Software Testing World Cup and our experience!!!

Hope most of you are aware of the awesome software testing competition conducted by Matt Heusser, Maik Nogens and many volunteers across the world. The whole concept of competing for one spot per continent is awesome. You might have participated in contests within your company or a local gathering but can it get bigger than a continent? Software Testing World Cup lets you experience that moment where you compete with close to 250 teams. Yes, 250 and only 1 winner.

Before I begin highlighting our team's experience, I want to thank the lead organizers - Matt Heusser and Maik Nogens and all the volunteer judges, the sponsors and everyone who helped conduct this BIG contest at the highest level. Check out the website for more details: Software Testing World Cup website

The logo is quite good too :)

For the Asia preliminaries, we had started preparing from April. We were a team of four - Pranav, Satish, Sundar and myself. I created a folder on Google Drive and shared it with other teams representing Fiberlink, an IBM company. Two teams were representing us from the America continent. We had few documents, list of test websites, tutorials on the G Drive. We also scheduled for 30 minute testing sessions till 07th June. Due to our busy schedule, we could manage only 6-7 focused sessions. We tested websites, mobile apps and windows applications too.

Meanwhile, we were brushing up our knowledge on different bugs, patterns, quick tests and checklists. We not only practiced the testing sessions but we also practiced writing the final test reports. We did send a sample test report to few judges for feedback and this exercise helped.

On the day of contest - 07th July, we were all set to test and only after an hour of testing, we realized that many other teams were not able to access the SUT and the contest was called off.

We were worried about the future date as one of us had to fly and we were not sure on how we would manage testing across time zones. The date was announced - 25th July and we had the following conflicting events:

- The day after a hectic office trip where I enjoyed a lot and was tired by end of day

- Pranav had to be part of interview drive for developers

- Protest in Bangalore

- Sundar had to pack for his trip that night

We did not have any practice sessions after the contest was postponed. We were monitoring the other continents' contests closely. We planned to assemble at 8.30 am IST. As Pranav was busy with the drive, we asked Rahul to join us. One interesting observation from my experience is that people find it tough to clear traps till someone else clears similar trap. I reached at 8.30 am and logged in to my Agile Test manager account only to find that the password was incorrect. On attempting Forgot password, it asked for Security Answers which I had no clue of. Immediately, I pinged Michael from HP, Maik and Smita asking them to help me with my login.

Michael solved it immediately and I was able to login to discover that it displayed Europe instance instead of Asia. After confirming that it was an issue on their side, I was waiting for the organizers to announce the SUT. Sundar and Rahul joined me in the meeting room and Satish was stuck in traffic because of the protest.

Sundar tried connecting to mIRC on both the laptops but it kept retrying and connection was timed out. Then, Sundar did something brilliant - connected to VPN and tried connecting via US network and we were placed in the chat room immediately :) Many teams from our company backed out as they were not able to connect to mIRC chat.

I use Unroll.me and found it great to start with. The only disadvantage I face with it is few important emails - like the one from STWC announcing the SUT get moved directly to the Unroll folder. We were informed a day before the contest that there will be two websites and one windows application to choose from. I was asking Sundar on which application to choose - Website or Windows application. He replied NBA.com and I asked him why NBA without realizing that the SUT was already announced.

Immediately, we started our task and we listed out our focus areas for the next 30 minutes. Satish was testing from the cab and sharing files over Skype. We had the Skype group chat going where each one would highlight the bug and send the screenshot. My role was to replicate, file the bug and do some testing when the bug flow was manageable. Sundar was focusing on the different tours, I took up the quick tests with different checkers and Rahul was testing on iPad. Satish was testing on Android smartphone.

We found quite a decent number of critical bugs and in no time, there was just 45 minutes left.

We covered most of the areas planned for testing and I started consolidating the report. Sundar was filing the bugs discovered by Satish and Rahul. He was also helping me with the mind map for additional testing scenarios. At 12.31pm, we were done with testing and finalizing the test report. We emailed it to the mentioned email address and quickly received a confirmation from organizers that they received the report.

Key Highlights:

- Previous experience of working under severe time pressure helps.

- Getting our test reports reviewed by the judges pointed us to key areas we had overlooked.

- Practice sessions helped us finalize on a convention within the team.

- Do not panic when you face a trouble - think through and take steps to solve it.

That was one contest well planned and executed :)

Now, waiting for the results.