VISTACON Bug Hunting Competition Winner :)

August seems to be the most busiest month for me. Last year, WeekendTesting was born on August 1st and WeekendTesting had its first public session on August 15th, 2009.

This month, I participated in two competitions.

LogiGear's 2010 Bug-Hunting competition

The competition was quite simple and straight forward. 

The tester had to register themselves, test the TestArchitect™ , submit the bug report in a template provided by the organizers. The judging criteria was also mentioned on the website - bug severity and quality of the bug report. I was happy after reading the conference schedule. Take a look at the impressive list of keynotes and track sessions. 

Registration:

As soon as I read the competition guidelines, I registered on July 19th. The reply was instant. I got my login credentials and the URL to the application.I downloaded the TestArchitect™ User Manual (.PDF)and the bug report template(.XLS). I immediately saved the documents in my dropbox so that I can access it from my mobile too.

Preparation:

In the first week of August, I took a hard copy of the User Manual. Everyday on the way to office, I jotted down my test ideas on the printout. August 15th was the deadline for uploading the bug report. August 16th was the deadline for the uTest Bug Battle. As it was a sunday, I got up quite early (9 a.m.) and started working on the TestArchitect™ application. 15 minutes passed and the television screen started flickering, the tubelight went off and I heard a loud sound. Some of the equipments on the electric pole on the street were burnt. I switched off the computer and hoped that someone would quickly repair the equipment.

1 p.m. : Power came but again low voltage prevented me from starting the computer.  :(

Execution: 

Finally after lots of excuses and concentrating on other tasks, it was 9 p.m. [3 hrs to the deadline according to IST]. I wanted to sleep and blame the power cut for not participating. But then, I realized that I would not forgive myself later. An opportunity was present right in front of me and I was hunting for excuses. Finally, I wanted to give it my best shot and leave the rest to the judges.

I started hunting for bugs and then realized that its better to prepare a model first and then hunt for risky bugs.

The complex application was slowly unfolding as individual features, the examples by other participants helped me learn quickly. I was aware of the *risk* that I was not the only one interacting with the application under test[AUT]. I kept all my test pages private [I did not want to share my test ideas in public ;)]

Half an hour into testing, I found an issue - High severity. 

'Unable to use three of the five options given to the user'. Awesome Ajay. I continued and was continuously taking screenshots and saving them in the dropbox. I was praying that there be no more power cuts.

I planned to stop at 10.30 p.m as my previous experience with the Test Crowd and other projects meant that bug-reports also took considerable time.

I started composing the bug report and was focussed on highlighting the important issues. 11.48 p.m and I had reported 13 issues. Yes, 13 seemed to be an unlucky number. I logged one more issue and finally ran the spell check, verified the attachments, severity and read the instructions for bug reports for one last time. 

So, before it struck 12, I had emailed the bug report and took a screenshot of the 'Report successfully uploaded.' message.

I was happy during this bug-hunting experience. Does emotions affect testing? 

Well, that's a different blog post on the way. 

Results:

The results were supposed to be announced on Aug 31st but to my surprise, I received an email on Aug 24th that read: "Congratulations! You are one of the winners of the BUG HUNTING CONTEST 2010"

Super, I won and that meant I can attend VISTACON. I can attend track sessions by Dr.Cem Kaner and other eminent personalities. 

Ho Chi Minh City: I'm coming... :)

And if you are wondering what was the second competition I participated in, a blog post is on the way. 

Stay tuned :)