Focus on the process, not just the outcomes

We live and die by our habits.

When everything goes for a toss, we humans go back to muscle memory and what we have been doing for years. Thinking about testing, I wanted to see what those habits could be to be a sharp tester.

I tried to list out my habits and open up a discussion about your habits:

Organized Work Desk and Bag
I can close my eyes and find out my things. I know that the bottle is to my right. The charger is to the left. The book and pen are at the top right and the phone is at the bottom left. When they go into a bag, the earphones go to the first section, laptop and charger to the last section. Books, pen, mobile charger to the middle section. This helps me avoid searching for things in multiple places. The habit to note is that after using, I consciously put back the things in the same place.

Remembering and Using Shortcuts
As and when I use any application and especially if it is something that I would use often, then I note the shortcut for that feature. I immediately try out the shortcut - one to validate and two to get my muscles used to it. 
Ex: I use Mac and to format text I copied from any app, I first paste it in Spotlight and then paste to the destination app.
The order of shortcuts are
Command + C = Copy
Command + Space = Open Spotlight
Command + V = Paste
Command + A = Select All 
Command + C = Copy
Esc = To clear the text
Esc = To close Spotlight

All of these happen so quickly that you wouldn't even realise that I pressed so many keys. You might wonder how many seconds I would save by such actions. Multiply by so many applications and the number of times I would use those apps. 

Collecting Fieldstones
Any fieldstone (anything you feel is interesting and can be of help later) is collected and organised for later use. There are multiple groups in WhatsApp created for this purpose. On Twitter - they are bookmarked and they are also revisited, thanks to Bookmark of the day chrome extension. Link: https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/bookmarkoftheday/jldlnlkjghmljkcbdebeebbafjgdmllc

Routine websites
You want to visit certain websites daily to get information? Make a list and visit them - batch them. For me the list is Twitter, LinkedIn, Espncricinfo, Discord and Telegram. I do try to play the guess the number game daily on TTT discord.

Online Timer
I like the simple timer here: https://www.google.com/search?q=online+timer I have been using it to write blogs, articles and the timeboxed pressure is helping me get things done.

Laptop Stand
A very recent and late investment has been the laptop stand to ensure the display is at eye level
Link: https://www.amazon.in/gp/product/B08R78CSZ5

Modeling any application
The first task is to keep the book and pen handy for any quick notes. I model any application by trying to use it in a systematic manner. Sometimes, the output is a feature map, sometimes it is an excel sheet or just notes in a notebook. What matters is the thought process and not necessarily the end result. Later, I polish the deliverable in a way that it is presentable.

Test Data
Most of the times, the fieldstones come handy here or the groups of testers who help me. Either a tool is used to generate the data or the risk is highlighted. One of the other activities that is associated with test data generation is understanding of the domain. For example, Blood Pressure of a human can have numbers field but it doesn't mean that it can take any number of digits as an input. It also doesn't mean that I will not try entering large digits. Knowing what is acceptable, within limits and what is not is an important skill in testing software.

Using Resources
Why put in extra effort when you can also take help of existing resources.
Are you aware of 
Heuristic Test Strategy Model: https://www.satisfice.com/download/heuristic-test-strategy-model
Context Free Questions: https://www.developsense.com/blog/2010/11/context-free-questions-for-testing/
77 Test Idea Triggers: https://www.thetesteye.com/presentations/REdgren_77TestIdeaTriggers.pdf
Ultimate Productivity Tool: https://leanpub.com/productivitytoolkit
Test Heuristics Cheat Sheet: https://testobsessed.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/04/testheuristicscheatsheetv1.pdf

Connect with the team members
Your connect with the team members should never be just for asking help. Ensure that you have a good relationship even before you ask for help. See how you can add value to them. Thank them whenever you get a chance. 

Organized Folders
These also help a lot, especially if you deal with multiple accounts, files, folders which is a given in IT industry. 

What are your habits and muscle memories that you would like to share?

Leia Mais…

Part 1: Shout-out to TAU, BBST

 

This is a shout-out to Test Automation University and the Learning Paths. While there are many courses, trainers on YouTube on automation, this one I loved the most.

The next one is the evergreen BBST (Black Box Software Testing). This one helps you get the fundamentals right and the references, additional reading - all of them have value. Is it outdated - NOT really.

If you have not visited TAU or BBST websites till now, do check them out. If you have better alternatives, do suggest. I will be happy to learn. Hope to add more such learning opportunities in the coming weeks.

Leia Mais…

ATA Meetup #22 - Bangalore - Amazing experience

Reached super early
The session was supposed to start at 9 AM and I reached by 7.45 AM. I did not want to be late. Due to weekend's minimalistic traffic and super driver, I surprised myself and I thought I can just enter and wait in the hall. The security asked me the contact person name and I told him that there is a meetup by Agile Testing Alliance - did not help. I called up Aditya Garg and somehow the security got convinced that I can at least pass the main barricade and sit on the makeshift park seats.

It was nice to experience fresh air, have fruits and dive into an interesting book called "The Practicing Mind" by Thomas M. Sterner.

The Practicing Mind

I remembered the discussions with Shrini Kulkarni about consciousness, mind, awareness as I read the book. Around 8.40 AM, Thrivikram and Venkata P from HCL welcomed and escorted me to the induction hall where we had the meetup. The conversation between them and the security folks was an interesting one making me think of the process adherence vs value addition.

Learning for me:
Know the contact person in advance and keep them informed about surprises in plan.

HCL Services
The first session was by HCL management represented by Prashantha M who highlighted the various services offered by HCL, the case studies and the learning. There were few really good questions by the audience who wanted to know more details about the insights shared to them.

My tip:
Knowing something and applying directly to your context might be dangerous. Know about the context in which it worked/failed. 

We messed up the craft - Ajay - Qapitol QA
We went for breakfast and after making new friends by consciously sitting with strangers, it was time for my talk. The slides took some time to appear. Thanks to this, I could express myself at the whiteboard and have the audience involved in answering few questions - did we mess up the craft or is everything perfect?

There were just two slides and here are the images:

Five ways we have messed up the craft

Time to clear the mess

EarlGrey - Satadip Ghosh - Coviam

Many years ago, I had bet that Srinivas Kadiyala would become a tester to watch out for and it is true today. I predict now that Satadip Ghosh will be the next one to watch out for. I am impressed by his organizational skills at such a young age. If he continues to work hard on his skills, he will be a super hire for any company. His presentation on EarlGrey was a decent one and well paced!

How to be a Test Jumper - Sushma MB - Qapitol QA
I was super nervous for Sushma's talk and Sushma watching me every now and then during her presentation did not calm my nerves at all. She did a great job for her first community presentation. The attitude with which she approached the whole task when I asked her to present at ATA meetup is commendable. The feedback from Chaithra and Balakrishnan from Qapitol QA helped her deliver a good talk. She was ready to incorporate most of the feedback and defended some of her decisions - a good quality! All the best, Sushma for more talks!

ChroPath - Sanjay Kumar - Autonomiq
I knew Sanjay from The Test Tribe session where Sanjay demonstrated ChroPath and I was lazy to attend it live. I wanted to pay attention to the session and it was mind blowing. I was relating some of the points to Sahi Pro's ease of use. Sanjay is the creator of ChroPath and the story of why he created the tool was also inspiring. I have installed the addon and will conduct an exercise at my company to get everyone familiarised with the tool. Sanjay is open to conducting a session at your company too if you can prove the numbers.

Toll gate
I was mentally exhausted after all the lovely sessions and slowly losing physical energy as the Ola auto was taking its own sweet time to reach the location. I had bought double toll and it was wasted as auto went below the bridge. I kept thinking if autos are allowed over bridge and suddenly I was asleep.

More events coming up

June-July Schedule

More Details at www.testwithajay.com 

My thanks to the organizers - Agile Testing Alliance, Nagesh, Thrivikram and everyone involved in making this meetup a memorable one.

Leia Mais…

Learning an Application: Can you find clues within the application itself?

I recently changed jobs and landed myself in a totally new domain for me. I am spending most of my time learning about the domain and the products involved. There is little documentation about the product, the team is very busy with the day to day work and I am left alone to explore and learn about the product.
There are different styles of learning about an unknown entity and one of the approaches I am following is to interact with the product, create mind maps about the product's capabilities and see if I can make any sense out of the data. While I was playing with the product, I observed that there was a big difference in the number of options displayed since I used it the first time and now. So, I called up my friend who had experience with this product and asked what could be the reason. He told me that the options could have been hidden due to a configuration in the application.

Quite possible and then we went to the configuration screen and there were few roles already assigned to my user id. I spent few minutes checking out the different user roles and was amazed at the information the product was sharing with the user.

For example, consider Google Maps and imagine if it had user roles like
maps.add
maps.view
maps.delete
maps.update
directions.favorite
directions.satellite
directions.optimise
directions.reverse
directions.reset
and so on.

So, by looking at the roles I can infer that there is an option to even optimise the directions even without looking at the directions screen. Few questions I can think of by knowing this information:
- Have I tested this feature
- How is this feature dependent on other features
- Am I even aware of this feature

The answers will help me understand
- my test coverage
- my knowledge of the application
- the capability of the application (in terms of whether the feature is discoverable by the users or not)
- my model's strengths and weaknesses (or loopholes)

Have you encountered similar situations at work? What has been your experiences in learning a product of a new domain? Looking forward to your comments.

Leia Mais…

Quarterly Update: Conferences, Workshops, Meetups and Learning

This post is a quick update about the past few months.

Test With Ajay website was launched

Launched www.TestWithAjay.com as a one stop source to capture my blog posts, tweets, articles, books and workshop announcements. This will be my online portfolio going forward.
Upcoming workshops include

April 15 (Bangalore)
Web Performance Engineering | Test With Ajay 
More Details 

April 28 (Bangalore)
Mobile Application Testing | Agile Testing Alliance 
More Details 

April 29 (Bangalore)
50+ Tools: Know, Learn and Apply in your testing’ | STeP-IN Forum
More Details 

I also conduct online workshops over Skype chat. Deepan Kumar recently took my online workshop.
If you are interested, you can ping me on Skype (ajay184f is my Skype id)

Deepan Kumar

Conducted Exploratory Testing workshop for Agile Testing Days Asia audience

At the last minute, there were multiple registrations and there were around 40 testers in my Exploratory Testing workshop. The workshop was a success for me as it was quite an interactive workshop and I managed to squeeze in most of the concepts in an eight hour window. The true success of any workshop is when the participants go back to their organization and implement some of the learnings. I have not heard back from any of those testers which bothers me to some extent. 

A one day workshop is not a magic pill to solve all your problems. It needs continuous effort from the testers and the management across few pilot projects to see the expected end results. And I am always ready to help people who are struggling to implement the learnings from my workshop.

Attended Agile Testing Days Asia and Agile India 2017 conferences
As part of the sponsor booth, I spent most of my time at these conferences at the sponsor stall. There were many interesting conversations and how people have assumptions which is very hard to dislodge or alter.

Agile Testing Days came to Asia for the first time and it was a success considering the enthusiasm shown by participants in Agile Games and also the fully packed sessions.

This was my first time at Agile India conference and I was blown away by the sheer number of participants every day. With so many well known speakers spread over 5-7 days, they had all the bases covered.

Presented at Global Testing Retreat, Pune
The topic was: "Agile Teams: The Best Test of a Tester's Skills". The talk was for 25 mins instead of the usual 45 minutes. It is a good idea too as one need not wait the whole 45 mins for the next talk.

There were a lot of new faces and talks which fascinated me. Looking forward to the next year's conference.
                                      
 
Exploratory Testing workshop for Global Testing Retreat audience
This was a three day course and we had good discussions on various aspects of testing. There were lots of hands-on exercises and each concept was followed by an exercise.

Started using Encode app
I am not sure how I stumbled on this app but I am happy that I did. I am loving the lessons and the exercises for JavaScript in this app.

Started learning Java from 'Java for Testers' book
Alan Richardson has done a great job explaining every concept in detail. Though I am finding it hard to understand few concepts, I WANT to learn Java and I am on it.

Agile Testing Alliance Meetup 
I presented at the meetup organized by Agile Testing Alliance on "Problem Solving Techniques". I am planning to create a workshop out of it soon.

And I need to get ready to office. Till next time, enjoy testing.

Leia Mais…

Problem Solving Leadership - Part 1 of N (N could be 1 too)

As you can see, it is an email I sent to Esther in 2010 asking for details about the Problem Solving Leadership. I kept trying year after year to check if the cost came down. The good thing is that they have not increased the cost more than 2800 USD. It looks like it has always been 2800 USD since 2010 and maybe before that too.

2800 USD + Flight cost to USA from India + Accommodation + Food + Local transportation = Huge $$$. I could not afford it. I had multiple opportunities where I had to give them 14 hours and I would be paid a lot of money. I kept rejecting them. I stuck to those jobs that let me go home after 8 hours and also let me practice my skills. The jobs that let me participate in workshops, buy me books, send me on week long leaves to conferences and be myself.

While some of my colleagues started earning more money but were unknown to the world, I got some good mentors and friends all over the world. I kept going to conferences, spending my money on workshops, courses, books, licenses, mobile devices. I was working on my reputation as a good tester. Slowly, I was invited to present at conferences, called to conduct workshops, advise testers and it was all going good.

I had taken workshops/courses from Rahul Verma, Pradeep Soundararajan, Matt Heusser, Peter Walen, Fiona Charles, James Bach, Jon Bach, Michael Bolton, Cem Kaner since I started my testing journey ten years ago. Many recommended Jerry Weinberg's books. I also liked them when i read them. In fact, I liked them to the extent that I used to quote his words in personal life too.

I wanted to meet him. I also asked him if he conducted PSL workshop online and his reply was a No. I changed jobs and thereby got an opportunity to attend the PSL workshop this June. Even though everything was in place, I had my own fears - will I be sent back from airport for some issue with the documents? will I have to travel back due to any emergency? Will my flight be hijacked and I take a bullet to save someone and many more such crazy stuff as I could not believe that I would be able to attend PSL without any issues.

Finally, I arrived and I went to the hotel and was very excited about attending the workshop the next day. I was ready by 7 am and the workshop would start only by 9 am. I kept waiting outside the wrong room for an hour before I confirmed the exact room and went there.
There were already few people waiting. I smiled at them and got myself a seat. Esther soon came to the room and my eyes were still on the entrance waiting for Jerry.

And once Jerry came and the time was 9 am, the workshop officially started.

There were five full days of intense workshop followed by half day of introspection and some of us went to a nearby peak and had an awesome time on the Sky Tram.

 

What did we do during the five full days?
We had many explicit exercises which tried to emphasize

• Observation
• Team work
• Personality types
• Leadership models
• Running a startup
• Problem solving
• Consulting 
• Fish bowl
• Lot of sharing what we learned as individuals and as a team. 

Sharing the exact workshop contents would not do justice to both - the trainers and the readers. One has to experience the workshop to feel the lessons. It is also interesting to know that each individual comes to the workshop with different set of expectations. Some want to know more about themselves, some want to hone particular skills, some want to know where they can improve (and not necessarily improve in the same week), some want to just absorb everything and some come just to have a break from their routine.
I was someone who went to learn more about myself and I realized that I learned a lot about others and how my actions affect others!!! Some interactions were eye-openers in their own terms and I also had the opportunity to see others full of passion / raw emotion and bringing their true self in the open.
There were opportunities to dive deep and get what you want. There were opportunities that made you feel stupid temporarily and it seemed to follow the golden rule (according to me for any workshops): You get as much as you put in. You put in a lot of effort, you get a lot of learning. You just skim through the workshop experience and you can get just that - the top layer - you might like it or hate it.

So, the next few months to start with, should be interesting. The participants of the workshop have promised to support each other. Sometimes, the workshop enthusiasm dies down after few weeks but I have a strange feeling about this one. This kind of teaches skills for life as it focuses more on problems which never go away and then on people who seem to be the ultimate creators of any problem :)

Till next time, "We will deal with it!!!"

Leia Mais…

Time for some Coursera courses :)

I received my Power Searching With Google certificate last week.

Sep 24 to Oct 10
2012 

My next target is Coursera courses. There are plenty of them. I signed up for the Python course which started today. And the next course I want to do is the Think Again: How to Reason and Argue
This should take care of this year. Hopefully, these courses help me to become a better software tester.

Meanwhile, I created a video for Bug DeBug Facebook channel on how to get started with mind maps.
Its less than five minutes long. Get started on your mind maps.
And thanks to Sudhamshu, Bharath & everyone involved, the next workshop is on Oct 27th at Microsoft, Hyderabad.

Leia Mais…

Power Searching With Google - Done!

You can still take the course at www.powersearchingwithgoogle.com
Calendar is booked with lot of tasks :)
Next week - New batch of online training, this month - workshop at Hyderabad, till Dec - important features to be tested at office,  project to be submitted for my MS degree... Life is busy and I am loving it :) 

Leia Mais…

Online Course with Tea Time With Testers & Quality Testing.

I learnt a very important quote from Robin Sharma. "Relationships matter"

Yesterday, I read a tweet from Tea Time With Testers:
"@TtimewidTesters in association with @qualitytesting launching Online Training Course http://bit.ly/HBwwzr . Register Now !"
The tagline made me happy. "Certifications might get you job but ONLY your
Testing Skills will define your GROWTH !"

I was happy that at least someone other than CDT school members understood this concept.
The name of the trainer - Savita Munde made me even more happy. I had heard good words about her from Ilari Henrik, Shrini Kulkarni and a bit from James Bach.
But when I clicked on the syllabus link, all the happiness disappeared.
The syllabus had close to zero content matching with testing skills. It was like a certification course syllabus.

I tweeted that "Disappointed with this: http://bit.ly/HBwwzr" and put a #testing tag to it.

Immediately, Lalit and I had a discussion on Gtalk and I decided to take a course for free through their site.
The word "Free" did not go well with few people.

I was not against anyone. I was against the syllabus. I was confused. I did not know if what I did was right or wrong. Should I have taken the issue in private? Who am I to criticize the syllabus of someone else? These questions were troubling me and I pinged James and Michael.
At the same time, Lalit was also talking to them.

James & Michael supported me that I did the right thing but definitely, there is always a better way to do things. I don't know who did it but I assume that James/Michael helped clean up the syllabus. The syllabus now looks a lot cleaner. A lot of terms, definitions are no longer part of the syllabus. I see a big influence of "Lessons Learnt in Software Testing" book on the syllabus which according to me is a good thing.

As I promised to Lalit, I will take a course on Testing Skills with focus on hands on exercises.
When I asked Jon Bach if I will be able to do it, he was more confident than me.

Now that I like the syllabus, I am going to promote their course and offer my course too.
As I don't ask for anything other than your time, I want to make sure that you are serious enough to attend the course. As a pre-requisite to my course, I request you to attend the course conducted by Savita. It should be worth every rupee or dollar spent by you.

I do not get any benefit from Tea Time With Testers or Quality Testing apart from the free platform to conduct this course.So, dive in and lets enjoy learning from each other.

And why did we argue yesterday but friends today? Because "Relationships Matter" :)

Leia Mais…

Sympathetic testing

One of the reasons I like BBST courses is that there is a focused reading on a topic. There are questions asked about a document. You might have read the document before but one seems to learn more when there is a focused reading of the same document under time pressure. In the Test Design course, I learn about "Sympathetic Testing". There seems to be an excellent document explaining how to learn an application. The focus is on learning about the application and not testing the application.

Do go through this article by Michael Kelly here.

I decided to learn about the application ClipX in a similar manner to how Mike Kelly learnt about the Magnifier tool. The first tour described was the 'Feature Tour' where the focus is to move through the application, getting familiar with all the controls and features one comes across.

I installed the application ClipX from http://download.cnet.com/ClipX/3000-2384_4-10315451.html
Based on the Mike Kelly's blog post, I prepared this mindmap.

Application Tours

The next few hours, I will be focusing on the application tours. Let me start with the feature tour.
When I was installing the application, I found one interesting behavior. The 'Run the application now?' popup appeared even before the progress bar on installation window was complete.

Click here to view the partial report of the feature tour. I did not do a complete feature tour.

What did I learn from this exercise?
It was a different experience to focus on learning about the application and not hunt for bugs.

Rich model
As the focus shifted from "Can I test for this bug" to "What else this product can do", I learnt about the product in detail. The additional information will help me frame better tests and target each of the areas I learnt. This also helps me in relating a test on a single feature to its effects on other feature. The rich model helps me think of the big picture.

Better bugs
As I learn more about the overall application, I ask questions related to the design of the application. If I were to concentrate on a single feature, my question might be limited to the particular feature. Looking at the bigger picture, I can find bugs related to the absence/presence of a particular feature. I can question the very existence of a feature instead of a bug in a feature.

Risk - Coverage - Priority
I can talk to my stakeholder with my initial report and ask for the areas to be tested. Based on my initial tours, I have an idea of how a test might affect the other features. How risky is a particular feature? What percent of coverage would be achieved in terms of features? Which feature demands highest priority testing? I have a better answer to such questions after this exercise than before the exercise.

Learn in five minutes
After I finished prepared the report, I realized that few of my tests could have been avoided if I had seen other features before. The next time, I will quickly go through most of the options within five minutes and then focus on tours.

I am still learning to do sympathetic testing well. Have you experienced Sympathetic Testing? What do you think? How do you learn about the application? How much time do you spend?

Leia Mais…

Where was this option till now?

Launch Twitter on any browser, login to your account and note the icons displayed next to the Search field. An icon when clicked displays your profile details and other options and 'Compose new Tweet' icon. Now, lets get to the scenario which prompted me to write this post.

I was following a particular conversation on www.twitter.com. A conversation is different from an isolated tweet as you will a tweet in reply to another tweet. Isolated tweets are individual tweets and not typed using the Reply link. You can recognize a conversation by the text 'In reply to SomeUsername' below the tweet.
Once you click on the 'In reply to SomeUsername' link, the entire conversation is displayed.

And if you notice carefully, once you click on the link, you will see an additional icon next to the 'Compose new Tweet' icon. Where was this icon till now?
What will you do if you were the tester? Let me make it very simple - there are only three icons to be tested. The icon to see more details, the 'Compose new Tweet' and the 'Close all open Tweets'. When you launch twitter, you will not see the third icon. Let us relate this behavior to the software we test everyday.

There might be options or functionality which are no so obvious. In fact, they might be enabled based on some action. These options might not be displayed by default. I think this is an interesting situation for a tester. Many times, a tester has to focus on things which are not just obvious but what is hidden behind the obvious.

As a tester, what will you do? I am not interested in answers like 'As testers, we will receive requirement documents which will mention all the functions.' or 'I test based on what the programmer asked me to test.'
When I thought about such scenarios, these questions came to my mind:

• What are the hidden functions?
• Are they important functions? Should they be hidden by default?
• Is the user informed about such functions? Should the user be informed that some options are hidden? I am thinking of contexts where displaying all the options by default is not a good idea. Maybe games where you would like the user to discover options. 
• Have you tested for all of the hidden functions?
• How do you know if you have tested for all the hidden functions? Who has the list of all the hidden functions?
• Why are are some functions hidden? What should be the criteria for hiding a functionality by default?

As a tester, this exercise should be interesting. Look at your software and discover the hidden functions :)

Who knows, you might find a bug that was hiding from day 1...

What other questions come to your mind. Let me know through your comments.

Leia Mais…

100 days to 2012

At the beginning of 2011, I posted about my goals for 2011 here. I was very eager to complete the year on a high and make this the best year. There was enough planning. As it often happens with me, I was able to successfully meet some of the goals. I started working towards some goals and I added few more *NEW* goals and pursued them.

Today, I look back at the months gone by and count the days to 2012. I am trying to assess my performance this year. I am happy to say that I have met the expectations even though I could have exceeded my own expectations in some other way.

To start with January, I started reading the books mentioned for January. I learnt a very important lesson from this experience. I could not finish a book in one go. I needed 2-3 months to fully absorb a book.

Though I felt that I was on track for most of the year, I achieved a lot more which was not present on the Goal Chart.

I participated in http://www.99tests.com/ contests and was in top three in most of them. I added few more books to my collection.

Books in my reading list

2011, I was thinking of not attending any of the conferences and I ended up presenting at THREE conferences!

First of them was at Chennai - BugDeBug conference:

Resources to help a tester

Then I presented at STEP - AUTO conference at Bangalore. 

Summary Slide of my presentation

Finally, my dream came true. I met the Bach Brothers and Matt Heusser in person. I met all my online heroes and friends in person. I was at CAST 2011. I presented at CAST 2011.

The Bach Brothers' Award

Then I had the opportunity to present a webinar for EuroSTAR 2011 and the topic was

'The Joy of Weekend Testing Facilitation'



Weekend Testing Facilitation

I wrote articles for Testing Planet and Testing Circus.

The latest was the mindmap to EuroSTAR 2011. As the Country Ambassador, I presented the following mindmap:

And finally, here I am - analyzing how the year has gone by so quickly.

Close to 100 days and I am focussed on just one book for now

THE CODE

Lets meet in 2012.

Leia Mais…

CAST 2011 - Tester Competition - Miagi-Do School Team

After Part I and Part II , here is the blog post about the CAST2011 Tester competition.
On Day 1 - Aug 08th evening, there was a testing competition for four hours from 06:00 PM to 10:00 PM US time. After the awesome sessions the first day, it was time for some fun. And how do testers have fun? Testers have fun by competing in a testing competition.

As I belong to the Miagi-Do School, all the students of Miagi-Do formed one team. There were few other testers who were not part of the school also joining us. So, the team members were: Matthew Heusser, Markus Gaertner, Michael Larsen, Adam Yuret, Elena Houser, Justin Hunter, Simon Schrijver and myself. We were never in chance of winning the cash prize of $1401 as Matthew Heusser was one of the organizers. And still we wanted to participate in this contest. We wanted to test as the Miagi-Do school team!

06:00 PM - Setting up and Learning the Application
As we had more Mac machines than Windows and the application to test was a Windows app, we paired. Michael & Matt, Markus & Adam, Justin & Simon, Elena & myself formed different pairs. The first half an hour was very irritating. The app was close to 19 MB and the network speed was too slow compared to the usual speed. Close to 50-60 testers were accessing the same link from the same hall! I and Elena had USB and we got the app downloaded on them and passed to others in our team. By that time, Michael had already downloaded the app. Then we started to play around, learn what the whole app is about, read the document which came along with the installer. Some clicks here & there, there were few Access Violation errors displayed.

06:45 PM - Calm planning amidst chaos 
Markus takes the lead and brings some calm amidst the chaos. Justin points that instead of everyone testing in their own way, we could have a plan of attack. Markus brings the flip charts to play. After our initial testing, we set ourselves a time limit of 20 minutes of testing sessions followed by 5 minutes of de-brief. The first few sessions were interesting - everyone took different features and going was smooth. The bugs were found and it was time to log them.

07:30 PM - A bit disconnected but focussed on testing
I can't speak for other pairs but our pair (Elena & myself) found some cool Access Violation errors. By this time, we found 3-4 errors. They were not easily reproducible but popped up now & then. After spending close to 40 minutes, we wanted to nail the errors. We also went to the developer who was also in the same room and asked him if he needed exact steps or just the error logs were sufficient. He was happy wit the error logs and the screenshots.

08:45 PM: Bug reporting in full flow
By this time, we had captured most of the bugs and we decided to log them. We had to upload the screenshots, video and the error logs. All these had to be zipped and uploaded. We tried uploading them to the specified location but it failed twice. Sometimes it displayed 90% uploading and then failed. Then I thought of uploading them to my most trusted friend - Dropbox. All the zip files were dropped onto my account and the link was shared. We felt happy that we overcame the link barrier.

09:30 PM: Test Report & Bug Hunting
Matt, Markus, Justin & Adam were busy with preparing the final test report. Matt asked me to report the bugs on the typewith.me document too from which he would consolidate all the bugs in the final report. We were busy logging bugs and did not update the document. In fact when the team was busy adding sections to the final report, Elena & I were still hunting bugs and reporting them.

What did I learn:
This team rocked! Everyone took a considerable amount of tasks out of the final list of tasks and contributed equally to the final test report. The testing coverage in terms of the different features model was also very good. During the de-brief, each pair picked up something new. Sometimes, if they felt that a particular area needed more testing, they continued. The approach was fantastic - 20 minutes of testing followed by 5 minutes of debrief was very effective. With such a big application to test, that was a very good approach to gain coverage and reduce redundant testing.

I liked the way Markus used flip charts to record during de-brief. The flip charts helped a great deal at the end as we were the only team with good flip charts highlighting test coverage. Those also helped in the preparation of the final test report. I liked how Matt organized the final test report. He gave us simple instructions  - update the typewith.me and he would take over. I liked how Michael picked up the areas left by others for further investigation and filled the gaps. Markus was too good organizing the entire de-brief. Justin was cool with the mind map. Simon, Adam helped with the final test report. Elena was very helpful in paired testing especially the bug investigation for the Access Violation errors. She helped me use Jing (which I had never used before). Me & Elena were also talking with the developer asking if some of the bugs we found were useful for him.

The four hours were very exhausting. It was like an extended weekendtesting session. Being used to the weekendtesting sessions, I was kind of used of competing in these kinds of hectic testing environments. I learnt a lot about team co-ordination, organizing testing & de-brief sessions. I learnt how to prepare a test report for such a project quickly.

And finally, the next day - Matthew Heusser promoted Elena Houser, Michael Larsen and myself to the next level - Black Belt in the Miagi-Do School of Software Testing. That was a proud moment. I am waiting for the next testing sessions to demonstrate the learnings from this tester competition.

Leia Mais…

CAST 2011 - First Impressions

Preparation for CAST 2011 blog post is here.
Continued here...

Aug 07th  09:00 pm US time: 
I finally reached Seattle after a long flight journey. I was tired. I wanted to go to Courtyard Marriott hotel and on inquiring, I found that it would cost close to 200 USD for a cab. I wanted to board Shuttle Express as per Lanette Creamer. And the cost was just 26 USD. After a journey close to 1 hr, I reached the hotel.
At the hotel lobby, I found Matt Heusser, Lynn McKee and Nancy Kelln. I was sharing the room with Michael Larsen. When I went to the room, he was awake even though it was close to 10:30 pm US time.

Aug 08th  - Friends meet!
Michael & me went down to the hotel lobby and we met Markus Gaertner, Michael Bolton, Matthew Heusser and few other testers ready to walk to the Lynnwood Convention Center. After close to five minutes of walking, we reached the hall. We were at the registration desk of CAST 2011. I saw Jon Bach talking with  a tester. The moment had arrived. I shook hands with Jon and proceeded to the registration desk. I collected the T shirt, conference kit from Dawn Haynes and saw Sajjadul Hakim busy with his laptop.

I saw James Bach, Anne-Marie Charrett, Adam Yuret, Lanette Creamer, Carsten Feilberg, Simon Schrijver, Fiona Charles and Pete Walen. I was so happy. As Jon Bach said: "It felt like a big party". All the online friends I had were in the same hall as me. The day started with Jon, James welcoming everyone and Michael Bolton's keynote. There were no slides as there was some problem with the laptop/projector combination. I remembered my dream :)

Michael Bolton's Keynote
A keynote without any slides. Michael once again highlighted the CBC show - Ideas and the 24 part series of "How to think about Science"
Notable quotes were:

• Decisions about quality are political and emotional.
• Shake the constraints. Refuse to accept the apparent constraints.
• Testers know that things can be different.

What if there is no time to find all bugs?

We find the important bugs.

What if there is no time for that?

We would conduct a Risk-Analysis.

What if its wrong?

We also take an approach which considers non-risky areas. We will learn from mistakes.

Do we accept failures? No, we accept reality!

We testers discover how the product actually works. We do not confirm that it works.

Acceptance of the reality is maturity. We need to remain skeptical [Rejection of certainty]
Michael also highlighted that testing should focus on human values. The document by Dr. Cem Kaner can be found here. Testing as social science provides partial answers which might be useful.

Michael recommended the study of Philosophy, Epistemology, measurements. Testers should be able to tell both the testing story and product story. We need to be beware of bogus metrics. Also, testers need to be aware of Safety language. There is a difference between "It seems" and "This is". It is important to recognize the difference between observation & inference. "The vs A" problem was also discussed. "The terrible problem" sounds so different from "A terrible problem". Heuristics play an important role in a tester's life. We need to learn & unlearn rapidly. Every minute of the keynote was filled with great learning moments!

Troubleshooting Skills by Chris Blain
After the keynote, there were few RED cards flashing across the hall. There were K cards being used to facilitate the discussion. My cards were numbered 186. After the keynote, it was time for some fruits and the track sessions. I attended the 'Troubleshooting skills' session by Chris Blain. I did not attend Markus' session as I had already seen it at EuroSTAR 2010. Troubleshooting skills are important specially when you do bug advocacy. Chris Blain pointed that as testers, we should not take anyone's words for granted. We should work on improving our skills by learning a range of systems. Systems thinking, modeling, thinking from different perspectives and asking lots of questions to gain information might help troubleshoot better.

Multiple tools like the Process Explorer, Visual Studio, WinDBG, Registry Viewer, DTrace, WireShark, Fiddler, ChainSaw, Log Parsers were highlighted. Some interesting stories like the accidental shaking of a wire causing static electricity and a bug was narrated. When I asked about the books, he highlighted the 'Advanced Windows Debugging' by John Robbins. Chris asked us to be aware of the cultural differences too in troubleshooting.

Weekend Testing presentation by me
After lunch, I presented about Weekend Testing As I had dreamed, there was no laptop and I had to borrow James Bach's laptop. Though I logged in to dropbox and clicked on download against the presentation, it failed to download. I soon realized that creating a rule made the download possible. All set, I entered the room. There were close to 15 members in the audience. I was happy to have James Bach, Michael Bolton, Jon Bach, Michael Hunter and Michael Larsen along with Elena Houser in the audience. Every time I present about Weekend Testing, some titbits which were never shared before come to light. After close to 40 minutes, many questions were asked. One of the question was what is required to participate in the session. I told that as long as a tester has passion, skype and knows english, he can participate!

Jon Bach highlighted how weekend testers tested eBay and helped him gain more information to his questions.      He facilitated few sessions with missions on eBay and those were really useful sessions to the weekend testers. Michael Larsen, Co-Founder of Weekend Testers Americas highlighted how weekend testing was a different experience from a facilitator's perspective. Jon, James, Michael liked my presentation style. I was happy to present at CAST :)

Presenting a Compelling Testing Story by Benjamin Kelly
Ben started with a video of a movie and how a junior finally convinced his senior to agree to his views.
"Give compelling reason to take specific action" was the lesson.
He narrated his story where he and his team presented a 15 page report to the senior management. Whenever the management asked if there was any problem, he replied that nothing more than what was present in the report. The Green flags of the project slowly turned to Red. When management was shocked, Ben was even more shocked. The reports were never read! Ben realized that he had used a wrong medium and a wrong format to present the report. The manager was not willing to spend so much time reading the 15 page report.

People do not respect your testing if they don't like your test reporting. As testers, we need to present the test reports in formats which is appreciated by the stakeholders. He highlighted the different ways how we format information - verbal, written & visual. Ben started with Modeling. Asking questions helps gather information and understand what stakeholders want.
Questions like - What would describe project success, what should happen to achieve project success, what might look like failure, what are the most important aspects of the project to each stakeholder help bring every stakeholder to a single page.

Meta modeling - model of model was also highlighted. As testers, we need to compare our meta models to the models of the stakeholders. What is different, what they don't know and learn what they tell you?
Once we learn about the different models, Ben moved to Reporting part!

The two types - Push Reporting & Pull Reporting was described. Mike Kelly's MCOASTER heuristic was also recommended for effective test reporting.
Pull reporting is when someone asks you for a report. If you are not comfortable, ask for time, Ask for clarification if it helps. There is no point in giving a wrong report without understanding the exact questions.
Push Reporting is when you provide information. The most important aspect is that the audience is briefed. Ben suggests that you as a tester take time to ensure that your audience is briefed. Examples are bug reports, critical bug discovery and risk report.

Prepare, know the purpose, have the story, know the model of audience, understand the difference between your model & the audience's model. Also, pay attention to the audience's model of you. Speak the language of the audience!

The next blog post is about the CAST 2011 tester competition.

Leia Mais…

Preparation for CAST 2011

Dec 2010: I was happy when James Bach asked me on Skype if I was interested to be present at CAST 2011. I asked for 1-2 days time and accepted the invitation. I got a speaking slot and Weekend Testing was the topic James wanted me to present on.

I started saving money for this trip. Though the conference fees was waived off, I had to cover the travel, accommodation costs. I knew that it is worth spending 2500 USD for CAST 2011. My mother and few friends thought that I was crazy.

June 2011: I applied for VISA and there were no dates available for VISA interview at Chennai. I had to wait for few more days. The date slots opened and I selected the first date available - July 13th. I had to be in US by Aug 07th and the visa interview was scheduled on July 13th. All the forms were filled & submitted.

July 13th 2011: Visa interview
Few questions were asked about the conference, my company, why my company i snot sponsoring, why am I spending so much, when will I return and so on. Then why did I go to Vietnam & Germany were also asked. I was granted visa. I was very happy. Finally, I could meet the Bach brothers and my first hero - Matthew Heusser.

Aug first week:
I polished the slides, added/deleted few slides and sent the dropbox link of my presentation to James & Jon.

Aug 05th dream:
I had the dream that just before my presentation, the slides were corrupted. James, Cem told me that such things happen and asked me to download again. I accessed dropbox website and found a totally new GUI. Quickly, thanks to some exploration - I found the slides and downloaded them. In between James asked if I really needed the slides for my presentation. I replied with a big NO. I woke up smiling.

Aug 05th 2011 will be a special day. Reason: I got the award: "The Bach Brothers Legion of Testing Merit" http://www.satisfice.com/blog/archives/591

Aug 07th Flight
The flight was at 04:00 am IST from Bangalore to Dubai. I left home at 12:05 am on Aug 07th and reached airport by 1 am IST. Very sleepy, getting ready for the long flight journey.

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…

End of Q1 - Progress Report

I am Back!

Wish I could say that but I know that I am not at my best yet. My best is yet to come. 

Looking back at the three months in 2011, I am happy and disappointed with my progress so far.

First the 'not so good' news: 

• I had few books on my list to complete by March. I started reading all the three books. There are quite a lot to read and learn from each of the books though.
• I wanted to work on my programming skills but that is still a dream.
• I could not fulfill a dream. I realized that I was not yet prepared for it.
• Though I promised many people about many things, that remained as a promise. I did not keep the promise.
• I started getting up late again. I missed the cab few times. I did not practice writing enough.

So, what is the 'good news' after so many 'not so good news'

The good news is that I have realized my mistakes early enough (hope so) and I have started working hard to get back on the right track.

Thanks to all my friends and well wishers - I am working hard towards my goals.

I will bounce back. As they say  - 

“It's not how many times you fall that matters, it's how many times you get back up.”

I will give in my 100 % in the next nine months. Next progress report is due on July 01st 2011.

Leia Mais…

Perfecto Mobile - An Overview

As I had promised last month on twitter about a blog post on my experience with Perfecto Mobile, here it is.
What is Perfecto Mobile? 
To quote them,

Perfecto Mobile is a global leading provider of cloud-based testing, automation and monitoring solutions for mobile applications and websites, utilizing a wide selection of REAL mobile devices accessible via the web.

 So, I got interested in knowing more about them & wanted to use their services.
And they amazed me with their demo, the services offered and the support.

A demo was scheduled and I was briefed through the entire list of features:
* Selection of handsets
* Actions which can be performed on the handsets
* Automation - How to simulate some of the user actions
and most important of all, I was shown a real device and not some simulator!
The actions we performed were on a REAL MOBILE DEVICE.

For someone like me who always heard of simulators & tested on simulators, this was amazing - actions reflected on a REAL device.
I agree that it is different than testing on a physical device but according to me, it is effective than testing on a emulator.

So, once the demo was over, I got few free hours to play around. Special thanks to Sveta for the demo which included a lot of questions from my side. She answered each one of them to my satisfaction.

I was very excited to see if what was demoed actually works !!! Yes, I am a tester - a tester who likes to test to my satisfaction before endorsing a product. I recommend Hexawise, Rapid Reporter and now Perfecto Mobile

With free hours added to my account, I started exploring. I have a Nokia E63 and I was more interested in trying out features of E63.

I did a freestyle exploratory testing session of Perfecto Mobile. Wish I had learnt using Rapid Reporter before testing Perfecto Mobile!

Feel free to go through my overview of Perfecto Mobile.
CLICK HERE to view the report.

As a concluding note, I would like to highlight the advantages of Perfecto Mobile services.
I have tested an iPhone app on a simulator, found bugs which were not present on the actual device. Also, I could not reproduce the bugs found on iPhones on the simulator. Can you see the difference?

Testing on Emulators, Simulators is not equal to testing on REAL DEVICES.
Make use of the services provided by Perfecto Mobile - Variety of handsets, ease of use and most important - you can share your testing activities real-time.

TEST it yourself to BELIEVE it.  

Useful Links:
Perfecto Mobile website
Perfecto Brochure

PS: Let me search for what's an emulator & what's a simulator!

Leia Mais…

Skype - Paired Investigation for list of commands issue.

Last night was amazing. We had a testers chat on skype.

I sent out this tweet    and Phil Kirkham was the first one to ping me on Skype. Later we had Mohinder Khosla, Tony Bruce, Shrini Kulkarni, Albert Gareev, Michel Kraaij and Bala Sista joining us.

We (me, Phil, Mohinder, Tony) started off with an initial deadline of 45 minutes till 11pm IST. Later, as more testers joined, we extended till 12 midnight IST.

The session was very good. I am assuming that each one of them had their share of learning. During the discussion, after I typed a phrase, I got this:


Immediately I typed what I thought I had typed, in a notepad and tried that on Skype. The same list was displayed again. The text was:

/Knowing what skills is/ might help us define 'skills' better

Calling this as the 'Master Text' for the rest of this blog post 

I decided that I will investigate this behavior later. As soon I got up this morning, I pinged Allmas Mullah on Skype with the text '/xyz/ might help' expecting list of commands.
She replied with a standard '?' . Not surprised with the reply, I explained the purpose of my ping and asked her if we can spend ten minutes to investigate this issue? (It was an issue at that time to me)
By this time, even Allmas had reproduced the issue on her side.

Allmas started off with brilliant questions -
What's the plan of action? What's the strategy of investigation?

I opened my  favorite tool for such sessions - Typewith.me (Thanks to Jon Bach for introducing this tool in WT32).

Chat from Typewith.me

 Ajay: Lets copy paste the commands here & google for that. take the solution & search for the problem in skype support page or google. I am suspecting some answer would contain the words - type 'these words' and you will get the list of commands. Then we can compare our test words & the actual words.

Allmas: Even if you just type '/' it gives you a list of commands. So, its the '/' .

Aj: Good, when I type / I don't see anything in Skype chat. not even the / character.

AM: What version of Skype?

Aj: 5.0.0.152

AM: 5.0.0.156

Meanwhile I click on the link http://www.skype.com/go/help.chathelp which is displayed at the end of the complete list of commands and found this:

To see a list of the available commands simply type /help into the chat.

I pasted this on our Typewith.me chat and tried /help on Skype. A short list of commands was displayed.
With few more tests like

• Removing few words from the Master Text
• A / followed by a word. Ex: /word 
• /(space)word 
• word/ word

I was thinking that the second / in the sentence was causing this issue & trying more tests like word/ word
and Allmas was progressing on the right track by pointing to me that even a character followed by / gives the full list of commands.
So we arrived at two points:

• Just '/' does nothing
• '/' brings up a list of all commands supported by Skype.

Then I realized where I was going wrong and started trying further tests like / in between two lines of text.
Ajay
/test
this

Allmas was highlighting that /command looks like a UNIX command and looking at the language in which Skype was written. I was searching for a user guide which would explain the usage of /commands and I was failing miserably in my attempt. Allmas gave the link. It was at Support link > Step by Step guide.

Amazed by the number of user guides provided, I quickly searched for what I wanted in few of them.
Allmas pasted this:

Does Skype for Windows have command line options?

Yes, you can use these options:

I did not ask for the link or the complete information. I replied with 'I am wondering if Skype connect is different from Skype windows as I am not getting much help from the user guides.'
This did not go well with Allmas as we were on two different tracks :)
What followed was interesting:
To read the unedited chat, please click here.
If you do not want to read the chat, just ignore the link and read further.
We clarified our assumptions, we exchanged our learning.

Learning for me:

• My belief in my quote: "When we listen and respect each other, Paired testing ROCKS" increased.
• There is so much information. If you are ready to learn, there is no limit.
• Be aware of what actions you perform. I remembered what I typed - the Master Text. If I had not remembered it, I might have taken more time to come to the conclusion.
• Recognizing that there is a trap and coming out of it before its too late.
• I need more & correct practice.

Special thanks to Allmas who agreed for ten minutes and ended up discussing for ninety minutes.

Useful Links:
Chat Commands: https://support.skype.com/en/faq/FA10042/What-are-chat-commands-and-roles
User Guides: http://www.skype.com/intl/en-us/support/user-guides/

If you are interested in further investigation, try this:

Why does /getba, /get ba and /getbanlist give three different results.

/getba - list of commands

/get ba - blank

/get banlist - executes the command

I would love to be part of such sessions. 

Feel free to ping me on Skype/Twitter at 'ajay184f' and not /ajay184f :)

Leia Mais…