Windows Installer Logging

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

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

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

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

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?

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

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?