ii) If you as a tester took additional responsibility of either build engineer, document writer , whistle blower in CMMi process or whatever, be clear to give priority to testing and then go for others.

OLE in Gmail

2011-01-20T14:40:00.000Z

I am not sure whether this facility is available in Gmail or not, if it is not , it would be great to have.

I am not able to copy some excel fields and paste in my gmail. In other words, OLE is not supported in Gmail. I am not very sure whether OLE is possible outside Microsoft component.

If anybody has any work around for this (embedding an excel sheet/part of excel sheet in Gmail), I would be thankful :-)

Interesting Observation

2011-01-16T17:33:00.003Z

Today i came across an interesting observation in my Yahoo Mail Inbox. I had some Birthday reminders which i did not read but deleted directly. Thereafter i opened an mail from one of my friends but the Birthday Alarm mail got opened. I was surprised and then again went back using the browser back button and again clicked on my friend's mail and once again the birthday alarm mail content got displayed. I refreshed again and tried and was able to see my friend's mail. Not sure what could have been the issue. Any such experience for readers?

Developers Reviewing test cases.

2010-12-07T17:17:00.000Z

Recently I came across one process. Reviewing of test cases by developers. In my team testers are writing test cases (or scenarios) and getting reviewed them by developers, and the net result is developers who are finding test cases are 'suddenly' seeing new conditions, and remembering that they missed these conditions in their unit test or code. Hence, in my company code freeze date is about to change and net result is almost our test cases are passing , without much Bug filing.

Is this good practice? I definitely don't think so. Either the code freeze date should be rigid or Test case review shouldn't be done by developers. It should either inside test team or if it is needed product management should take care of this.

Cheating Tests

2010-11-18T08:14:00.001Z

Another week goes by and more leading consumer websites crashed and burned, causing losses in both revenue (millions) and, perhaps more importantly, in consumer confidence in ecommerce. This week fail whales were sited swimming in the oceans of one of the world’s largest retailers, a leading children’s toy manufacturer and the industry’s leading online payment processor. PayPal alone (which was down for several hours this past Friday) may have lost hundreds of millions of dollars for itself and the enormous network of retail outlets that rely on them for their financial transaction services.

So why are fail whales continuing to happen so frequently? Don’t these companies test their sites? The answer, for load and performance testing, is of course they do…most of the time. In fact, some companies are spending millions of dollars on people, hardware and tools to load and performance test their websites. So why all the fail whales? One answer may be that organizations that have chosen the wrong testing tools or test service are, in fact, cheating on their tests!

Consumer facing website have become the primary channel of revenue and product information for millions of companies around the globe. So why cheat on testing? The pressure to deliver (business agility) is enormous today, for all IT organizations, and may well be a key reason cheating has become a common practice. Many test subcontractors and test companies cheat on their tests simply because they run out of time. According to PCWeek, this is what happened to AT&T on the pre-registration site for the iPhone4 launch. Due to a last minute feature upgrade they had no time to adequately performance test the site, which, of course, crashed an hour after it was launched, due to a 10x spike in traffic, creating a PR and revenue nightmare! Other organizations cheat because they just can’t afford the resources (people, hardware and tools) to properly test their sites in the first place.

The most common way to defend this cheating is to use semantics to obscure the shortcuts taken. When asked by an enraged business owner “did you test the site before going live?”, the answer is always “of course we did”. The problem is that it’s the wrong question. The right question is “did you test the site by accurately simulating real users performing both normal and unusual tasks, at and above expected volumes?”. For instance, if the goal was to simulate 5,000 concurrent users, a tester may respond that they tested for 5,000 “page views”! This is when language matters, since 5,000 page loads rarely equals the activity of 5,000 real users. In fact, it likely represents only a fraction of the target volume. By simply substituting page views or transactions for accurately simulating the activity of users on the site they almost certainly won’t reach the expected goal set by the business owner.

Another method of cheating the system is to adjust the timings of test scenarios. This practice is widely used by the testing community, primarily due to the cost of hardware and software when using traditional testing tools. For example, if buying a plane ticket online typically takes about 10 minutes, a clever tester may reduce the timing of this process in the test to just 1 minute. This, on the face of it, allows many more “users” into the system, but it doesn’t accurately simulate real world conditions. Finally, many leading edge companies are beginning to realize that the only way to accurately test a site is by including production testing. Testing only in the lab, and then extrapolating the results for the production environment, leaves far too many variables unaccounted for in the complex deployment environment that is the web. Again, cheating the testing system.

Whatever the reason for the cheating (lack of time, people, or resources) we must change this game now to maintain a high level of consumer confidence and continue to expand the growth of online commerce.

Source: www.soasta.com/blog/

Sales and Delivery

2010-10-27T17:24:00.002+01:00

This post has nothing to do with testing. Just blogging my frustration.
Prospect calls company and asks to be connected to the sales team. The conversation is as follows:
Prospect: Hello, Can i speak to Mr.Xyz, VP sales?
VP Sales: Yes speaking, what can i do for you?
Prospect: We are interested in your IV & V services. Can you share your offerings?
VP Sales: We offer everything. Name it and you will have it.
Prospect: We have a testing requirement which is slightly complex but
(VP Sales interrupts)
VP Sales: There is nothing complex to us. We have 18000 man years of experience in testing.
Prospect: Ok, we need 2 resources at onsite for this requirement. The requirement is, we have 2 african lions suffering from digestion issues. We need a 2 testers(1 for each lion) to come open the lion's mouth some time after every meal and test if the food has digested properly.
VP Sales: Hmm..this is little challenging but i am sure we can do it. Hold on for a second. Let me pull in my Delivery Manager
VP Sales: So ABC, you are there right..ok..ABC is our Global Delivery Manager taking care of local operations. ABC, they have a simple requirement to test. I am sure we can do it. Can we talk about the rates?
ABC: What's the requirement?
VP Sales: Test if digestion is happening correctly..That's all
ABC: But how do we..
VP Sales: (Interrupts) You remember a similar case we did in Europe 2 years back..The customer was so happy with our "Blackbox Digestion Testing"
Prospect: Can you give us the reference?
VP Sales: No Problem. Once the contract gets signed, we'll give the reference.
Prospect: And can you get onsite resources? We also need substantial evidence on your capabilities.
VP Sales: Just a second..(Puts the line on mute). ABC, can we have 2 testers go to the nearby zoo tomorrow?
ABC: Yeah but why?
VP Sales: (Releases mute) To give you confidence what we can do is have a video shoot of the digestion process done by our testers which we can share over Webex or GoToMeeting. ABC has agreed to do it tomorrow evening itself. What would be your convenient time?
Prospect: Sounds like a plan. We can do it at 9 PST.
VP Sales: Allright cool, looks like we are all on the same page. Also, please note that the video shoot PoC is free of cost for you. Can we talk about the rates?
Prospect: Our current tester from the vendor side has lost 1 hand since he joined and now we have started paying them 2500$. We can start from 1500$ in your case.
VP Sales: I suggest that you don't pay us until we lose both the hands which in a way would prove the value of our services
Prospect: Excellent. Look forward to seeing the video shoot tomorrow.
VP Sales: I will in fact try my best to send it tonight. Convey my regards to the lions. I am sure they will enjoy our services. In case you have any questions or need more discounts anything, please let me know. Thanks. Oh sorry..forgot to tell you something. If you add more than 4 lions, we give a Project Manager free of cost as value add. Keep that in mind.
Prospect: Sure Ok. Have a great day.

Test Environment-Few questions..

2010-08-16T14:48:00.000+01:00

Since, I couldnt 'comment' the following due to limitation in no.of characters (for blogspot comments) I am posting this as a separate post for Vasu's problem.

I am trying to answer with my experience, there may be huge no of permutations / questions for Vasu's question about Test environment.

IMHO, like any other QA Problems, there is no 'silver bullet' for this kind of questions.

There are (i) Number of questions to be asked to client (ii) Number of factors to be considered for analysis after getting the answers from client

Also, we may need to bang the client with questions repeatedly

Before going to client , QA person need to conside the nature of the project

Factors/Questions to client

(1) How end customer is going to use this application?
(2) What are the following are supported
    2.1.Databases
    2.2.Servers
    2.3.Server Operating Systems
    2.4.Client (Desktop operating systems)
    2.5.Browsers
    2.5.Replica of Databaseses/Webservers for load balancing
    2.6.Router,Firewall (and their required combo of installation, something like having DMZ, webserver inside firewall, outside firewall etc...)
    2.7.So on...............................
above said factors depends upon the project, what I said is in general, based on my experience.
(3) If the application is a project and dependent on heavy database transactions, then
    3.1 Is it possible to cut the production database periodically to QA database?
    3.2 If it is any nightly run, then situations dealing with deadlocks, or issues with integrity

of data across databases/tables?
    3.3 Optimum setup so that loading the QA environment should take minimum time
    3.4 Size of Database
(4)Factors to consider for VMWares,
    4.1.The VMWare should be used for relatively less performance high functional testing
    4.2.High end base systems with large no.of VMWares are needed if and only if the testing team uses all the combinations of OSXBrowsersXServesXDatabase constantly
    4.3.Capacity of base machines are very important since, the performance of VMWares are based on the base system's capacity.
(5)Availability of Softwares including support
    5.1. Since QA deals with all OS/Servers, having a licensed version of each component is important, in one of my projects, we used solaris like OS without proper license, and all of a sudden it went down, without support, it was a night mare of ITservices (& QA)
    5.2. In case of evaluation copy of softwares, need to be informed to client beforehand (i.e it will expire any time and there wont be much support)
    5.3. Information about Patches/Service packs should be made clear (especially non-windows OS,Databases, browsers)
(6)Information about customer usage
    This is very important, but we may rarely get full information. Again without nature of project no body can get clear requirements on test environment.
(7)Prioritise combo
    If I.E 8 X windows XP X Oracle X Weblogic in Linux AS combo is most frequently used combo, then need to have additional space for that combo.
(8)Usage of additional softwares if, any
    e.g Share point,XML editor etc.
(9) Relevance of Test environment w.r.t Test data
    Test data is the fulcrum for test environment, if the test data doesn't suit any of your environment combo, eliminate the environment and declare before hand.
(10) Calculation of optimum usage of combinations, switching on and off the VMWares etc.

(11) How we are going to deploy new build in test environment, in different combo, how difficult it would be (e.g installing websphere in Solaris Risc environment, deploying new build in HP Unix etc) ,

corresponding expertise in QA team / IT services team.

(12) SPOC for test environment from IT services.

(13) Howmuch the QA environment is in sync with dev and production environment (this is very IMPORTANT,depending upon the nature of the project)

(14) Accesability of QA environment by QA team, developers, IT services team from their desktop, from US (client environment) in case of trouble shooting and network setting accordingly.

(15) Security of the environment (like Anti virus softwares,Authentication,Authorisation, internet access from QA environment etc)

(16) Remote Desktop Access Policy, Domain Policy (Test environment is in separate domain? Child domain?, from QA's Dev's Desktop). In case of data transfer from production to QA database, the connection should be possible w.r.t domain policy. Also, admin permission for QA people over machines to install anything they want including automation tools & FTP tools.

(17) A good visio diagram , if needed.

(18) Client Sign off for version 1 of test environment doc :-)

Pheww...................... As you see it, this is very very generalised reply.

Forgot to add, in case of large test environments,

Racks,Switches, no.of monitors Vs VMwares plays a huge role and early planning will avoid nasty word wars!

Test Environment

2010-08-15T02:20:00.002+01:00

I was recently involved in a project where the client asked me, "What kind of Test Environment do you think would be ideal for our application?". Frankly, i was speechless for a few minutes and then responded saying, "It depends on how your customers access the application". I know i was not correct but apparently i was not confident about what the right answer was. He again said, when i mean environment, i want to know what kind of Test environment you need for testing. How many servers do you need, is there a need for staging, how many VM's do you need, what kind of infrastructure(hardware + software) you need to replicate customer issues etc. I was not able to confidently answer him and hence asked for some time to revert.

Being in this league(QA) for a while now, i never had the opportunity to setup test environments or rather i never tried to gain knowledge in setting up test environments. After this experience, i realized how important it is for a Senior QA person to help clients in such cases since they completely rely on our experience to help serve their customers better. Request readers to share your thoughts.

Which Generation am I?

2010-06-08T14:42:00.000+01:00

Recently when I was conversing with my friend's cousin (who is around 20 years old), I was telling that I couldn't use Facebook, instead I like orkut for social networking. I am of the opinion that Orkut's UI is better than Facebook's for connecting with friends. His reply was that I belong to previous (web) generation, though not technically (Web 1.0,Web 2.0) but on usage of web.

I was pretty displeased on hearing it.. but on thinking on it, I started listing what are all the sites I do not use or not explored , the list seems to be growing,

Facebook (albeit I am in, not feeling easy)
Digg.com
Delicious.com
Stumbleupon.com
Diigo.com
reddit.com

list is growing.. all the above mentioned are social networking/ news / book mark sharing sites.. Rarely I use ecommerce sites to buy things..

All I use is Orkut, LinkedIn,blogger,youtube,Google maps ...hmm..and obviously gmail.

I read news @ google news, chat via yahoo msnger.

Am I belong to previous gen?? What about you?

Rajnikanth and Test Coverage

2010-05-28T06:09:00.003+01:00

"I know that my product lacks test coverage and thats why i have hired you as consultant. Can you increase test coverage in 2 weeks?"

"Don't tell me that i should change my automation framework to get better returns. Can you suggest improvements to the existing framework so that we get better coverage asap?"

"Your audit report says there is lack of communication between manual and automation teams. I disagree with you. How does test coverage suffer if they don't communicate. Can you explain?"

These are comments from some of our customers recently and all they are looking for is a pill that will solve their test coverage issues. Their products suffer from lack of test coverage for 2/3/5 years but the moment they outsource, they want the outsourced vendor to help them increase test coverage the next day after the SOW is signed.

I am reminded of Rajnikanth movies where he becomes rich in just one song. I wish i can do something similar for test coverage improvement. Any Rajnikanth's out there in our industry to do this? Please revert ASAP.

I wandered thinking how to test the Cloud

2010-04-30T10:03:00.004+01:00

Does the title line sound like something that you have heard before? Yes, remember the English lessons you took during high school days. Yes, i have slightly modified the line "I wandered lonely as a cloud" from the poem "Daffodils" by William Wordsworth. So, what is this article about? Is it about introducing readers to English poets? No. This article is about "Cloud Computing", around which there is a huge buzz in the software industry today. Analysts predict cloud computing to form the next big wave in technology infrastructure and are also talking about lot of other terms such as SaaS(Software as a Service), PaaS(Platform as a Service) etc in conjunction with Cloud Computing.

Now, let me refrain from discussing about Cloud computing in detail since i am oblivious of the nitty gritties. However, i have limited exposure to SaaS, which i understand as a model in which software will be centrally located somewhere in the internet(cloud) as opposed to storing them in local machines.The basic idea is cut down the expenditure on hardware/software.

To give a simple example, lets say there are 3 star hotels in Chennai and all have their own software/hardware to manage their services. Now, Software as a Service is a model where a vendor comes and offers to manage the hardware/software for all these 3 hotels from his premises and thereby enables the hotels to use the software on a demand basis through virtualization and relieves from all the issues related to managing their own infrastructure. Certainly makes life easy, isn't it?

Now what are the challenges in the cloud world particularly when it comes to testing?

Configuration and Customization

Each of the hotel's software can have a different workflow and hence the vendor needs to make sure that when the user for "Hotel X" logs in, he is able to view only the screens pertaining to him. Customization should also be looked at from an Integration testing viewpoint

Security

The SaaS provider needs to ensure that the data of all his clients are maintained properly. He cannot afford to mess with the data.

Monetization

Since software will be used on a demand basis, the charges will be made as per the usage(something like electricity). So, testing also needs to take care of this aspect.

Performance Testing

Clear cut goals with respect to Response Time, Throughput, Maximum load supported should be identified and the same needs to be tested carefully.

Paper Submission for ASTA

2010-04-20T15:23:00.003+01:00

I am planning to submit a paper in this year's ASTA (Asian Software
Testing Alliance) International Software Conference 2010 which will be held in Vietnam's Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh cities between the 2nd and 5th of November 2010.

There are 3 categories under which papers can be submitted. People, Process and Technology are the 3 categories under which different headers are available to select for paper submission. Under the "People" category, "Testing Skills" is the title on which i intend to submit my paper. As a prelude to the paper submission, the conference expects the participant to send an abstract summarizing the paper content to them.

Under "Testing Skills" i am planning to write about some interesting areas which i have learnt over the years. I will continue to post more information on the abstract, how my paper is shaping up and the obviously about the areas that i plan to cover in the paper under the title "Testing Skills".

Rendezvous with TesterTested

2010-04-08T12:50:00.002+01:00

My company's "Talent Nurturing" team were discussing with me about their plans to hire an external consultant and conduct a 1 or 2 day training session for our Testing DU (Delivery Unit) and during the conversation asked me to suggest some good topics that will benefit the attendees. As someone with the experience of being coerced to attend testing training sessions by my employers in the past, i was not keen to recommend a standard training program where you have the trainer talking about concepts that will never help the tester improve his skills. Some examples are, what’s the difference between Sanity and Smoke testing, contents of test plan, what exit/entry criteria exactly mean, bug life cycle, how to have better communication with the developer, how to know if automation is good for your project and finally asking the attendees to write testcases for Yahoo mail as a exercise. Apart from the trainer (he receives a fat pay cheque for the consulting from the company) no one else really derives benefit from such sessions.

So, i suggested that it would be good if we can introduce our testers to the "Context Driven School of Testing" which specializes in approaches such as Exploratory Testing, Rapid Testing etc. The very fact that the context driven school emphasizes on areas like Lateral Thinking made me recommend it as i thought our testers stand a chance improve their skills to "test" better than what we were currently doing. With the idea being accepted, i was not able to think of anyone else apart from Pradeep Soundararajan, who is leading the context driven testing efforts in India.

I sent a mail to Pradeep explaining the need and he in turn consented. Pradeep also compromised a lot on his pricing since he was keen to share his knowledge and experience with the group to help them become better testers. As expected the session focused on puzzles for testers, lateral thinking etc and also questioned our primary understanding of various testing concepts. For example, we were not able to explain the exact meaning of testing despite the fact that we use the term at least 100 times every day. Pradeep also gave us some exercises to help us improve our testing approach and taught us about better defect reporting methods. He also emphasized on the need to use tools when it comes to testing. No, not automation tools but tools like AllPairs, Perlclip etc which can help the tester expand the coverage of testing and subsequently raise the quality bar.

Overall the session helped us to introspect the way we were doing testing and opened our eyes to newer aspects of testing.

ASTA Testing Conference 2010 Vietnam

2010-03-24T06:48:00.002Z

Please visit http://www.vietnamesetestingboard.org/zbxe/?mid=notice&document_srl=291844&listStyle=&cpage= for more details

Vietnamese Testing Board(VTB) is considered to be the #1 Software Testing Community in Asia with more than 1,00,000 members.

Getting outlook email metadata.

2010-03-08T14:27:00.000Z

I want to get access to an msg file (standalone, outlook message file) and read all of its metadata (like To,cc,bcc, size,from,sent time etc..)

Which language will be useful in achieving this in an easy manner?

In addition, will outlook API can be used? If it is , then any code samples please?

Any help,would be appreciated.

A Myth called Test Automation

2010-02-16T11:21:00.004Z

In the past 6 months, i have seen a lot of prospects asking only for Test Automation from us. Though we clearly say that without manual testing it doesn't make sense for them to move towards automation, they really don't seem to care. As a services company, we also do not stress on the importance of manual testing again and again for the simple fact that we can lose the prospect from being converted into a customer. But personally, i feel bad that we are showing them the wrong direction and also knowing that the automated scripts won't be reused after a period of time, i feel sorry for them since i am aware that they are not going to reap return on their investment. Test Automation is considered to be the "Silver Bullet" by many companies today for all their testing problems.

Product Companies in India...

2010-01-15T03:37:00.000Z

I am working at a software product company. Many of my friends are working in product companies. Though I am in Product Company, originally I am from Service Company.

I am seeing a model difference (as everybody knows) between service and product companies in India. Here in product companies, there is a collaborative development model, or in other words collaborative business model. The American company is not treating as client but as a parent, the American workers are treated as peers.

Definitely there may be many thought patterns would have ridden over it, but my opinion is, this is not good for both Indian as well as American wings. Indian wing should its American counterpart as its client, which not only increase the internal competency but also greatly justifies its existence.

As a company, either we have to bravely innovate things or should satisfy our clients/customers... Most of the core customer relationship activities are done in US, Indian companies start enjoying the 'non-pressure' of customer satisfaction... Even if it is created, it lags direction...

Then when Indians can treat their American counterpart as peers? In simple words, over the years, i.e. if process, knowledge, maturity of Indian wing is optimum, obviously the 'Equality' will emerge. Attrition plays an important role here.... Say if an ODC in Bangalore/Chennai is having contract with an American company for the past 6 years and with minimum attrition, then it’s the time for treating 'them' as your 'peers'

Simple Test Estimation Model

2009-11-08T23:45:00.004Z

Gokul,

Came across this simple test estimation technique when browsing for some other content. The website where i found this claims that they have had reasonable success using it. Now, to the technique:

Test Estimation

================

Testing Days = Dev Days / 3

Testing People = Dev People / 2

Testing Cost = Testing Days * Testing People * Billing per day

Test Effort Estimation

2009-09-07T04:00:00.005+01:00

For a long time, I wonder about the effort estimation on Software testing. Recently I read a piece of information on this,

How do managers estimate the effort needed for software testing? There may be many in house and practical gut-feeling methods, but scientifically, the following methods are used,

- 'Percentage-of-Development' approach
- Implicit Risk-Context approach
- Metrics based approach
- Test work breakdown approach
- Iterative approach

The practical 'gut-feeling' approach may or may not indirectly follow the abovesaid approaches. None of the methods are 'recommended', as the best.

Metrics in Agile

2009-09-04T20:06:00.006+01:00

Since all are turning to agile, definitely software tester have to equate their traditional methods into agile.

In non-agile there are some metrics used in testing

For e.g.,

To find the efficiency of test cases, we can say

[No.of.test cases those can be mapped into defects] / [Total no.of test cases]

is one of the ratios used in traditional software testing.

How to do this in agile process, where test case itself is not important (at least , test case documentation)

Likewise, there are many ratios/metrics which were non-agile period may not be directly applicable in agile era.. looking for the conversion or in simple terms,

"What are the ratios and metrics those can be useful in agile testing?"

BlackBox Vs Agile

2009-08-29T12:21:00.001+01:00

For quite sometime, I am hearing lot of things about Agile development, and in turn agile testing. Lot and lot of things about testing frameworks, unit testing, early testing etc.

All these methods are trying to kill Blackbox testing and the role of black box tester. None of these methodologies, emphasize about the role of Blackbox tester. All these are telling about early testing, extensive unit testing, automating unit testing etc.

But is this true? Will these testings w/o blackbox testing achive result? I do not think so, the primary reasons being, that many 'ities' are missing the above said agile methodologies,
-Usability
-Portability
-Compatibility
etc.
are the 'ities' those are taken care by Blackbox tester which the automated unit testing cannot achieve.

But the agile development and so called agile testing is blown out of it 'deserved' proportion and it tries to occupy the land of Black box testing, which should be defeated by blackbox testers. But alas, I couldnt find proper propoganda of blackbox testers against this agile wave.

Guidelines to follow before filing defects

2009-08-20T09:33:00.003+01:00

I created this for my team but felt it would be useful for others if i make it public

General Guidelines
Be precise
Be clear - explain it so others can reproduce the bug
One bug per report
No bug is too trivial to report - small bugs may hide big bugs
Clearly separate fact from speculation
If a bug already exists in the same area then make yours as an annotation to the existing bug instead of filing a new bug
Search the bug tracking system and ensure that the bug does not exist already
Explain the bug in a quick and understandable summary
Mention the browser, operating system, printer and other relevant details clearly
Take a snapshot of the issue if required and add them to the bug report as attachment. Try to attach a jpeg as the size would be small and can be opened easily
Mention the steps to reproduce, expected result and actual result clearly
Mention the component/module where the error occurred
If you unable to reproduce the bug consistently, please mention the same in the remarks/notes section
Have a word with your peer to just ensure if he is also facing the same issue.
Have the right service packs in place for your browser, operating system etc
If the bug is pertaining to look and feel, usability etc test it on multiple browsers before filing it
Clearly categorize the testing level where the bug was found such as unit/integration/system/acceptance
Mention the type of testing you did to unearth the bug such as smoke/regression/ad hoc etc

Build Guidelines
If the bug is identified in an older build, reproduce your bug using a recent build of the software, to see whether it has already been fixed.
Mention the build release date and build number clearly before filing the bug
Make sure that you are using the right build
Read build release notes carefully before filing a defect since the bug that you have identified could be a known issue.

Enhancement Request and Defects
An enhancement request is a case where the tester feels that the existing feature can be either enhanced with a new functionality or completely replaced with a new functionality to give the end user a better product experience. One example is to replace the option of choosing countries using multiple checkboxes by providing a user with a combo box.
A defect is a case where there the expected behavior of the system is not matching the actual behavior when testing it.

Priority/Severity Guidelines
Severity refers to how bad or critical the bug is from a functional/technical viewpoint. Severity of a bug is defined by the tester
Priority refers to the importance of fixing the bug from a customer viewpoint. Usually this is decided by the development team/manager in discussion with the QA manager/team

When assigning priority/severity for a bug, please follow the guidelines below.
P1 - Fix the bug ASAP
P2 -Bug can be fixed before release
P3 - Bug can be fixed even after release
P4 - The bug is very minor, can be fixed anytime
S1 - Blocker
S2 - Critical
S3 - Major
S4 - Trivial/Minor

Types and Levels of Testing

2009-08-06T05:00:00.004+01:00

I have often found testers getting confused between types and levels of testing. Levels of testing is associated with SDLC whereas types of testing are not. To put it straight, there could be only four levels of testing which are Unit, Integration, Systems and Acceptance. The classic "V" model is a good example for levels of testing.

Types of testing are more detailed and differ based on context. For instance, Smoke, Sanity, Adhoc, Exploratory and other similar types are performed mostly in the functional category based on the application need. For the benefit of everyone, i am sharing my knowledge on the types of testing using the picture above . I request the visitors to correct me in case if i am wrong.

Pairwise Test case Generator

2009-07-22T00:40:00.002+01:00

Many of the testing experiences, especially product testing, testers will come across situation like executing test cases in

3 Browsers (Chrome,FireFox,IE)
2 Databases (Oracle,SQLSERVER)
4 operating systems(Linux,Windows,Solaris)
etc..

So the total no.of.combination is 3 X 2 X 4 = 24 combinations

If we have even 100 test cases, there comes an exhaustive no of 2400 test cases along with these combinations.

In order to avoid this, we use Pairwise testing, by removing the redundancy in the 24 combinations (in above said example).

How to reduce the redundancy is an important but slightly cumbersome knowledge, but www.testersdesk.com provides a free online tool to create an optimum result on pairwise testing.

Refer: http://www.testersdesk.com/pairwse_testersdesk.html

We have to register to use this tool.

Test Coverage - Contd

2009-07-16T16:42:00.001+01:00

Vasu,

Lets assume that in your project, customers are finding more production defects, if you ask me , then i can say

1.I am finding your test strategy is wrong.

2.Whenever production bug is found by user, just analyse whether the bug they found (and you lost) is because of carelessness / negligance of your testers or because of the your nature of testing i.e your test strategy

If first is the case, then we need to make sure it wont happen and we may practice techniques like pair testing (two tester in same test area) or more tight supervision of test execution etc. If second is the case, you have to revisit the strategy.

3. If you keep on getting production bug then you need to get the list of production bug and do the gap analysis with your test cases. It is not simply adding the defect as test cases, but you do the 'gap analysis'. For e.g take X number of defects found in production and see the test cases in that area , the question should be asked is 'Why they havent added as test cases before?'. Finding a pattern between "{Z number of defects found by production users} vs {Y number of (probably ineffective) test cases} will also throw some light.

4.Diversify the testing techniques.This is one of the important area that should be concentrated. Change the testing techniques often during test life cycle.According ot context driven testing school there are four dimensions of testing,
-People oriented (beta testing, UAT etc)
-Risk oriented (Risk based testing)
-Coverage based (like documentation based testing, testing page by page of product documentation, or combination testing etc).
-Activity based (like regression testing, Long sequence testing etc)

There are many techniques in each section. But one of the important technique that i would like to quote is "Map and test all the ways to edit a field". You can change a field value in different ways. Depending upon the context, this technique may prove powerful.You have to test in all the possible ways.

5.Use gray box testing: do the black box testing by applying white box testing techniques like Decision coverage and condition coverage.

6.Clear the old test cases. See what are the existing test cases are obsolete and delete it or make them as non-executable. In this way you can save time & energy which can be used for new powerful attacking test cases.

7. Get powerful test data, it depends upon the project, some project real time data will act as powerful agent.

8.Get the help of end user (subject matter expert / business analyst). Schedule a meeting and go with important questions, like pattern of usage, pattern of real time data, more use cases / user stories etc. based on which we can create more powerful test cases. If it is product, then ask product manager, or marketing person to gain this knowledge on common usage.

9.Get the use of support team, use support team's knowledge on their calls in your testing.

Iteration by iteration, in this way we can reduce the production bugs.

How to increase Test Coverage?

2009-07-14T07:35:00.003+01:00

I have often been asked by my clients to increase application test coverage through testcases and reduce customer defects and i wish i have a magical wand to help them.

In my perspective, increasing test coverage depends on various factors. How knowledgable testers are on the application, how effective they are when it comes to understanding of new requirements and creating testcases for that, do they step into the customer's shoes during test design are some of the key aspects which help in increasing test coverage.

Testcase effectiveness is a metric that talks about how effective a testcase is in finding defects and any testcase that is executed repeatedly over a period of time without identifying defects should be reviewed for its effectiveness. And, to design an effective testcase, the tester's knowledge and his approach of the application from the customer's viewpoint definitely matters.

I have seen products that have more than 10000 testcases for the application but repeatedly after every release customers file many defects which should have been ideally caught by QE(Quality Engineering/Testing team). And needless to mention, all these customer defects are being created as testcases after every release and are added to the test execution bucket for the next release to ensure that the same defects are not repeated and for increased test coverage. This eventually results in a lot of testcases being created but somehow the end goal of "coverage " never gets fulfilled.

So, the question is, how do we bring 80/20 rule here? 20 percent of the testcases should find 80 percent of the defects in the application. Because unless we do that, execution will be a laborious task with no goal and at the end of the day testers will still say "I have not tested this part of the application well and hence could be a risk". So, how can testers provide customers with a quality product by testing as much as possible within the given execution timeframe?

p.s: I am definitely not looking at 100% test coverage.

Excel in Testing

2009-07-11T20:28:00.004+01:00

As excel is the de facto tool of any tester, usage of excel starts from test planning, test case creation, test execution and most importantly test reporting, even if we use other tools like MS -Word, web forms, rich text email, or other customized sophisticated technologies, testers may directly or indirectly use MS-excel in test reporting and thus, knowing excel or excelling in excel is one of the key responsibilities of tester. Usually even commercial tools have the option of exporting the test execution status to spreadsheets.

Test reporting without any functions or conditions: This is just copy paste or data entry operations of entering pass or fail or blocked against tests and filling corresponding bug numbers against failed test cases. Though this method is simple, it is time consuming and definitely is not the smarter way of working.

Test reporting with functions and conditions: In this way, we can write macros for copying the cell data across spreadsheets in a workbook, change cell colour based on test status,

refresh the whole workbook on periodical basis, summarize test results using aggregate functions and if conditions--all using single macro click.

Macro programming starts with simple formula entering in the cells and it goes up to complex function calling using VBA.

Personally I have used formula like,

=COUNTIF (Test_Area_Login! C3:C100,"P")

Here Test_Area_Login is the name of the worksheet (which obviously contains Login related test cases), this formula tells that count the number of 'P' entry between the cells C3 and

C100, so between C3 and C100 (which is 97 test cases, too high for login :-)) if tester passes 40 test cases by entering 'P' and fails 50 testcases by entering 'F' and 7 testcases are

blocked (entered as 'B'), now the above formula gives 40.

In the same way, failed test cases can be found by

=COUNTIF (Test_Area_Login! C3:C100,"F")

Suppose let’s assume some test cases are marked as N/A which stands for Not applicable. So in calculating total number of test cases, we should subtract these test cases, which can be done by

=COUNTA (Test_Area_Login!C$3:C$100)-COUNTIF(Test_Area_Login!C$3:C$100,"NA")

Moving forward, we can access and control the cell values.

Worksheet ("Test_Area_Login").Range ("C1").Value=10 -->Assigns 10 the cell C1

We can change the active cell from one cell to another cell by,

ActiveCell.Offset (1,0)=1 (Places 1 on the next row)

ActiveCell.Offset (0, 1) =2 (Places 2 on the next column)

We can also change the background colour of the cell based on our own condition (if passed, then green, if failed, then magenta etc.)

We can do so by,

If (Worksheet (Test_Area_Login).Range ("C1").Value="P") then

Worksheet (Test_Area_Login).Range ("C1").Interior.ColorIndix=3

The interior property references the colour and style of the shading; it uses an index, rather than real colour. What is the colour of magenta? I don’t know, we can find it , by the following

VBA procedure,

Sub DisplayPallet()

Dim N As Long

For N = 1 To 56

Cells(N, 1).Interior.ColorIndex = N

Next N

End Sub

The options through the macro and VBA are countless, what I have touched here is just a tip of ice berg. Usage of macro and VBA programming will definetely rise the bar in test reporting and make it more sophasticated and smart.

Welcome

2009-07-07T15:10:00.000+01:00

Welcome to our blog, yet another blog in software testing. We know that there are numerous blogs in software testing discussing abounding no. of. Topics.

In this blog, our intention is to share our testing experiences, challenges we met, questions we have (and you have) while continuously getting the input from you.

Well, there are many grey areas in software testing,though explored by many of the industry’s most powerful testers, but still remaining as puzzles.

-Are testers Non-technical persons middle of 'techi developers'?
-Self respect of tester in a development team
-Measuring the capacities of testers in a testing team
-Precise test estimation
-Power testing
-Effective automation
-Using Open source tools and scripting language in software testing
-Evolution of testing and tester in agile period

are some of few...

There are many areas in outer world, which are not (yet) completely explored by software testers,at least you and me, many mathematical subjects (like mathematical modeling, permutations and combinations), Statistics (Sampling and probability) , Logic (Complex truth table) are to name a few..

Still we do not know the precise answer to questions like 'How you missed this bug?','Why automation framework is not robust across builds?','Can we release the product?' etc.

This blog will continuously explore these grey areas, will get questions (as well as answers) from friends to solve our testing problems,ways to improve our testing, ways to make our self powerful testers,attaining international standards (see, v shud be a bit enthu.. :-))

So, START MUSIC...

-Vasu & Gokul