Q: I am a fresher. I want to improve my testing skills. How will Weekend Testing help me?
A: Welcome to Weekend Testing (WT). I am happy for you for two reasons:
You are aware of WT & WT is one of the good platforms to improve your knowledge.
Let me highlight some of the ways WT can benefit you:
1. An excellent platform to test your skills.
WT has this brilliant idea of coming with a unique mission every session. Though there are chapters in India, Europe, Australia-New Zealand, Americas and European WeekNight Testing as of today, every chapter makes sure that no mission-product combination is repeated. Every session is a totally different experience and what's cool is you are free to participate in any of the sessions - No chapter restrictions.
1. Varied experience
If you have no experience of working in any organization, I cannot think of any other easy way to face such a diverse set of products & missions. Just imagine, after every weekend you would have tested 2-3 products and at least one would interest you to explore more. Last week, I learnt about Rapid Reporter, Text2MindMap and Process Monitor. Worst case, you might learn about 1 tool every weekend. Isn't that cool? Different tools, different experience added to your ammunition list.
1. Excellent repository of experience reports
If you are not satisfied by the sessions and want more, the WT website - www.weekendtesting.com must act as a huge repository of excellent experience reports. We are open for scrutiny. You can go through each report, chat transcript at your own pace and ask us questions. We are ready to help you. You might have an idea which no one of us thought of. We are waiting to hear that idea.
WT is all about Test, Learn and Contribute.
1. Cost Vs Value
We ask for two hours of your time and nothing else. Two hours of pure learning, interactions with other testers, new products, new friends, new test ideas. Think about the value you get for just two hours of investment. Cost Vs Value. WT is aware that you are dedicating your valuable time and hence tries its best to give you a learning platform. Make use of it.
1. Be part of the community
Join us on twitter, create your own blog, add us on Gmail, Skype. Lets talk. So many WT sessions are discussed even after the sessions on different forums, blogs and on twitter. Take part in those discussions. You might learn something new. Build your reputation, demonstrate your testing skills and be part of the testing community. Your next organization's QA lead might be someone whom you paired with in a weekendtesting session!
Looking forward to your participation in weekendtesting sessions.
Wednesday, December 22, 2010
WeekendTesting & its benefits to a fresher
Friday, December 10, 2010
Daily Experiences & Learning
Feels good to be back to my blog - Enjoy Testing
This post is about two experiences I had today - one in the cab on way to office and another in office.
Experience No. 1
Friday morning - I got into the cab, started messaging my friend about the GLAM NIGHT event later in the evening. Then, it was time for cab testing. Both of us like discussing about testing and travel time is the only time we get to talk. So, we started cab testing. 5 minutes of testing and 15 minutes of discussion. Everything happens via sms.
Today's question was:
How will you investigate if for every sms you send, I receive it thrice in my mobile inbox.
Time limit 5 minutes.
As usual, both of us had contrasting approaches.
Discussion was interesting as we got to know new ideas.
Two of my friend's ideas I found quite interesting.
1. Check if the sender is getting multiple delivery reports.
2. Check if the sender is charged for multiple sms or single sms.
I asked why she thought these two ideas were important.
She answered that she will NOT be aware of this issue - sms sent multiple times unless
a. she gets multiple notifications or
b. she gets charged multiple times or
c. she has a look at my (receiver's) mobile.
That moment I was very happy. I never thought about it. How will you know that there is a problem?
How many times management lives with false hope that product is doing well in market just because there is no customer complaint? Are you aware of the mechanisms through which you will be notified of issues?
That was an eye-opener for me.
Can I find out if there is a problem before I think of solving that problem? Error mechanism, Logs?Why am I feeling that it is part of TESTABILITY.
Experience No.2
I am very talkative and love to have most of my friends on my chat list. A new colleague (now a friend) Shreya Prasad joined my team and sits right opposite to me. Yesterday she was joking that we would never need the office intercom to talk to each other. Yes, she is right.
But sometimes chat works on best for short messages and we can use Google Talk in our office. So, I asked her is she uses GTalk. She replied that she would always be in invisible mode. It meant that I can type her a message even if I don't see her online. I sent her a request and she told she has not received the request. I checked in my contacts list. (Invited) was displayed against her name. I went to her cube and browsed for my name - No request. She was right - there was no request visible.
Huh, why does the status matter for a request - I thought. There is no harm in trying and I asked her to go online. She selected 'online' and bang, the request appeared. I repeated my favorite line:
"You never know unless you try"and she completed my sentence with : "That is testing". A smile flashed across my face and I said to myself - She is right.
These two experiences made my day. Any similar experiences to share, please feel free. Leia Mais…
Wednesday, November 10, 2010
Please help. God bless you.
It is time to help.
Please feel free to donate here.
Next, Software Testing Club has come up with a beautiful idea for charity. It needs your ideas/donation/both.
Thanks for your time. God bless you and your loved ones. Leia Mais…
Tuesday, October 5, 2010
Friday, October 1, 2010
I'm blogging at EuroSTAR Blog
For the past one month, I am writing blog posts at the EuroSTAR blog for the competition BlogSTAR.
You can find my posts here.
Here is the list of posts:
VISTACON Updates for the EuroSTAR Blog Readers - Day 3
VISTACON Updates for the EuroSTAR Blog Readers - Day 2
VISTACON Updates for the EuroSTAR Blog Readers - Day 1
Blog posts describing each day of VISTACON 2010.
'One eye on Path, One eye on Goal'
A blog post on how most of the failures is caused by not focusing fully on the task at hand.
'WSSW - When Software Stops Working'
A blog post on how irritating it is when the software stops working when its needed the most.
Counterattack Elves
A personal view on how to protect the test environment.
Scouting and Testing
What can we learn from Scouting?
Emotions and Testing - Emotional Testing?
Are you aware of your emotions when you test?
Enjoy Testing
A brief introduction on how my dreams were fulfilled.
Please feel free to share your views, comments on the EuroSTAR blog. There are many good bloggers out there and interesting blog posts for you readers. Hope to see you there. Leia Mais…
Thursday, August 26, 2010
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.
Thursday, August 19, 2010
Relationships Matter - Tester and Programmer
This post is close to my heart. I dedicate this post to all the programmers I have interacted with. My official testing career is just over four years old. In these four years, I'm very lucky to work on multiple products and interact with many programmers. Initially, I was worried that I never worked on any product for a full release cycle. After few months I realized that this continuous swapping between products meant increased interaction with different sets of programmers.
First product:
The programmer was my friend. Both of us joined the company on the same date. I always got the news about the changes in the build, which feature would be implemented, confidence level of the programming team and many more *secrets* before they were officially announced later. He used to tell me the bugs in others' code and I used to help him by testing his fix before it went into the build. Both were happy with this *adjustment* until the project was scrapped.
Second product:
I was the only tester in this project and there were four programmers. By this time, I knew that programmers are a good source of information. I also realized that they are ready to talk about their work. They too feel proud on doing a good job. My interactions with this team was more informal. We had more Coffee day meetings than formal meetings. I gave them my test suite and highlighted the different scenarios. They taught me ways to analyze log files and answered all my questions about the product.
I worked on many more products and I'm very happy to say that my programmers like to work with me. I'll share some of the tips which might help improve your relationship with programmers:
* Remember that they are human beings first and then programmers. Give respect and take respect.
* Programmers do not code to introduce bugs. If you think programming is easy, exchange your job responsibility for few hours.
* As Michael Bolton and James Bach highlight, our job is not to prove them wrong or make fun of them. Help them understand that you are helping them and not finding faults.
* Give them the information which would help them solve issues easily and quickly. Improve your bug investigation skills.
* Appreciate in public when they fix a very difficult bug, on their good work. People like to be encouraged and appreciated.
* Be patient, listen more, complain less, help more, fight less, talk more, argue less, discuss more, work together towards one mission.
And don't forget: 'Relationships matter' :)
Tuesday, August 17, 2010
Aware of the other side of your application ?
 |
| Logged in from eBuddy |
To be connected to my colleagues and other friends who want to contact me on Google Talk, I enabled eBuddy on my mobile. Even when I was away from computer, I was able to respond to my friends and anyone who pinged me. I like to keep my status message simple such as a ':)' unless there is a particular link to be shared or I need information quickly.
Last evening, my colleague pinged me asking for some information.
I replied to it after two hours. This morning, I pinged him again and asked why he pinged me and did he get the answer to his question.
He replied that he got the message but the status message seems to repeat nearly 8-10 times. Wow, I never knew this. I had seen similar issues when the recipient was on a vacation or was online from mobile. I never paid much attention to this behavior.
Today, when my colleague highlighted this issue and also named the screenshot as 'SPAM', I understood that he was not happy with this behavior. I was totally unaware that my friends got such messages from my account.
I'm Sorry. I thought:
Are we aware of the side-effects of any application?
How many customers complain if they face a problem?
How many times we learn to live with the problem?
How can we train ourselves to see what others might see?
Do we keep silent if the value outweighs the problem?
Finally a thought from Jerry Weinberg's book - "Are your lights on?" struck me:
The trickiest part of certain problems is just recognizing their existence - Jerry WeinbergHave you faced such problems - which you were not aware of unless someone else pointed it out? Leia Mais…
Sunday, August 15, 2010
No test is also a test ! Agree?
One of my colleagues - a tester logged an issue and the issue was assigned to a programmer. The issue was a CRASH and hence quite important. My colleague went on a vacation and the issue had to be verified. My team lead assigned the issue to me.
I was happy on receiving this task as it meant two things:
a. Escape from executing test cases.
b. A new challenge to apply my bug investigation skills.
On going through the details of the issue in the bug tracker, I was surprised. There were multiple comments and the issue had oscillated multiple times between the tester and the programmer. It reminded me of the BBST Bug Advocacy class where Dr.Cem highlighted that we should comment only if necessary as every comment meant an extra email to the concerned people.
The programmer had asked the tester to give additional details, verify on the latest build and so on. How many times have we faced this scenario - the bug report is sent back to the tester in need of additional details.
I asked my team lead if anyone else had worked on the issue. He replied that he was able to reproduce the issue but it was not consistent. I read the latest comment by the programmer - he was unable to reproduce the issue and wanted the tester to try on the latest build. I installed the latest build but on an incorrect operating system. The issue was reported on Windows operating system and I tried on Macintosh. I wanted to be sure that the issue was not reproducible on Macintosh.
First attempt: Unable to reproduce.
Second attempt: Unable to reproduce.
My friend who was sitting next to me teased me: Can't you see that the issue was logged on Windows? Why are you trying on Macintosh? I decided to verify on Windows machine.
When the installation on Windows was in progress, I wanted to try one more time on Macintosh. Once I was on the last step, my mobile rang. I received the phone call and after few seconds, I was surprised to see a crash on Macintosh. Hurray, I was able to reproduce the crash.
I started thinking - What did I do different?
Did I change the order of steps? No
Did I use a different instrument? No
Did I use a different file? No
Did I change the configuration? No
Did I use a different version? No
Then I realized that the one thing different in the third attempt from the previous two attempts was the phone call. I'd look stupid if I said phone call was the cause of the CRASH. In one way, phone call helped me identify the cause.
As I received the phone call and I was at the last step, I stopped moving the mouse and the window was open even though the task was supposedly complete. So, in the first two attempts, I had closed the window as soon as the task was complete. Hence, I missed the CRASH.
In this case as the window was open for more than a minute after the task was completed, I was able to notice the CRASH. When I highlighted this point to the stakeholders, many confirmed that they too had closed the window as soon as the task was completed.
I learnt that time delay between events plays an important role in discovering some issues.
No test is also a test ! Agree?
Friday, August 13, 2010
A valuable lesson - Save your data
I was in my cab after the weekly round of carrom. The only valuable task apart from sleeping in cab was to write a blogpost. I started writing the blogpost on my mobile. I almost finished the blogpost - which took almost forty minutes.
I was writing the last few lines and I received an email on my mobile. Out of sheer carelessness, I pressed the end key and replied to the email. Then I realized that on pressing the end key, all the contents was lost. I wish there was the autosave feature similar to the blogger on web.
How often do we forget what we were doing and press a key or click on some button. How often have we lost crucial screenshots or wasted a lot of time due to our carelessness. When I relate what happened now to testing, I'm reminded of policemen who investigate a crime scene. As the policemen are trained to not touch any objects or bodies with bare hands, are we trained enough not to perform any actions without thinking?
Think before you ink
Do we think before we click?
Are we skilled enough to be aware of our every action during testing? Is this what is known as 'Situational Awareness'
This particular experience will definitely make me think of 'Autosave'.
* Does the application support 'Autosave'
* Frequency of Autosave
* Overwrites existing information
* Other processes are inactive till Autosave is complete or the user can perform other actions
* File saved before; unsaved file
Its quite interesting that one carelessness led to a blogpost. Before I exit the browser or battery goes down, let me publish this blogpost :)
Wednesday, August 11, 2010
No testcases for the scenario. What do I do?
One of my seniors is a big fan of Silk, Selenium, Loadrunner, TestComplete and any other commercial tool available in the market. He is very good at automating few tests depending on the product. My team lead had no tasks for me. So, he asked me to learn Selenium from the senior. My senior demonstrated some basic commands of Selenium and asked me to play for few hours. Now the next question was: 'Which application to use?'
There were two choices presented to me:
a. An application yet to be released to the market and still being tested.
b. An application released to the market after being tested by the team reporting to the senior.
I chose the second application. My senior told me that I'd not find any bugs as it was tested by his team. I took this as a challenge and explored the application.
In twenty five minutes, I found two inconsistencies. The severity of the issues was high too. With a big smile on my face, I called my senior and showed him the two issues. He immediately called the tester who tested the feature.
On being asked how the issues were not found, the answer given by the tester shocked me. His answer was: 'We do not have test cases for those scenarios'
Few strange lessons I learnt:
1. Some testers fail to test beyond the testcases. Should I call that testing?
2. Testcases give a false sense of security to some management.
3. Forcing a tester to learn any automation tool might not be a good idea in the long run.
4. A new pair of eyes - A new test idea - might lead to discovery of a new issue.
5. Its not a good idea to criticize or interrogate your team member in public.
6. I took it as a challenge to find bugs. Did the challenge attitude help me find those issues or the challenge had no effect?
What would be your answers to the question:
'Why did you miss those issues?'
Did I tell you that the tester added the two test ideas as testcases later?
Monday, August 9, 2010
Interesting Virus and funny bug investigation
Cool, the last post was not that bad when compared to a blogpost from web. In terms of the format, the last paragraph had 2-3 additional line breaks. Hopefully, I'll not repeat the same mistake in this blogpost.
Today I reached office few minutes late. Two of my team members had already started working on the build released on friday. I heard one of the two team members talk about Virus with the systems guy.
Incident No.1
I heard one of the two team members talk about VIRUS. I thought she was talking about the VIRUS character from the '3 Idiots' movie. On seeing the systems guy, I understood that its the VIRUS - the one we worry about. The network cables were disconnected and the systems guy was busy checking the security updates, patches and other vital information.
Hmmm, just when I thought 'one resource down' for the day, the systems guy was laughing loudly and my colleague was smiling. I was wondering what happened and what was so funny? The systems guy left and I went to my colleague to know more about the incident.
# My colleague had called the systems guy. Her exact words were: 'A pop up says that there are 7 virus detected and the xxxxxx antivirus has not detected the virus. Please come fast. I've disconnected the cables.'
# How could this happen? Why did the antivirus not detect the virus? How did the virus breach the antivirus barrier? How risky was this virus? How many files and computers were affected?
# Simple reason was: It was NOT a VIRUS. It was one of those funny ads on the website which tries to distract the user and install some junk toolbar on the browser.
No wonder the systems guy was laughing so loudly.
Learning:
1. My colleague was so focussed on the application under test that she failed to look at the bigger picture. Is this an example of 'Inattentional Blindness' or 'Lack of DeFocus principle' ?
2. She could have investigated a bit more before calling the systems guy.
3. She could have called for help within the team.
Incident No.2:
Colleague next to me had to reproduce a customer issue to the programming team.
What is the scenario? Let me describe it. Our software is used to print a photo and a footer with details of the photo. Around 4-6 lines were printed as the footer. The first line was for the title of the photo.
What is the issue:
The first line of the footer was not printed completely in Japanese language. The programmer was not able to reproduce the issue and the customer had attached a screenshot of the problem as a pdf file. The pdf file clearly highlighted how the first line of the footer was not printed completely.
My colleague's approach:
As he was not familiar with Japanese language, he wanted to reproduce the issue in English. He printed the pdf and found that the first line of the footer was not printed completely. An email was sent to the programmer that the issue was reproducible.
Five minutes later, the programmer was in my colleague's cubicle and what came out of the small discussion was a bit funny.
My colleague had printed the pdf without the footer setting. As the pdf had the screenshot of the issue, my colleague thought that the footer was not printed correctly. :)
Learning:
1. Carelessness or Lack of focus?
2. Pressure to reproduce an issue
3. Importance of bug investigation skills.
Two incidents in one day... Lets see in next blogpost if there are any other interesting experiences.
Mobile Blogger :)
My new mobile:
I like to use my mobile more as a computer than a mobile. I always wanted to buy a mobile which would help me check emails, browse sites, watch videos, tweet, skype, chat and be connected to the online world. Having an unlimited internet connection on my mobile definitely helps. So, after losing my last mobile, I bought myself a Nokia E63.
Everyday learning:
So, with a new tool and loads of excitement, I started learning about the various features. I made quite a few mistakes, few factory resets, lots of installations and configurations. I started with installing Skype, Snaptu, ebuddy, Screensnap (an application to capture screenshot on mobile),,, the list just goes on.
Surprise Application:
Today when I was accessing a website, I observed an ad which read: Download OperaMini 4.1 (Customized for Vodafone services). I downloaded and on installation, I observed an icon which looked familiar - 'Blogger'.
And this is the first blogpost from my mobile. I hope to blog more frequently from my mobile. Meet you soon with yet another blogpost describing my experience.
Wednesday, July 28, 2010
Are you the BlogSTAR
I want to make this blog post simple and direct.
Here is the opportunity. Grab it.
"The winning blogger (known affectionately as BlogSTAR) will get an ALL EXPENSES paid trip to EuroSTAR 2010. Flights, luxury airport transfer, accommodation for 4 nights, ticket to the gala awards party and €500 for meals and champagne, as well as exclusive access to the EuroSTAR blog for the conference week, and celebrity access for the year ahead."
I'm also participating. Leia Mais…
Tuesday, July 6, 2010
Answer to a Testing Challenge
My answer to the challenge by Michael Alexander
Update: I beat my own score ;)
Leia Mais…
Wednesday, June 30, 2010
BBST Foundations and BBST Bug Advocacy
Last November, I completed the four week course of BBST Foundations. The course focussed on the different terminology, bug, mission, oracle, heuristic, different types of testing and so on. It was definitely a hectic four week - each week taking as much as 35-45 hours. Remember, this is after the office hours and even more hectic to someone not used to online lecture assisted courses.
The course was interesting: there used to be few exercises, assignments, videos by Dr. Cem Kaner, quizzes and peer reviews. I liked the group assignments the most. Our group had a member each from Dubai, India and London. The different timezones made the assignments even more challenging and interesting.
After few weeks, I received an email confirming that I had successfully completed the course. I was happy on receiving the email. So, the next step was to take up the BBST Bug Advocacy Course. This course was supposed to be tougher than the Foundations.
I had two slots for this course. March and May. I registered for the May 23rd batch.
The course duration was May 23rd - June 21st.
How was the course?
- Investigate an issue
- Write a bug report
- Be persuasive in your bug-reporting
- Increase your credibility
Sunday, May 30, 2010
Grab it or keep waiting
I feel, I'm not good at writing a blog post, which leads to me not practicing it, which of course leads to me not being good at it.
If its meant to be, its up to me!!!
Image Credits: http://www.pravsworld.com/
Sunday, May 2, 2010
WTANZ02 - An interesting session :)
"Exploratory testing of how easy it is to get data in different formats about education in the United States and the United Kingdom from data.gov and data.gov.uk."How easy was it to get data in different formats?
"Exploratory testing of the two websites"I set myself a mission: "How easy it is to find information from the webpage: http://www.data.gov/catalog/raw/category/4/agency/0/filter//type//sort//page/1/count/25"
Monday, April 26, 2010
Oh Variable Name!!!
Monday, April 12, 2010
Bugs - Stop following me!!!
Some not so good news: My mobile phone was stolen!!!
Tuesday, March 2, 2010
Learn Daily - Learn Without Any Restrictions - March 1st, 2010
I love to set myself new tasks, challenges, tests.
Saturday, February 13, 2010
I know you'd have a test case for this !!!
Here is a question answer session for my blog readers.
Friday, January 1, 2010
2009 - #The Year That Was
As we welcome 2010, I take few minutes to reflect on how I spent 2009.