Life moves on. Thank you, Fiberlink (IBM)

I wasn't challenged at my job as I had spent just over 5 years at my first job at EFI. Most of them who had joined with me had quit. I had groomed my skills at EFI - thanks to the 9-6 office timing. I would reach home by 7pm and practice. I used to practice at 99tests, participate in Twitter conversations, read books and blogs. One fine day, I got a call from 99tests Founder - Praveen Singh that MaaS360 wanted to give a project to 99tests for 6 months. Before that, they wanted to have a pilot for a month with 1 tester. I was the chosen one. I tested the product. I also got my first Android smartphone for that (which I still have in perfect working condition).

After 2-3 weeks of testing, the QA director at MaaS360 called me for a chat. I kept on refusing. But after persistent calls and emails (6 to 7 times), I finally went to the office for a chat. They liked the reports and I liked the complexity of the product. I was offered on the spot and in the name of chat, I was interviewed :) I resigned from EFI the next day and after serving the notice period, I joined MaaS360 (Fiberlink) on Jan 30, 2012.

My first blogpost after joining the company is here: http://enjoytesting.blogspot.in/2012/02/new-job-best-is-yet-to-come.html

There are many things I got to learn - both professionally and personally. I would like to highlight some of them below:

After close to four years of working at Fiberlink and IBM (IBM acquired Fiberlink), I wanted to try my hand at freelancing. I wanted to get out of corporate culture, the performance appraisals, the fixed timings and working on the same projects. I did not have any problem continuing what I did for my last four years but the urge to engage more with the testing community is strong. 

I want to spend more time focusing on individual testers, sharing what I know, helping small teams achieve greatness. It is time to move on. Thanks Fiberlink, IBM for the learning and the happy memories. Till the next blog post, be fearless and follow your heart :)

Leia Mais…

Less time? Map the bugs.

Last night when I came back from office, I saw the email from www.99tests.com about a one day contest on Android mobile. I joined the contest and observed that the max limit of bugs per tester was 15 instead of 25 (for 3 day contests). For every duplicate bug one logs, there is a -1 point. So, one has to be careful before logging bugs. And when I joined the contest, there were already 50+ bugs logged. I like to spend the initial few minutes of any contest, trying to understand the purpose of the application, the focus areas by the other testers and the validation strategy by the contest owner.

I wanted to go through every bug logged and at the same time understand the application quickly. I started with few bugs and then an idea struck me. Why not map the bugs and categorize the features too as parent nodes?

This is what I got after 25 mins:

Mindmap of Bugs

This way, I went through every bug and still made a high level model of the entire application.

I liked it and after three hours of testing, I got the 7th position with 100% valid bugs. I logged 6 bugs.

Maybe, there is a better approach but I liked the approach of mapping out the bugs before testing. What do you think? Do you have a better way?

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Release of my ebook: "What If... : 50+ tips to win testing contests"

October 16th, I released my first ebook titled - 'What If...'. It is a collection of tips on software testing. Thanks to everyone for your wishes, more than fifty copies were sold.

This sunday - Nov 20th, I am releasing my second ebook titled -

"What If... : 50+ tips to win testing contests"

Contents page

What is this book about?
This book is a collection of tips which might help any tester competing in a testing contest. Testers are under tremendous time pressure and the competition is tough. Skilled testers have a better chance of winning the contests. After participating in a number of testing contests, I realized that it is easy to win any contest if you dedicate some time and demonstrate the right skills. In this book, I have tried to highlight few points which will improve your chances of winning the testing contest.

As seen in the image above, initial chapters focus on test environment, test planning. Then the focus shifts to bugs - finding important bugs, bug reporting and finally learning from the testing contests.

Just like my first book - "What If...", the tips are short and to the point. Focus is on ready-to-use tips. Hope you enjoy reading the book and win many more contests.

Download from bit.ly/booksaj

Special Thanks to
Praveen Singh - Director of www.99tests.com for founding 99tests. It is an excellent platform to participate in testing contests and learn from other testers. I learn from every contest at 99tests.

Friends who helped me review the book:
It is a tough task to review any book. Alek, Bernice and Elena helped me by reviewing the entire book. Thanks to them, I am able to release the book on time.

Hope this book helps you win at 99tests and many other testing contests.

Leia Mais…

Are you a 99tests tester?

After a routine day at office, I am in my cab to home. Relaxing at the last seat, chewing Center Fresh and listening to songs, I am lost in my thoughts... What makes me confident to take up any testing tasks without any fear? I am about to complete five official years of software testing and looking back, I need to credit my success to many people and many tasks I did again and again.

The long post is reserved for the fifth anniversary. Today I want to highlight how a single community has helped me grow and is helping many testers to grow. Few months ago, when I googled for 'Beta Testers', I hit the site www.99tests.com I registered as a tester and as the site was in Beta stage, there was nothing in store for a 'hungry-to-test' tester like me...

Few months passed, I had even forgot that I had registered for the site when I received the email about a new testing competition. Immediately I joined and found many colleagues from the testing community already in the hunt for the top tester for the competition. Healthy competition and true test of testing skills were on display. The best part about these competitions is the short duration. They are spread over few days (3-5 days) and lots of value to be gained compared to the few hours spent. One gets to know the thought process of many testers, learn different test ideas and earn some money too. I regularly participated in most of the 99tests competitions and had healthy contests with my co-testers.

What have I gained from 99tests?


Time management: Few contests taught me how to prioritize my testing tasks. Though the deadline was two days away, due to the high number of bugs, the competition would end 24 hrs in advance. Such experiences helped me learn the importance of time management and prioritizing the testing tasks.

Test Ideas: There were few competitions where I learnt a totally new test idea which I was unaware of before the competition. The new test idea got added to my list of test ideas.

Customer's Expectations: Though few bugs seemed very obvious, the customer would mark them as invalid. This happened to most of the testers in the competition. I learnt about what bugs actually mattered from the customer's point of view.

Healthy competition: Few competitions were so close that I felt I was playing international cricket. There was a healthy competition to be one among the top three testers.

Test of testing skills: After participating in 5-6 competitions, I tried testing my skills. I joined the competition late on purpose and tried if I could still win it. Sometimes I could and sometimes, the lead was too big to make a entry to the top three.

Variety of products: I must have participated in 7-10 competitions and that means 7 varied products. It is an amazing experience to learn the product, log bugs as per the customer's expectations and win the competition. You need to experience it to understand the feeling.

And I gained some money too...

I am proud to admit that 99tests has played a big role in my learning curve and continues to do so.

I am a 99tests tester. Are you one? 

Better late than never: join www.99tests.com and enjoy testing :)

Leia Mais…