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.

Leia Mais…

I know you'd have a test case for this !!!

Here is a question answer session for my blog readers.

Context:

The image at the right was taken at a ticket counter at Bangalore City Railway Station. Passengers wait for their turn to buy tickets. The officer inside the room asked questions like "Which station, Which train, Number of passengers?"

Once the passenger gave the details, ticket was given after collecting the fare.

There was a display put up to help the customer with details of the ticket.

Now, with the message : "There are unused icons in your desktop" overlapping the fare details/breakdown, some of the questions arise:

* Is it a bug? How risky is it to ignore such messages?

* Is the purpose of the display served?

* If the overlapping of the message on the display is a bug, will you fix it?

* What if it is not fixed?

* Which tester will think of these kinds of tests?

* Do you wear the hat of a non-tester and say: Hmmm, there is a workaround. I'll not fix it.

* I do not know how to fix it.

* It might be a bug but it is a limitation of the technology. [Cannot fix]

Finally one question:

"IS THERE A PROBLEM HERE?"

(Thanks to Ben Simo)

Please feel free to question, think, comment, argue and discuss :)

Leia Mais…

One Mission - Many Approaches: BWT 9 Experience Report

Date: 26th September 2009
Time 3pm - 5pm IST
Product Tested: SplashUp

Mission: To find Functional bugs in the Splashup application

Last week, we had tested the same application with testers choosing different quality criteria.
This week, we had to test the same application with one quality criteria - "Functionality" as the base.

Testers: Ajay Balamurugadas, Amit Kulkarni, Dhanasekar Subramaniam, Gunjan Sethi, Karan Indra, Parimala Shankaraiah, Poulami Ghosh, Rajesh Iyer and Suja C S.

This was the first session where I was not moderating and only testing the product.
I was happy that I could dedicate more time for testing.

We tested from 3pm to 4pm and started the discussion session at 4pm sharp.

Poulami started off the discussion. This being her first experience with BWT, used Exploratory Testing Approach to guide her. She wanted to get a feel of the product before she could concentrate on issues in the application.

She found the "Layers" feature interesting enough to continue her focused testing on the Layers and Filters feature.Happy with her first BWT experience, she promised to attend more sessions before passing any feedback to the team.

Poulami found the application very user-friendly and found the Auto-Crop feature not working.

Rajesh was next to describe his experiences. He was interested more in the Sign Up feature of the product. Having created an email address with username of 132 characters length, he was unable to login. Though the email was created successfully, an error message greeted him on Login.

Me and Rajesh had a discussion about an error message popping on the screen if Webcam was not connected. We were not sure if Flash generated the error or the SplashUp application generated this error. While I felt that the error was application specific, Rajesh was of the opinion that it was similar to Flash Generic messages.

I was happy that Rajesh enjoyed testing the application. He also felt that this was a good application to test.

Once Rajesh was done with his description, Amit took over. Amit was frustrated with the application being non user friendly. Absence of help files and lack of support to other image formats posed a serious question regarding the scope of the application.

One of the highlights of Amit's description was the bug he discovered. Moving the error message out of visible window area made it disappear.
He felt that such bugs were common in similar applications and make him wonder if the application is really tested before releasing.

Someone had to cool Amit's frustration on the product and Dhanasekar took centre stage. Like Poulami, he too was a first timer to BWT. He had no experience of testing any imaging software and hence concentrated on the different file types for the application.

One of the bugs found by Dhanasekar was the "Improper handling of unsupported file formats".

This made me wonder how different people look at the same application in different ways and How thought process of each individual under the same circumstances varied.

The only concern he expressed was the lack of prior knowledge of the product being tested. BWT's purpose of letting testers to test with less information about the product would be defeated. The thrill of testing an application when one does not know anything about the application is different from testing a known application is different.

There is less chance of getting biased if one does not know much information about an application. Amit also was of the opinion that exploring a product without much information is good as testers get to learn a lot of new things.

What followed next interested me. Suja's description of her testing approach. After the initial "Get to know the product" session, Suja divided her tests into "Happy Testing" and "Negative Cases".

I feel this is a very narrow way of modelling the application. It was good to see other testers actively participating in the discussion. Even Suja wanted the application to have more documentation to help the user. The experience with BWT was good and she was happy.

Gunjan was next and her previous experience in testing imaging software helped her. using an Exploratory approach, she went on different tours of the product. She found some bugs with the Zoom and Filters feature. Her logical approach to testing the application was a different experience when compared to the last BWT session she attended.

Her only concern was that it took some time to know some features.

Next was my turn. Only testing and no moderating was in itself a different experience for me. This application had lots of bugs and if one is Bug-hungry, I'd recommend this application.

One of the strange bugs I discovered was to make the Menu bar disappear.I also learnt a lot of different bugs.

The purpose of BWT is achieved if a tester goes back with some learning. :)

Amit asked a very important question:
How many of you tried using the application only with their keyboard?
I replied in the negative as if it failed, that would be an usability issue and the mission was to find functionality issues.

Karan's summary was rocking. He had typed everything in a notepad and just pasted everything at once on his turn.
Following an Exploratory approach to some extent, he felt the application was not user friendly. He was confident that with time, this application could be developed into a full-fledged application.

Parimala - the moderator for the session was the last one to present.
Lack of dedicated time for testing was her main concern.
A new software for her, being a curious tester, she explored and learnt most of it quickly. She tested the Tools section of the application till time permitted.

Overall the session was good coupled with strange bugs an discussions about them.
The only concern was: It was fast and discussions were not full-fledged.

We will improve on this next time.
Thanks to all the testers, I learnt some new bugs.
Interested to join us in next session? Email to weekendtesting@gmail.com

See you all in BWT 10.
Till then, ENJOY TESTING :)

Update: Please find the Test Report shared at Scribd.

Leia Mais…

Online or Offline??? Gmail or Gtalk doesn't matter

This is a strange behavior I observed while I was chatting online with my friend.

Application Used: Gtalk and Gmail chat

Reproducibility: 100%

Machine specific: No

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I expect people chatting with me to reply within 5-10 seconds after I send them a message.

I also promise to reply instantly unless I'm not infront of my monitor.

It so happened that I sent my friend a message and I did not get any reply for a minute.

I got irritated by him not responding and I started banging the keys on my keyboard.

Infact I banged only one key - the DOT '.'

I pressed the '.' (DOT without quotes) and pressed enter key.

This continued for 15-20 times continuously.

Then these messages were displayed on Gmail chat window(pop up) and Gtalk application respectively.

As you can see on both the screenshots, the user is still Online indicated by the Green dot against the name.

And the message reads: "The user did not receive your chat" or "The user's email is offline and can't receive messages right now"

I liked this bug... Use of emotions helped me find this bug.

I don't really care if this is fixed or not but the behavior definitely brought a smile on my face.

:)

Leia Mais…

Simple Things Do Matter :)

I had to check a fix provided by a programmer to solve an issue.

I had to replace two files- One an .exe and the other .ini file.

Once I replaced the files, changed the contents of the files to suit my test and went through the steps to reproduce the issue, the issue was still reproducible.

So, I sent an email to the programmer that the issue is not resolved and the fix does not solve the issue. He wanted to have a look at my machine and try the scenario once.

Before handing over the control to the programmer, I copied the two files which were part of the test. This way I can compare the files after the programmer has completed his test.

The programmer was in Germany and was accessing the machine. I could not see what actions he was carrying out on the machine.

After ten minutes, I got a reply to that email that the issue is solved. Please re-test to confirm.

I was surprised and then along with my manager wanted to carry out the test. Before conducting the test, I wanted to compare the current file(after programmer conducted the test) and the file used by me to conduct the initial test.

And surprisingly, the contents were slightly different.

The initial file had 'Timer: 5:00:00 PM' and the new file had 'Time: 5:00:00 PM'.

Also, the programmer asked me to include an additional step so that the issue is resolved.

The additional step was to exit the service and run the .exe so that it may re-read the contents of the modified .ini file. I had not run the .exe after modifying the .ini file.

I replied back to him that the contents were changed and also the additional step was missed. These were the two reasons why I was able to reproduce the issue and he wasn't.

Learnings:

1. It is always safe to have a backup of files before and after conducting the test. Again it depends on what value this step adds to the overall mission. In my case, If I had not compared with the original file, there was very little chance that this issue would have been fixed before the customer found it.

2. Programmers have a natural tendency to fix issues on the fly. It is by nature that they fix issues and they do not consider it important to inform the tester about the changes. In my case, it turned out to be 100% true. The programmer never informed me about the change of text to 'Time' from 'Timer'.

3. I must have paid a bit more attention and come to the conclusion that the .exe must have been run to re-read from the .ini file. This taught me to relate the interaction between files & application to the tests I conduct using those files.

Simple things like having a backup of important files helped me find an important issue before it knocked the customer's door :)

Leia Mais…

Interesting defect

This is about a defect I found in my application this morning.

The application was not tested for a month due to some requirements change. I was shifted to test some other products and finally I got my application back.
There were supposed to be lot of changes introduced as per client request.

My application has a login window as soon as it is launched.The login window has fields username & password and OK & Cancel buttons.Username: guest, password: guest

So, the first test is as follows:Enter guest in the username field and guadt in the password field.Click OK.Observed Behavior:A window with the message 'Incorrect username/password.' popped up.This window too had a OK button.
I clicked on OK and clicked again on OK button in the Login window.

As stated in www.satisfice.com/rst.pdf slides 108 and 109, I wanted to test 'Error Handling'.I kept on pressing 'Enter' key in the keyboard.

This happened for more than 20 times and I was reminded of M.Bolton's statement in one of the post : 'Do the right thing after you have tried the incorrect thing' (Not the same words)

So, I thought of entering the correct credentials as I had tried enough of incorrect credentials and the application is not allowing me to enter.

I entered 'guest' in both the username and password fields.

Bingo!!!

The same window : 'Incorrect username/password' popped up.

I deleted the password and entered the password 'guest' again carefully and slowly.
Again the same message.I found something interesting here.

I went to the developer and asked whether they had changed the password and they replied 'NO'.

I closed the instance and opened a new instance.Entered 'guest' in both the fields and the application opened without any problem.
So, I realized that entering incorrect credentials and then entering correct credentials might reproduce this defect.

I tried entering incorrect credentials 10 times and the correct credentials at the 11th time. Application worked.
15 times, it worked.
20 times, it did not work, message popped up.
19 times, it worked.
21 times, it did not work, message popped up.

So, finally I logged a defect that 'After 20 incorrect logins, login with correct credentials also fails.'

Test Ideas that helped me find this defect:
Error Handling technique.
M.Bolton's statement.
Ben Simo's 'Failure' mnemonic

Have you ever come across such a defect?
Have you come across defects more interesting and wierd than this?

Please share the test ideas too as it may help others.

Scripted Testers:Would this defect be found by the execution of test case?

Feel free to question, discuss and comment.
Regards,
Ajay
www.enjoytesting.blogspot.com
ajay184f@yahoo.com

Leia Mais…