The joy of bug hunting

A short post on what happened yesterday in office:
I and my friend Sanket Gagneja were involved in a paired testing session. We had two mobile devices with us. One of the devices had the app which acted as the oracle and the other had the test app.
I was keen on using the test app as I was new to this app. Sanket was testing this app since few days.
He was the note taker and would answer my questions.

I tapped on an icon, typed "test3" and tapped another icon. There appeared a popup with some text. I was reading in my mind and told to Sanket this line "Your development team has really done a good job" and then THE APP CRASHED.

We both looked at each other for a second and emailed the logs. I tried to replicate the issue and once the popup appeared, the app did NOT crash. I immediately pressed another button.

Sanket took over the device and tried the steps. Then, Sanket did something which made me very happy. He not only repeated the steps but went ahead and told the line "Your development team has really done a good job" and THE APP CRASHED.

He was smart enough to not get diverted and actually remembered the exact sentence and repeated it. It is not about remembering the exact sentence. It is more about being aware of what happened, what's happening and is this what is called as "Situational Awareness"?

PS: The app seemed to crash after 10 seconds of inactivity once the popup appeared and we took 10 secs on average to say that sentence.

Leia Mais…

STeP-In: Done. Next Generation Testing Conference: In Progress

The STeP-IN conference started on 18th June and the closing ceremony was on 21st. I received the Best Speaker award for my hands on tutorial on "Mindmaps: A powerful testing tool to aid testing thought process"

After STeP-IN, its time for World Conference on Next Generation Testing by Unicom.

I am excited to be part of this conference for multiple reasons.

This is the first time, I am conducting a paid workshop on Exploratory Testing. Details about the workshop are here (Click on the Agenda tab). This is a one-day workshop and you can register here. The speaker list is impressive. I have known many of the speakers for quite a few years now.

I take this opportunity to let you know of three reasons why one should attend this conference:

Reason 1: The Experience & Knowledge
If you have never attended any conference till date and you are working in software testing industry, I would say that its too late. You need to experience the conference atmosphere. Better late than never. Get started. Once you attend, you will know about different contexts other than the one at your office. You would also know that you can present in next conference too.

Reason 2: Build your Network
It is good to know that others share your passion or have interests just like your team. The problems faced by your team are already solved by some other teams. You may never know whom your company might hire in next three months or which domain interests you after six months. The bigger your network, higher your chances.

Reason 3: Good Investment
When I started my career in software testing, I paid one-fourth of my salary for a half day workshop. Friends called me crazy but the investment paid off big time. My perspective on software testing changed. And today, I have reached a state where I would conduct a paid workshop. Do not wait for your employer to pay for your learning. Invest in self-learning and reap the benefits soon.

I will be available at Le Méridien from 10th to 12th July. See you there.

Leia Mais…

2 day testing vacation at Hyderabad

I left Bangalore on 1st Feb on a 2-day trip to Hyderabad. The purpose of the visit was to interact with my Hyderabadi tester friends and also take a break. Anurag Raghuvanshi received me at the Kacheguda station. The train was delayed by half an hour. We took the MMTC train to Hi-Tech city.

Anurag & myself discussed about various testing challenges including

• building awareness about testing 
• continuous learning 
• relationship with programmers especially when they are not in the same time zone
• counting bugs

Then we freshened up, had our breakfast and started with a testing session. Anurag wanted us to test Junglee. Last time, we had tested Flipkart. So, we set a charter to test just the Search bar on Junglee.

Junglee Search Bar

The session was restricted to 15 minutes. I created a mindmap and screen recorded my session.

Test Ideas

Then we had a pretty long de-brief. It was a two hour long de-brief where we discussed the following:

• Why did I record the session
• How to use Comparable Products heuristic
• What was the test idea behind using script tag attack
• Special cases discovered in the session
• Persistent XSS Attack
• Http codes
• Difference between SupportDetails.com and .net

We went for lunch - Hot butter rotis and lots of paneer. Later we sat down for another testing session. I was happy with the Wi-fi speed and checked the speed on SpeedTest. It was more than 2Mbps.

He downloaded the application PNotes and I asked him to highlight his test strategy.

Then, we created a map for Project Planning template.

Plan for a new project

After reviewing Anurag's work, I gave him the next task to discover what the files .aff and .dic stood for.

I showed him the power of search terms to gather more information about the files. It was time for a break.

We enjoyed few hot Jalebis, parathas and then headed for Skype Coaching session from 10pm IST.

I had asked folks to create a mindmap and get used to the tool. 

Day 2, we had guests to the room. Sudhamshu, Abhinav and Balaji.

We discussed the Web Testing Heuristics mindmap. We got to know of the following:

• Xenu link checker
• Spoon.net
• Firefox addon - Extended Status bar
• Charles
• Article on Cookies

We stopped and then had Hyderabad Biryani for lunch. Balaji came after Abhinav and Sudhamshu left for the day. We went through my article on New Year Resolutions for a tester.

Balaji highlighted his experiences of RST workshop with James Bach. He tried 1-2 exercises on us and also told why he was so impressed by Rahul Verma's words. We discussed about why reputation and credibility is so important for a software tester.

Then, it was time for Weekend Testing session. The report can be read here.

When I thought that it was leave Hyderabad, I met Bikash who turned out to be a passionate mobile apps tester. We had a good discussion on the tools we use and the challenges we face.

All in all, it was a great two day trip to Hyderabad. My special thanks to Anurag for hosting me.

If you want me to coach you personally or conduct a session in your city, feel free to drop me an email at AJAY184F AT GMAIL DOT COM

Leia Mais…

Flipkart Testing @ Hyderabad - Session Results

At the end of Session 1 & Session 2, we preapred two mindmaps about the product & the testing plan.
The corkboard image is also put up below.
Thanks to Anurag & Raghavendra.

Consider this for testing

What to test

Testing Notes

Leia Mais…

Flipkart Testing @Hyderabad - Session 1

One of the reasons I travel at my own cost to present workshops at other cities is that I get a chance to meet  other software testers. I arrived at Hyderabad on 27th October early morning around 5.30 am IST. The first tester I met in Hyderabad was Raghavendra who received me at the railway station. From there, we went to his room, got ready and left for the venue for the workshop. The experience at the workshop is for a different post. I missed my train and had to stay one more day at Hyderabad. Raghavendra was generous enough to accommodate me in his room for an additional day. His hospitality is definitely commendable - right from food, entertainment facilities, the unlimited energy when asking questions on software testing and so on. Thanks Raghavendra.

Raghavendra wanted me to explain my testing approach from scratch. He wanted to know how I test, what tools I use, what bugs I find and so on. Though we were tired after the workshop, we were awake till 11 pm IST discussing about software testing. The TV was on mute and we don't know when we dozed off. The notebooks were filled with lots of notes.

Plan for Sunday
Next day, as planned we got up early and I invited Anurag - a budding software tester whom I met online in my Skype training class and also at the workshop on Saturday. We planned to test a product for close to four or five hours and present a test report.

We started at 12.06 pm IST and decided to use corkboard.me to share notes.
The application to be tested was 'Flipkart'. We spent the next 45 minutes testing and noting the issues, tests, tips, notes.
Attached are the corkboard images before and after the 45 minute session.

When we started

After Testing Session 1

Leia Mais…

Bug Investigation - Never Give up...till you tried enough

          After many days, I got my office laptop home to verify some bugs assigned to me. Some are disciplined enough to focus on only the bugs first. I belong to the category of people who are inquisitive enough to probe areas closer to the bug, find new bugs and log them. On verification of one such bug, I noticed something strange.

The Bug Appears
There was a popup and there was a browse button to choose a file to upload. I clicked on the Browse button but nothing seemed to happen. I clicked again and the file picker window opened. I was pretty confident that I had clicked on the Browse button the first time too.
Confidence doesn't help you unless you have proof especially in the case of bugs.
And as I have got into the habit of recording ( http://bit.ly/SYpIlG ) my testing sessions, this too was recorded. The next step was to follow the advice given in BBST Bug Advocacy Course (Remember RIMGEA? ) on encountering a bug. I tried to identify the critical condition, recorded a shorter video and  logged the bug.

The next day morning, the programmer pinged me on Skype asking if I could still replicate the issue?
I could not :( 
Immediately, I noticed few differences.

• Firefox browser was updated [The issue I replicated was on a lower version]
• This build was deployed early morning whereas I had logged the issue on a previous build.
• The programmer was testing on a different account. 

The advantage of recording the sessions is that I don't need to remember every detail of the bug. The important, obvious details are recorded and my mind is free to remember some other information.
I replayed the video. The programmer was also watching it. I could not replicate the bug.

It is easy to assume that the different factors has a major effect and close the bug as non-reproducible.

The bug is Nailed
I did not give up. Points from James' blog post were crossing my mind. I observed the video more keenly. Immediately, a thought process started. The video showed 12:27 AM - which means - I tested at home - meaning - a different network - TATA PHOTON data card. Bingo! Is the bug caused by difference in network?

I always carry my data card with me - what if the office network is down - I don't want to depend on one factor alone. I immediately disconnected from the office network and connected the data card to the laptop.

The bug was reproduced. I was happy that a combination of factors helped me replicate the bug.

Proof (Recording), Resources (Data card), Observation (Time & inference about the network speed).
I wanted to share this story - its like the war story where you successfully defeated your enemy.

I would love to hear about your war-stories.
PS: Did you know how I searched for the blog post by James. Refer the image below. I applied something which I learnt in the Power Searching With Google course. What is the use if one doesn't learn and what is the use of learning if its not applied? :)

Power Searching With Google course lesson

Leia Mais…

RTI 2012 - Day 1 - Usability Testing Feedback

Just after the exercise

The different documents highlighted in the map can be found below:
usability-2-letter.pdf
usability-3-script.pdf
usability-4-rollup.pdf
usability-5-index.pdf
usability-6-solutions.pdf

Leia Mais…

RTI 2012 - Day 1 - Usability Testing

The morning session

A great start to the day. Chatted with family, showed them the scenery and then got ready for the Day 1 of Rapid Testing Intensive.

Orange juice - my secret ;) helped a lot.

And then we started on time.
24th July 2012 
9 am PST

The first task output can be found here.
Time for a break! :)

Leia Mais…

Weekend Testing Session Report.

Will it work?
Will it be good?
Will it be enjoyable?

Can we manage?
Will everyone benefit out of it?
Will everyone have fun out of it?
Will it be a learning experience?
Will everyone agree to our motto?
Will there be heated arguments?
Will everyone come on time?

How many bugs will we find?
How long the session it'll be?

How will we coordinate?
Do we need more than one software?


What if we face any distractions?
What if there is a power cut?

Ufff, all these questions were answered once the Bangalore Weekend Testing Session started.
Everyone came on time and wow what a session we had!!!!

Date: 15th August 2009
Session started at 9.30pm IST and ended at 11.30pm IST.

Testing session: 9.30pm to 10.30pm
Discussion Session: 10.30pm to 11.30pm

Every member participated actively and bugs flowed(literally) such that the discussion time was extended from 10.30pm -11.00pm to 10.30pm to 11.30pm IST. :)

I'll not hide the report anymore.
Please find the report shared at Scribd.

Most Important:
We promise to improve our bug reporting skills along with suitable screenshots.

Happy Weekend Testing!!!

Leia Mais…

Trio Testing at a distance - Part 1

Testers involved:
Ajay Balamurugadas, Sharath Byregowda and M V Manoj

Website Tested:
www.tinyurl.com

Mission:
To find bugs.

Start Time:
Aug 09 2009, 0022hrs IST

End Time:
Aug 09 2009, 0145hrs IST

About the website:
TinyURL is a web service that provides short aliases for redirection of long URLs. Kevin Gilbertson, a web developer, launched the service in January 2002 so that he would be able to link directly to newsgroup postings which frequently had long and cumbersome addresses.

Our Testing Session highlights:
The entire session was conducted over Group Chat on Gmail.
We started our search for a software to test around 1145hrs on Aug 08th 2009.
The search continued for an hour with Eyeos, Barcode4J and Piwik grabbing our attention.

Lack of prerequisites for the above softwares forced us to test TinyURL.

Bugs were communicated to the group as and when they were found.
The tests were based on learning from the tests conducted by the other testers.

Sharath's tests focussed on the security issues. Wish we had a proxy network setup. He'd have loved to test on a proxy network.

Manoj's tests focussed on the usability and Custom Alias feature. He highlighted the disadvantages of using Custom alias feature.

I focussed on the general functionality of the website.

It was fun testing coupled with good learning for me.
Though the testing session lasted for over an hour, the lessons gained would be for a long time. Thanks to Sharath and Manoj for their determination and passion at odd hours of Sunday.

Please find the testing report shared at Scribd.

If you would like to participate in such testing on weekends, drop an email to me at :
weekendtesting@gmail.com

Leia Mais…