tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-38555304548478803752024-03-09T02:17:06.773+05:30Testing Re-DefinedThe Blog is titled "Testing Re-Defined" to indicate the changes that came in me as a Tester after I met an Expert Tester.M.V.Manojhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09922734628562805382noreply@blogger.comBlogger15125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3855530454847880375.post-29373428486752978972009-09-18T12:16:00.004+05:302009-09-18T12:37:39.190+05:30Announcement - BWT Session 8<span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: separate; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; orphans: 2; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px;font-family:'Times New Roman';font-size:130%;" ><span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: collapse;"><span style="color: rgb(51, 51, 51); line-height: 18px;"><span style="">Friends,</span><br /><br />Weekend is nearing and so is our testing session. Please confirm your participation for the "BWT Session No.8"<br /><br />Date: <span style="font-weight: bold;">Sunday 20th Sept 2009</span><br />Time: <b>9</b><span style="font-weight: bold;">pm – 11pm IST</span><br /><br />Please be online on Gmail (visible mode) by 8.30pm IST. You’d be provided download details.<br /><br />Testing session: 9pm – 10pm IST<br />Discussion Time: 10pm – 11pm IST<br /><br />Please send an email to <a href="mailto:weekendtesting@gmail.com" target="_blank" style="color: rgb(42, 93, 176);">weekendtesting@gmail.com</a> <wbr>with the subject “<span style="font-weight: bold;">BWT 8 Confirmed Participant</span>”.<br /><br />We’ll include you for the session once we receive an email.<br /><br />For more details, contact <a href="mailto:weekendtesting@gmail.com" target="_blank" style="color: rgb(42, 93, 176);">weekendtesting@gmail.<wbr>com</a></span></span></span>M.V.Manojhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09922734628562805382noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3855530454847880375.post-1261024771442509922009-08-12T14:16:00.003+05:302009-08-12T14:37:55.295+05:30Here comes BWT – Learn, Test and have Fun<p class="MsoNormal" style="TEXT-ALIGN: justify"><span style="font-family:georgia;">On Sunday July 23<sup>rd</sup> ‘09, </span><a href="http://enjoytesting.blogspot.com/"><span style="font-family:georgia;">Ajay</span></a><span style="font-family:georgia;"> and I had planned to do a Pair Testing, the concept which Ajay and </span><a href="http://curioustester.blogspot.com/"><span style="font-family:georgia;">Parimala</span></a><span style="font-family:georgia;"> started the week before. So we were supposed start at around 9pm in the evening but as I had some unavoidable tasks that came up and it was 11:15pm by the time I and Ajay got together. And we found a sleepless wanderer in </span><a href="http://testtotester.blogspot.com/"><span style="font-family:georgia;">Sharath</span></a><span style="font-family:georgia;">, who more than made up for our disappointment of starting late. So now we three decided to start the testing threesome. The first challenge was to find an application for testing. We didn’t expect this to be a huge challenge and had decided to pick an application at run-time, and we made a strategic blunder here. It took us more than 45 mins. to decide upon which application to Test. We tried many Open Source applications to begin with but we couldn’t find one for which we three had all software installed. So we left the Open Source applications and Ajay came up with the idea to test </span><a href="http://www.tinyurl.com/"><span style="font-family:georgia;">http://www.tinyurl.com/</span></a><span style="font-family:georgia;"> . We finally had an application which could serve our thirst for the night.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="TEXT-ALIGN: justify"><span style="font-family:georgia;">Our mission was set as “Find as many bugs as possible”. We started our testing and the three testing brains were together attacking this application and the bugs started to surface. All three were connected over g-talk and it was fun to learn the ideas coming out and putting my ideas upfront. There was focus on usability, functionality and security (we couldn’t do much on this front like bypassing the firewall with proxy url [sharat’s idea] but some very good ideas were discussed). There were good ideas put up by Ajay too on the functionality of tinyurl, I found some interesting user experiences (some very embarrassing) over net and tried some similar ones. You can read the postmortem of the session done by “Ajay” in the form of a very nice report </span><a href="http://www.scribd.com/doc/18321870/List-of-IssuesTesting-of-TinyURL"><span style="font-family:georgia;">here</span></a><span style="font-family:georgia;">. It was a great learning, in terms of testers testing the same application sharing their ideas and getting to know their approach, which rarely happen at workplaces.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="TEXT-ALIGN: justify"><span style="font-family:georgia;">Thanks to Ajay and Sharath for a fun filled, sharing and learning weekend session.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="TEXT-ALIGN: justify"><span style="font-family:georgia;">If you are a Tester and want to share similar fun and learning with us, you can put a mail to </span><a href="mailto:weekendtesting@gmail.com"><span style="font-family:georgia;">weekendtesting@gmail.com</span></a><span style="font-family:georgia;"> and we will come back to you with details of how and when sessions can be arranged.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="TEXT-ALIGN: justify"><?xml:namespace prefix = o /><o:p><span style="font-family:georgia;"></span></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="TEXT-ALIGN: justify"><span style="font-family:georgia;"><br /></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="TEXT-ALIGN: justify"><span style="font-family:georgia;">We will Infect you too,</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="TEXT-ALIGN: justify"><span style="font-family:georgia;">-Bangalore Weekend Testers</span></p>M.V.Manojhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09922734628562805382noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3855530454847880375.post-34520226083959614912009-07-29T22:59:00.005+05:302009-08-07T22:41:53.901+05:30Testing Lessons from - The Coconut Exercise<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align:justify"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">This post is created by spying on a Testing exercise that </span><a href="http://testertested.blogspot.com/"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">Pradeep</span></a><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"> was doing with </span><a href="http://www.testersblog.com/"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">Santhosh</span></a><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">. I didn’t carry my moleskine diary at that time so I will to put down all I could remember. These are the benefits which one can get when you are with Pradeep, you will find unexpected ways of learning things. So I am sharing my experience for all others who were not there.</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align:justify"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">So the context was, we were near the chatting zone in Edista office. Pradeep asked Santhosh while pointing at a small coconut which was lying on the floor to come up with ideas of how that coconut might have got there. Santhosh began putting forward his ideas by looking at the coconut tree which was behind us, and said it might have fallen from the tree there. To this Pradeep asked, the place where the coconut is lying may suggest that the coconut may not have fallen directly to this place. To this Santhosh modified his idea by suggesting that it may have fallen here by hitting the parapet on its way. Then he came up with ideas like it may not actually be a coconut although it seems to be. Then it might have been blown here by the wind. Next idea was, may be some birds might have brought it here. Then Santhosh gave up.</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align:justify"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">Now Pradeep took up the challenge and showed how he would have approached this problem. He started by saying that it might would had fallen somewhere else and the guy who might have come for a walk may have actually kicked the coconut here. Then he said may be this coconut may not have fallen from the tree we are looking at and may be from other tree which was bit far and some squirrel or bird might have brought it here. Next idea was he went and picked up that coconut which was lying there and upon looking at it, he found some marks which indicated that it was eaten from one side. This gave more validity to the idea that it would have been brought there by squirrel or a bird. Then the idea that it may not be a coconut was also validated. Then other ideas were like, may be some coconut vendor might had come there and would have thrown it over there, then may be ideas like ones from Tamil movies of this coconut falling on the adjoining building and would had traversed different paths by hitting various parapets and may have landed to the place where we are seeing it etc.</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align:justify"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">This exercise gives us a learning that if we are conscious of our surroundings and environment then lots of things can be learnt. Such exercises would improve our observation skills, logical skills, interpretation of various facts and lots of other stuff which can help a Tester in his Testing activities. If you come across such exercises make sure to collect those and discuss and play it with your friends, it can be a lot of fun as well as learning.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align:justify"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"><br /></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align:justify"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">Happy Learning,</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align:justify"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">- Manoj</span></p>M.V.Manojhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09922734628562805382noreply@blogger.com7tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3855530454847880375.post-64113821144964560912009-07-21T07:51:00.003+05:302009-07-21T10:08:20.304+05:30Testing Tips 2 -: When you find an Error in your application, do some follow up Testing<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align:justify"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">One of the things which most of the Testers (me inclusive, many a times I have also not realized the importance of doing follow-up testing) don’t do when they get an error is - to do follow up testing. This mostly reduces the value of the Bug that you are reporting. The reason is you still have not identified the Bug in its worst form or not investigated the potential of that Bug. This would sometimes make the developers to defer the bug you have reported and the Bug may take its worst form in the field.</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align:justify"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">If a Tester wants the Bug reported by him to be fixed by the developer , then ensuring that he has investigated the Bug and reporting that Bug in its worst form, goes a long way in getting this done. </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align:justify"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">I was testing a text field in a web application which was not supposed to accept more than 1000 characters. I generated 1010 chars using </span><a href="http://www.satisfice.com/tools.shtml"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">PerlClip</span></a><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"> and pasted on this field. It just accepted 1000 characters and rejected the remaining 10 characters. I again tried appending more characters to the existing 1000 characters by trying to paste more characters, but it was also rejected. So I tried appending by giving keyboard input beyond 1000 characters and to my surprise the characters were getting appended. At this point, I could had logged a Bug saying that I am able to input more than 1000 characters to the text field which is an issue as per requirements. But I decided to do some follow up tests and tried to input as many characters as possible. I found that the field was allowing only 1000 characters to be pasted at a time, but if you give some keyboard input then again you can paste 1000 characters. So using this method I gave inputs of around 3 lakh characters. Then when I did further operation with the application where this data in the field had to be retained across couple of pages, the application initially slowed down when passing this data to the first page and then by the second page the application hung for around for 10mins before recovering. </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align:justify"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">Here if I had reported the Bug for the first error that I encountered i.e. “the text field accepting more than 1000 characters as input”, the severity of this Bug could not have been captured. But my follow-up test results, where I was able to input around 3 lakh characters to the text field and upon doing further operations the web application getting hanged showed the Bug in a more severe form. So the Bug report for the second case is more likely to catch the attention of the developer and has a better probability of getting fixed. The follow-up tests are sometimes simple and helps Testers in coming up with more credible and persuasive Bug Reports.</span></p>M.V.Manojhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09922734628562805382noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3855530454847880375.post-68597507856187077502009-07-20T08:28:00.002+05:302009-07-20T08:48:22.018+05:30Testing Tips 1 – Bug Reporting<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align:justify;tab-stops:155.25pt"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">Bug Reports are one of the most important work products, produced by a Tester. Many a times the client, management, developers and test team members judge a Tester’s skill from the Bug Reports he creates. So Bug Report is a very important document which affects the credibility of a Tester. </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align:justify;tab-stops:155.25pt"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">Here I would like to list down some of the vocabulary given/described by </span><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">Cem Kaner</span></b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">, which would help Testers in writing better Bug Reports. </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align:justify;tab-stops:155.25pt"><b><u><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">Error:</span></u></b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"> An error (or fault) is a design flaw or deviation from a desired or intended state. For eg. -: This could be a Coding mistake or a missing code.</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align:justify;tab-stops:155.25pt"><b><u><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">Symptom:</span></u></b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"> This might be a characteristic of a failure which helps a Tester in recognizing that the program has failed. For example -: Your application slows down when a user performs certain operations, is a symptom.</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align:justify;tab-stops:155.25pt"><b><u><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">Failure:</span></u></b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"> The failure is the program’s actual incorrect or missing behavior under the error triggering conditions.</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align:justify;tab-stops:155.25pt"><b><u><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">Critical Condition:</span></u></b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"> The condition which would trigger a failure.</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align:justify;tab-stops:155.25pt"><o:p><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"> </span></o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align:justify;tab-stops:155.25pt"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">It would be useful for a Tester to distinguish between an Error, critical condition and failure while writing their bug reports. I would like to take an example from the Testing activity that I was doing to drive in these points. I was testing a Username and Password field of a Sign-in page of a website. It worked fine when I provided a correct username and password and I was able to login. Then I thought of checking the maximum allowed characters in each of these fields. I found that the maximum field length of both the Username and Password fields were not set. I was able to provide more than 3 lakh characters in each field and when I clicked on 'Go', it was trying to send these huge strings to the server and the Sign-in page hanged and did not respond for more than 25 mins and eventually I had to forcefully close the browser.</span></p> <span style="line-height: 115%; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">In the above scenario, the “missing code for setting the maximum field length of the Username and Password field’s” is an </span><b><i><u><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">Error</span></u></i></b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">. The </span><b><i><u><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">Critical Condition</span></u></i></b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"> (or failure triggering condition) is the user giving more than 3 lakh characters as input in both Username and Password field’s and clicking on 'Go' button. And the </span><b><i><u><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">Failure</span></u></i></b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"> was the Sign-in page hanged for the Critical condition.</span></span><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 18px;"><br /></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 18px;"><br /></span></div>M.V.Manojhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09922734628562805382noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3855530454847880375.post-227564695841714122009-07-20T08:12:00.003+05:302009-07-20T08:27:40.844+05:30Test Automation Tools Vs Human Testers<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align:justify"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">One of the ideas I totally disagree with people who advocate Test Automation is their claims of Automation tools being able to</span><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> </span></b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">run tests much faster as compared to Human Testers. But my question is why do you want to compare an Automation Tool to a Human Tester? How did this comparison even arise?</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align:justify"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">According to me, a Tool can be some device which may be used to facilitate or aid in performing manual tasks. So, why should speed of Human is compared to speed of an aid he uses?</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align:justify"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">I remember using Scientific Calculators in my Engineering Degree. The calculator was used as a tool aiding in calculations. Few formulae could also be fed or stored into it. But, I have never heard anybody saying that the calculators should be replacing the engineers as it is able to execute the calculations much faster than humans. But what good is a calculator without humans? It cannot perform any task on its own, it cannot have logic, it cannot think. But it is very useful if an Engineer who has a calculator knows what benefits he can derive from it and knows when, how and where to use it and get maximum benefits from it.</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align:justify"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">We should understand that the purpose of a Calculator or a Test Automation tool is to aid humans in doing their tasks in a better way. This would allow humans to spend their time more judiciously on more important things in what he is good at and allowing the tools to do tasks for which they were specifically made for. Even the Test Automation is a heavily human intensive task. So a Test Automation tool can execute tests much faster than humans, but it cannot do anything by itself. The Test Design has to be done by humans, identifying tests for automation, creating automation scripts, maintaining automation scripts, identifying the comparison criteria (pass/fail criteria) and investigating the issues if any mis-match is found in the Test execution results, all these activities has to be done by human testers.</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align:justify"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">So, next time when you hear someone speaking about Test Automation tools being able to execute tests faster than Human Testers, make him understand why he should not be doing and talking about such comparisons.</span></p>M.V.Manojhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09922734628562805382noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3855530454847880375.post-8844213473960195162009-07-15T10:37:00.006+05:302009-07-20T08:27:10.307+05:30Why Indian Testers need to Wake Up, Come Out and Interact?<div align="justify"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">I mentioned in my previous </span><a href="http://testingredefined.blogspot.com/2009/07/testing-course-with-difference-bbst.html"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">post</span></a><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> about some of the learnings and experiences I had during my BBST course. I was interacting with two of my friends (and fellow Testers) from my BBST batch, ‘Juha Johansson’ and ‘Charles Penn’. I learnt from ‘Juha’ that he is in touch with some of the Testing professionals with mutual interests in Houston and they are starting Software Testers Group there. ‘Juha’ had also registered for ‘CAST 2009’ which began on 13th July in Colorado. Meanwhile, ‘Charles’ is one of the organizers of </span><a href="http://www.iwst2009.com/"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">IWST</span></a><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> (Indianapolis Workshop on Software Testing) which conducts regular Testers meets and discussions etc.</span></div><div align="justify"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><br />I was wondering, How many Software Testing Groups that we have heard of, are in India? Even though, India is supposed to be a Software Testing Hub. How many Indian Software Testing Groups are here, which are active or doing some significant contribution towards the Software Testing community. Hardly any…</span></div><div align="justify"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><br />But you might find many Indian Testers being part of Testing Communities outside India. I am not trying to say it is bad, don’t misunderstand me. The point I want to make here is, when there are so many Indian Testers who are part of many good Testing Communities hosted abroad and they have interaction with many Good Testers across the world, then why are we unable to come up with Testing Groups of our own. Why can’t we have the Groups where we can share the learnings, project experiences, hold workshops, come up with new ideas, experiment with new and existing ideas, talk about innovations, debate, argue etc. Why can’t we come up with Testing Conferences like ‘CAST’ of our own? When will we have the Software Testing Experts whom the entire world recognizes? When will we have our own Jerry Weinberg, Cem Kaner, James Bach and Michael Bolton?</span></div><div align="justify"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><br />I have seen and learnt about some Software Testing Groups within companies, but they were hardly active or doing anything noteworthy. To begin with, we should atleast try to make use of such groups which are already in place and make them functional. If we (Indian Testers) are only concerned with what we are doing in our company and think only about ourselves and our survival, And are not actually coming out and interacting with other Testers, then we are seriously missing out on an opportunity of mutual learning and improvement.</span></div><div align="justify"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><br />There are some initiatives which are being taken in this direction though, and one such initiative was </span><a href="http://testertested.blogspot.com/2009/05/collection-of-notes-and-experiences.html"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Bangalore Workshop for Software Testers – 1</span></a><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> which was held in May this year. But what we really need is - to have more and more Software Testers getting together and interacting frequently, and more such events/workshops happening in India.</span></div><div align="justify"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><br />It is high time that we (Indian Testers) wake up to challenges like</span><a href="http://www.mstb.org/softec2009/news.php"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> this</span></a><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">, </span><a href="http://www.apecdoc.org/node/9214"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">this</span></a><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">, </span><a href="http://ezinearticles.com/?The-Golden-Age-For-Software-Testing-In-China&id=1013961"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">this</span></a><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">, </span><a href="http://www.sqabd.com/"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">this</span></a><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> and </span><a href="http://www.vietnamesetestingboard.org/"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">this</span></a><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">, which is staring in our face and begging us to come out of the comfort zone and show to the world that When India is getting Software Testing projects – it is not just because of the cost/currency advantage.</span></div>M.V.Manojhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09922734628562805382noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3855530454847880375.post-68151746154340524822009-07-12T23:45:00.006+05:302009-07-20T08:25:41.274+05:30A Testing Course with a Difference – “BBST Foundations”<p class="MsoNormal" style="TEXT-ALIGN: justify"><span style="font-family:georgia;font-size:85%;"></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p><span style="font-family:georgia;font-size:85%;"></span></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="TEXT-ALIGN: justify"><span style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">I am blogging after some time gap. One of the things that I did during this break was to do BBST Foundation course. </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span></span>Here I would like to share my experience of this 1 month long course and why I think it would be useful for Indian Software Testing community.</span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="TEXT-ALIGN: justify"><span style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">BBST foundation course is a basic introduction to ‘Black Box’ Testing.</span><span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">You can read the details about this course </span></span><a href="http://training.associationforsoftwaretesting.org/bbst/foundations"><span style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">here</span></span></a><span style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">. </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span></span>This course includes video lectures, quizzes, homework of various kinds, and a final exam. The course is provided Free of Cost for the AST members. So this is a course which is non-commercial in nature and is dedicated for the betterment of the Testing community.</span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="TEXT-ALIGN: justify"><span style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Ideally one should have some Industry experience for taking up this course although it is not mandated. But I would say, for reaping better benefits from the course a Software Tester should have atleast 2-3 years of experience in IT industry.</span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="TEXT-ALIGN: justify"><o:p><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family:georgia;"></span></span></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="TEXT-ALIGN: justify"><span style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">There were 11 participants in my batch mostly from US, although there were participants from other countries as well. Apart from me, there was one more Indian (Rajkumar Pandian from Chennai) in my batch. The batch began with ‘Meet and Greet’ session where all the Testers had to introduce oneself to the batch. It was really cool and gave all Testers a platform to share their interests and make friends with like-minded testers and other testers in the group. There were Testers with wide range of experience, right from beginner (1 tester) to Testers with 5-7 years experience and also people who have chosen Testing after having experience in different fields. So this a playground where Testers can put forward their point of view, debate, learn from other Testers, learn how Testers work in different geographies, how the challenges differ </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span></span>and their experiences. This is place where your work would be challenged and put under scrutiny by Testers with different set of ideas and expectations, and you will have to defend your work. Your work would also be evaluated by some of the Experts in the Software Testing field who have got decades of experience. </span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="TEXT-ALIGN: justify"><span style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">It is really great Fun!! and lots of learning too. I am not sure whether Testers who had appeared for CSTE or ISTQB or other similar exams would have experienced anything close to this. This course had got many ingredients where a Tester’s skills are really put to test and clearing this exam would build a lot of “Credibility” for the Tester within the Testing community.</span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="TEXT-ALIGN: justify"><span style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Having gone through the grind and fun for 1 month of BBST course, I believe this course deserves more recognition from the Indian IT Industry. This course would give the IT industry a better insight about their Testers ability and skills than any CSTE or ISTQB exam can actually give. But for this to happen, I believe more Testers from India will have to take-up this course and share their experience with the Testing community.</span></span></p><p><span style="font-family:georgia;font-size:85%;"></span></p>M.V.Manojhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09922734628562805382noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3855530454847880375.post-68589224662451930022009-04-09T08:48:00.011+05:302009-07-20T08:28:27.510+05:30Yahoo Mail, Is there a problem here?<div align="justify"><span style="font-family:georgia;font-size:85%;"></span></div><p align="justify"><span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">I was logging into my yahoo account, when I realized when I had logged in an hour back the home page was different. I thought, the homepage might have been updated? Or was there a difference the way I accessed the Yahoo! Mail home page the last time?<br />Then upon little investigation, I realized that the last time I had traversed to the home page was in the following way– I went to </span></span><a href="http://www.yahoo.com/"><span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">www.yahoo.com</span></span></a><span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> and clicked on the ‘Mail’ option. The second time I had reached homepage through – </span></span><a href="http://www.mail.yahoo.com/"><span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">www.mail.yahoo.com</span></span></a><span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><br />This got me interested and I wanted to have a quick comparison of the two homepages which had opened. So for discussion sake, I want to use the following conventions -:<br />Option 1 -: Go to </span></span><a href="http://www.yahoo.com/"><span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">www.yahoo.com</span></span></a><span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> and click on ‘Mail’ option<br />Option 2 -: Go to </span></span><a href="http://www.mail.yahoo.com/"><span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">www.mail.yahoo.com</span></span></a><span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><br /></span></span><span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">[NOTE -: Option1 took me to ‘Yahoo! India’ homepage, while Option2 took me to ‘Yahoo! Mail’ default homepage.]<br /><br />I did a quick round of comparison and following are my observations -:<br />(i) Option2 (The default ‘Yahoo! Mail’ home page) had a link to go to ‘Yahoo!’ homepage But in Option1 (‘Yahoo! India’ homepage) I couldn’t find any link to traverse to ‘Yahoo!’ homepage.<br /><br />(ii) I noticed that the Window Title in Option1 showed “Sign in to Yahoo! India” while the Window Title in Option2 showed “Yahoo! Mail: the best web-based mail”. I wondered why Option1 didn’t have ‘Mail’ in their Window title. </span></span></p><p align="justify"><span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">So I opened the Yahoo! UK and Canada sites. Oh, there the Window title was “Sign in to Yahoo!”, Country names were not mentioned (although it is mentioned within the respective homepages). So Yahoo! doesn’t seem to have uniformity in naming the Window titles.<br /><br />(iii) In Option1 (‘Yahoo! India’ homepage) there is an amazing link “Forget your ID or Password?” . Wow!!, it seems Yahoo might want to help its users to Forget their UserID or Password. What an innovative idea?<br />I had first found similar message a couple of weeks back when I was testing a website during the Finishing School session that </span></span><a href="http://www.testertested.blogspot.com/"><span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Pradeep</span></span></a><span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> was conducting. That site was still to go Live, but it could be that they may have picked up the idea from Yahoo!.<br /><br />Again I got curious, is this message present only in Option1 or is it also available in Option2 ? Luckily, Option2 had “I can’t access my account” link. But here too, Yahoo! doesn’t seem to have uniformity in naming the links. For same functionality it has got different names.<br /><br />(iv) I decided to move on and have a peek into the ‘Sign Up’ page for both Option1 and Option2. Hey surprise!! , there is another “Forgot your password or Yahoo! Id?” link when entering Sign Up page through Option1 AND you know what, there is a “Forget your password or Yahoo! Id?” when you navigate to Sign Up page through Option2.<br /><br />First, why do you need “Forgot you password or Yahoo! Id” within the Registration page? May be because if the user cannot see this link on the homepage, he could dig into the Registration page and find this option. Highly probable!!.<br /><br />Second, even for people entering Yahoo! site by Option2 have a chance to ‘Forget their password or Yahoo Id’ by going to the Registration page. Good, why should the people using Option1 have all the fun alone?<br /><br />(v) Finally l had a look at the ‘Security Question’ for both Option1 and Option2 and interestingly there were different set of Security questions asked. Why is it so? Once again I got curious and looked into Yahoo! UK and Canada sites and found that those sites have got exactly the same set of Security questions which is available from Option2 -> ‘Registration Page’. So probably Yahoo! Might have come up with special set of questions for Indian users.<br />------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------</span></span></p><p align="justify"><span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">The intention of this post is to demonstrate that if anyone wants to practice testing, he can begin with almost any application he can get. I have nothing personal against Yahoo!, it is just my observations which I have listed here. And maybe, Yahoo! has got its own reasons for implementing things the way they are.<br /><br />The title of this post is inspired from </span></span><a href="http://www.questioningsoftware.com/"><span><strong><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Ben Simo’s</span></strong></span></a><span><strong><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> ‘</span></strong></span><a href="http://blog.isthereaproblemhere.com/"><span><strong><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Is There A Problem Here?</span></strong></span></a><span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">’ blog.</span></span></p>M.V.Manojhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09922734628562805382noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3855530454847880375.post-84922932996775678832009-03-26T15:55:00.012+05:302009-03-29T15:22:13.759+05:30Testing FreeMind - SBT2<span style="font-family:georgia;">CHARTER<br />-----------------------------------------------<br /></span><span style="font-family:georgia;">File' Menu Tour and explore the functionalities in 'File' Menu.<br /><br />#AREAS<br />FreeMind<br />Build 0.8.1<br />OS Vista Home Basic<br />Strategy Exploration & Analysis<br /><br />START<br />-----------------------------------------------<br />26/03/09 06:10am<br /><br />TESTER<br />-----------------------------------------------<br /></span><span style="font-family:georgia;">M.V. Manoj<br /><br />TASK BREAKDOWN<br />-----------------------------------------------<br />#DURATION<br />medium 65 mins<br /><br />.#TEST DESIGN AND EXECUTION<br />100<br />#BUG INVESTIGATION AND REPORTING<br />0<br />#SESSION SETUP<br />0<br />#CHARTER VS. OPPORTUNITY<br /></span><span style="font-family:georgia;">100/0<br /><br /><br />DATA FILES<br />-----------------------------------------------<br /></span><span style="font-family:georgia;">#NA<br /><br />TEST NOTES<br />-----------------------------------------------<br /></span><span style="font-family:georgia;">#1. <strong>File</strong><br />- New<br />- Open...<br />- Save<br />- Save As...<br />- Revert<br />- Create Encrypted Map<br />- Close<br />- Export<br />- Import<br />- Page Setup...<br />- Print...<br />- Most Recent Files<br />- Quit<br /><br />#2. Tried all short cut options given within File Menu, they are working fine.<br /><br /></span><span style="font-family:georgia;">#3. New / Open / Save ./ Save As ... is working properly<br /><br />#4. Revert -> moves the Map to last saved state.<br /><br />#5. Close / Quit / Most recent Files working properly.<br /><br />#6. Need to look into following observations(Potential Defects) in 'Print dialog' to confirm -:<br />(i) On Print dialog, Print Range -> Pages, values '1 to 9999' is set by default irrespective of no.of pages in the Map.<br />(ii)On Print Dialog, Print Range -> Pages, One of the boundaries for Pages are '0' and '9999'; but number entry is restricted to 5 digits. Why not restricted to 4 digits when '9999' is max.<br />(iii)On Print Dialog, Page Range -> Pages, the 'To' field accepts blank. Why so?<br /><br />#7. Couldn't test Import and Export functionalities as I need to know more about 'Branches', 'Linked Branch' and 'root'.<br /><br />#8. Upon clickin on 'Page Setup' -> 'Print Scaling' dialog opens. I suspect it is not working. - Testing further, 'Print zoom factor' for which range is given as (0.0 - 2.00) is taking any value upto 5 digits. It is also taking alphabets. - 'Print Scaling' is accepting the value and implementing the scale if the range is given between 0.00 to 2.00. Values beyond this range it is neglecting.<br /><br />#9. Click on 'Create Encrypted Map ...' , if the password is short it gives out a message box. 'too' is misspelt as 'to' in the msg.<br /><br />#10. Click on 'Create Encrypted Map ...' , opens a "Choose password for encrypted node" dialog. Not sure whether encryption can be done at node level or can also be done at Map level too. Also noted discripency between functionality name and dialog title.<br /><br />#11. Once I have encrypted a node, I am not asked for 'password' when I try to edit or add siblings and the lock remains. How the node can be decrypted, will have to figure out. (Need to investigate if this is a Issue)<br /><br />-------------------------------------------------<br />Issues<br />-------------------------------------------------<br /><br />#1. Presses on 'Alt' + alphabets, there are only two shortcuts for Top Menus ('Alt + F' -> File and 'Alt + M' -> Map). Other Top Menus doesn't have Shortcut Keys.<br /><br />#2. Open a Saved Map, add child nodes etc. and click on 'Revert' from File Menu. It takes the Map to last saved state but it changes the Mode to Browse. Upon going back to MindMap mode, the Map is in closed state and one has to re-open the Map for further working.<br /><br />#3. Clickin on 'Page Setup' -> 'Print Scaling', 'Print zoom factor' for which range is given as (0.0 - 2.00) is taking upto 99999 (5 digit values). It is also taking alphabets. But it is neglecting any inputs outside the range 0.0 to 2.00. Then why allow users to input values outside the range.<br /><br /></span></span></span>M.V.Manojhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09922734628562805382noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3855530454847880375.post-34660009794725226112009-03-26T15:06:00.019+05:302009-03-29T15:23:31.345+05:30Testing FreeMind - SBT1<span style="font-family:georgia;">CHARTER<br />-----------------------------------------------<br />Create a test coverage outline and risk list for FreeMind v0.8.1<br /><br />#AREAS<br />FreeMind<br />Build 0.8.1<br />OS Vista Home Basic<br />Strategy Exploration & Analysis<br /><br />START<br />-----------------------------------------------<br />25/03/09 06:25am<br /><br />TESTER<br />-----------------------------------------------<br />M.V. Manoj<br /><br />TASK BREAKDOWN<br />-----------------------------------------------<br />#DURATION</span><span style="font-family:georgia;"><br />short (45 mins)<br /></span><span style="font-family:georgia;">#TEST DESIGN AND EXECUTION<br />100<br />#BUG INVESTIGATION AND REPORTING<br />0<br />#SESSION SETUP<br />0<br />#CHARTER VS. OPPORTUNITY<br />100/0<br /><br />DATA FILES<br />-----------------------------------------------<br />#NA<br /></span><br /><span style="font-family:georgia;">TEST NOTES</span><span style="font-family:georgia;"><br />-----------------------------------------------<br /></span><span style="font-family:georgia;">I did a walkthrough of Help and Index, to come up with my own TOC for exploration in further SBTMs :<br /><br />- Help is displayed as a Mind Map, (seems it is easier to understand than sequential TOCs)<br /><br /></span><span style="font-family:georgia;"><strong>Node Features<br /></strong>- Appearance<br />- Folding<br />- Followable Links<br />- Multiline Notes<br />- Emulate labelled edges<br />- Icons<br />- Clouds<br />- Graphical Links<br />- Hyperlinks<br /><br />- Create and Deleting Nodes (Sibling and Child Nodes)<br />- Editing Node text<br />- Formatting a node<br />- Using Physical Styles<br />- Searching<br /><br />- Dragging and Dropping<br />- Copy / Paste<br />- Moving around<br />- Folding/ Unfolding<br />- Changing to Different Map,<br /><br />- Scrolling the Map<br />- Using Undo<br />- Export HTML / XML / Bitmap or vector<br /><br />- Importing Folder Structure<br />- IE Favourites<br />- Minmanager X5 mind map<br /><br />- Integration with Word or Outlook<br />- Setting Prefrences- Printing<br /><br />- Using Rich Text by means of HTML in nodes<br />- Picture in Nodes- experimental file locking<br /><br />- Table of Key Mappings<br />- Installation<br />- Browsing files in your computer, mind maps- About modes<br /><br />-----------------------------------------------<br />ISSUES</span><span style="font-family:georgia;"><br />-----------------------------------------------<br /></span><span style="font-family:georgia;">#ISSUE1 - In Intro it is mentioned that this documentation is for FreeMind 0.8.0 , not sure if it is same for v 0.8.1 as it is also mentioned that "Keyboard mappings and positions of Functions in menu can change from version to version."<br /><br />#ISSUE2 - Couldn't find a 'Search' option. In Help Menu the 'Help' option is disabled and only 'Documentation' is enabled.<br /><br /><br /></span>M.V.Manojhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09922734628562805382noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3855530454847880375.post-32268821338161722092009-03-26T09:46:00.002+05:302009-07-13T07:43:19.653+05:30Testing FreeMind 1<span style="font-family:georgia;font-size:85%;">CHARTER</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:georgia;font-size:85%;">-----------------------------------------------</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:georgia;font-size:85%;">Create a test coverage outline and risk list for FreeMind v0.8.1<br /></span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:georgia;font-size:85%;">#AREAS</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:georgia;font-size:85%;">FreeMind</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:georgia;font-size:85%;">OS Vista Home Basic</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:georgia;font-size:85%;">Build 0.8.1</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:georgia;font-size:85%;">Strategy Exploration & Analysis<br /></span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:georgia;font-size:85%;">START</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:georgia;font-size:85%;">-----------------------------------------------</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:georgia;font-size:85%;">25/03/09 06:25am</span><br /><br /><span style="font-size:85%;"><br /><span style="font-family:georgia;">TESTER</span></span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:georgia;font-size:85%;">-----------------------------------------------</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:georgia;font-size:85%;">M.V. Manoj</span><br /><br /><span style="font-size:85%;"><br /><span style="font-family:georgia;">TASK BREAKDOWN</span></span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:georgia;font-size:85%;">-----------------------------------------------</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:georgia;font-size:85%;">#DURATION</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:georgia;font-size:85%;">short (45 mins)</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:georgia;font-size:85%;">#TEST DESIGN AND EXECUTION</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:georgia;font-size:85%;">100</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:georgia;font-size:85%;">#BUG INVESTIGATION AND REPORTING</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:georgia;font-size:85%;">0</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:georgia;font-size:85%;">#SESSION SETUP</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:georgia;font-size:85%;">0</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:georgia;font-size:85%;">#CHARTER VS. OPPORTUNITY</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:georgia;font-size:85%;">100/0<br /></span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:georgia;font-size:85%;">DATA FILES</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:georgia;font-size:85%;">-----------------------------------------------</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:georgia;font-size:85%;">#NA<br />TEST NOTES</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:georgia;font-size:85%;">-----------------------------------------------</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:georgia;font-size:85%;">I did a walkthrough of Help and Index, to come up with my own TOC for exploration in further SBTMs :<br />- Help is displayed as a Mind Map, (seems it is easier to understand than sequential TOCs)<br />- Node Features </span><br /><br /><span style="font-size:85%;"><span style="font-family:georgia;font-size:+0;">- Appearance </span></span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:georgia;font-size:85%;">- Folding </span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:georgia;font-size:85%;">- Followable Links </span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:georgia;font-size:85%;">- Multiline Notes </span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:georgia;font-size:85%;">- Emulate labelled edges </span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:georgia;font-size:85%;">- Icons </span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:georgia;font-size:85%;">- Clouds </span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:georgia;font-size:85%;">- Graphical Links </span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:georgia;font-size:85%;">- Hyperlinks<br />- Create and Deleting Nodes (Sibling and Child Nodes)- Editing Node text- Formatting a node- Using Physical Styles- Searching<br />- Dragging and Dropping- Copy / Paste- Moving around- Folding/ Unfolding- Changing to Different Map,<br />- Scrolling the Map- Using Undo- Export HTML / XML / Bitmap or vector<br />- Importing Folder Structure- IE Favourites- Minmanager X5 mind map<br />- Integration with Word or Outlook- Setting Prefrences- Printing<br />- Using Rich Text by means of HTML in nodes- Picture in Nodes- experimental file locking<br />- Table of Key Mappings- Installation- Browsing files in your computer, mind maps- About modes<br /><br />-----------------------------------------------<br />ISSUES-----------------------------------------------#ISSUEIn Intro it is mentioned that this documentation is for FreeMind 0.8.0 , not sure if it is same for v 0.8.1 as it is also mentioned that "Keyboard mappings and positions of Functions in menu can change from version to version."<br />#ISSUECouldn't find a 'Search' option in help.</span>M.V.Manojhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09922734628562805382noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3855530454847880375.post-43854220149442867532009-03-23T16:42:00.005+05:302009-03-29T15:25:17.762+05:30Session Based Testing 1<p><span style="font-family:georgia;">Hereon I plan to post the Test Notes of the “Session Based Testing” of various applications that I Test - which helps me to learn and develop Test Ideas which I can use as heuristics while testing other applications. Here is the first of the series.</span></p><p><span style="font-family:georgia;">===================<br /><br />Product -: Wordsearch Creator V 0.9<br />Product Link -: http://sourceforge.net/projects/wsc/<br />Environment -: Windows Vista Home Basic, 32 bit OS<br />Tester -: M.V. Manoj<br />Start Date/Time -: 17/03/09 , 00.00 am<br /><br />Charter/Mission -: To find out as many problems as possible that could influence the stakeholders to consider fixing all the bugs I report in order to improve the quality of the product.<br /><br />#1. I am testing this product for the first time and I found that upon clicking the Help Contents, I am directed to </span><a href="http://openforschools.co.uk/wordsearchcreator/doc/0.9"><span style="font-family:georgia;">http://openforschools.co.uk/wordsearchcreator/doc/0.9</span></a><span style="font-family:georgia;"> But since at present I don’t have Internet connection, I would have to do without Help and learn/test by exploring the application. But then why a desktop application would require/mandate a user to have internet connection?</span></p><p><br /><span style="font-family:georgia;">#2. Because of lack of Internet connectivity, I am unable to search the Internet to see if I can get any info or reviews about Wordsearch Creator OR similar applications.</span></p><p><br /><span style="font-family:georgia;">#3. I launched 150 instances of the application. In task manager I can see that upon opening multiple instances there is a large variation in the memory usage of Wordsearch creator and it varied from 804K to 7424K. This large variations of memory usage could be a potential problem. I can’t see a reason when the user might have to open so many instances simaltaneously, so why not restrict the number of instances to one at a time?</span></p><p><br /><span style="font-family:georgia;">#4. The multiple instances did not have any numbering on them, so upon cascading I could not identify in which order the application instances were launched.</span></p><p><br /><span style="font-family:georgia;">#5. Close all the 150 instances in one go -> Close Group. Application closed gracefully.</span></p><p><br /><span style="font-family:georgia;">#6. The ‘Control Box’ -> Height and Width fields have a lower boundary of ‘1’ each and an upper boundary of ‘99’ when I used the scroll bars. When I provided the value ‘99’ to both height & width fields it made the squares to go out of bounds of the page. The squares should not go beyond bounds of the page, whatever a user does.</span></p><p><br /><span style="font-family:georgia;">#7. I was able to save the Out of Bounds page Results as ‘.PDF’ and as ‘.wordsearch’</span></p><p><br /><span style="font-family:georgia;">#8. Upon providing 276496 in the Word List and clicking on create , a message ‘Only 0 words placed’ message is shown (scrnshot aval).</span></p><p><br /><span style="font-family:georgia;">#9. When I copied entire A-Z in one line - multiple times and clicked on create. A message box with “Creating Wordsearch” blocks the screen and doesn’t return the result until I stopped the search.</span></p><p><br /><span style="font-family:georgia;">#10. Once the grid is created even if you modify your Word List, the New answers are not displayed. i.e. After create, modify word list does not work and you have to recreate the grid to include the new wordlist.</span></p><p><br /><span style="font-family:georgia;">#11. (Menu) Wordsearch à ‘Set allowed directions’ seems to be working fine in all directions. I tried a few tests and it passed.</span></p><p><br /><span style="font-family:georgia;">#12. Cntrl++ does not work for Zoom In.</span></p><p><br /><span style="font-family:georgia;">#13. If the grid goes out of bound of the page, Wordsearch à ‘Maskdrawer’ has problems, it also goes out of bounds and ‘Done’ cannot be obtained.</span></p><p><br /><span style="font-family:georgia;">#14. Menu Options, ‘File’ and ‘Format’ has been given the same Shortcut Key ‘F’. “Alt + F” opens ‘File’. So ‘Format’ doesn’t have shortcut key.</span></p><p><br /><span style="font-family:georgia;">#15. Wordsearch -> ‘Copy as Image’ works fine and passed few tests I ran.</span></p><p><br /><span style="font-family:georgia;">#16. WordSearch à ‘Word List Creator’ generates the same list as many times as we click on ‘Generate List’ button. When I clicked on OK, I found that this list gets appended to ‘Control Box’ à ‘Word List’ rather than overwriting the existing list.</span></p><p><br /><span style="font-family:georgia;">#17. The dialogs that comes up upon clicking the Menu options doesn’t have proper naming conventions. Wordsearch à ‘Set Allowed Directions’ –Opens- ‘Set Word Directions’ dialog. Similarly, Wordsearch -> ‘Mask Drawer’ –Opens- ‘Word Search Creator’ dialog.</span></p><p><br /><span style="font-family:georgia;">#18. ** *Test Ideas Used ***<br />- Try to open multiple instances of the application and look if multiple instances makes any sense?<br />- Open lots of instances and find the memory usage pattern of the application.<br />- Learn by the application behaviour, the inputs and output patterns<br />- Try to identify the boundaries of the grid/word list<br />- Menu Traversal to learn the functionalities provided. Open and look at the functionalities.<br />- Check if short cut keys are functioning properly.<br />- Check the word search application with different font and colors.<br />- Check the title of the dialog boxes in the application.<br />- Check the completed grid with only answers, only word list and with both.<br />- Check the various directions in which search can be done.<br />- Check the export and import functionalities.<br /><br />---End Session -: 2:22 am-----<br /><br /></span></p>M.V.Manojhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09922734628562805382noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3855530454847880375.post-68303924257152309632008-10-14T14:30:00.009+05:302009-03-29T15:26:42.997+05:30Testing as a Team Sport<div align="justify"><span style="font-family:georgia;">If an entire Product Development is considered to be a Team Sport (say Football), what would be Testing team’s role in it? What are the things that a Testing team can adopt from Football?</span></div><div align="justify"><br /><span style="font-family:georgia;">Let’s consider the case when a Football Team is playing for a win. There is an entire Team who has the common objective (mission) to win the game. The only way to win the Game is by scoring goals and conceding lesser goals than what you have scored. This doesn't mean that every player in the team is trying to score goals. The Coach draws out a Game-plan to achieve the mission. Players in the team are given certain specific tasks like goal-keeping, defending the goal, controlling mid-field and there would be usually 2 strikers whose responsibility is to score goals. The combined effort of each of these roles is required if a team has to win the game. And there would be times when the coach has to redraw the game-plan according to the situation and find the best tactics to achieve the mission. The success of the Team depends on whether the players in the team know what to do when they get the ball. The task of goal-keeper when he receives the ball would be different from what the defender has to do when he gets the ball or even different from what the striker have to do when he gets the ball. </span></div><div align="justify"><br /><span style="font-family:georgia;">Similarly in a Product Development the Project Management draws out the game-plan. Then tasks are assigned to the respective Development and Testing teams. The combined mission of Development and Testing team is Successful Release of the Product. Both these teams will have their individual missions too which would ultimately ensure the combined mission is achieved.<br /></span></div><div align="justify"><span style="font-family:georgia;"></span></div><div align="justify"><br /><span style="font-family:georgia;">The mission of the Testing team is to provide quality related information to the Stake Holders (who would be part of Management) and to facilitate them to take decisions. The Testing effort may still be broken further into sub-groups like UI Testing group, Function testing group, Installation Testing group, Database testing group etc. The Test Plan provides the game-plan as to what all things the Testing team would be responsible for (what all Testing would be done and what are the deliverables), what are the resources available and dates for completion of these tasks are provided. The Test Lead would be the captain who will marshal the resources and the coach would be the Test Manager who would ensure that the mission is on track and take decisions like altering the game-plan etc. The Testers would fill in for the various roles that the Manager provides him based on the Testers skill-sets. The success of Testing efforts depends on whether the Tester knows when they have received the ball, what should they do once they receive the ball. It also depends on how well each Tester has played his role and what information they have provided to the Management. Was the information provided by Testers help the Management to take decisions like - whether the product has matured enough to be released OR would some changes be made to the game-plan and take out the alternate game-plan?<br /></span></div><div align="justify"><span style="font-family:georgia;"></span></div><div align="justify"><span style="font-family:georgia;"><br /></span></div><div align="justify"><span style="font-family:georgia;">Disclaimer : All contents in this article are my personal views.</span></div>M.V.Manojhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09922734628562805382noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3855530454847880375.post-50291392106878451962008-08-16T23:34:00.005+05:302009-03-29T15:28:14.735+05:30Gambler And an Expert Tester<div align="justify"><span style="font-family:georgia;color:#000000;">Of late I have been reading a lot of stuff on Expert Testers, articles written by them and have also personally met an Expert Tester. Interacting and reading articles written by them, I feel they have certain traits which best fits a Gambler. In this article I am trying to compare few qualities of a Gambler and Expert Testers, which I personally think these Expert Testers possess and should benefit the Testers who aspire to become an Expert Tester.<br /></span></div><p align="justify"><span style="font-family:georgia;color:#000000;"></span></p><p align="justify"><span style="color:#000000;"><span style="font-family:georgia;"><strong>#1. </strong>The Gambler would always track every single bet he makes by noting it down in his diary. It would usually include date/bets/odds/what's at risk/result and why he made the bet. By tracking his bets he would be able to remain organized, won't fall into traps he had fallen earlier into, would help him to develop a nose for identifying newer traps, would help him to think clearly in uncertain situations and would enable him to identify some sort of patterns admist of chaos.</span></span></p><p align="justify"><span style="font-family:georgia;color:#000000;">An Expert Tester would always take down notes of the activities he is performing, the approach he used for identifying a bug in a particular context and the learnings he got while testing a particular product. He would keep on appending his list of learnings all through his testing career. He would be searching for similarities and dis-similarities, different contexts, different heuristics, more oracles and almost anything (things which normal testers are likely to miss) which could help him to achieve his mission.<br /></span></p><p align="justify"><span style="color:#000000;"><span style="font-family:georgia;"><strong>#2. </strong>The Gambler doesn't fear going to the unknown territory and believes he can conquer it with his skill, courage and spirit. He has to train his mind to look beyond the obvious and to look into things which would elude normal people. He has so much at stake (money, reputation, existence ...) that he cannot miss even on minute details. </span></span></p><p align="justify"><span style="font-family:georgia;color:#000000;">An Expert Tester challenges the application by stretching its boundaries and testing scenarios which normal Tester would usually miss or can't imagine. He would train his mind at all times to look beyond things which eludes normal testers. He challenges himself to better the benchmarks he sets for himself.<br /><br /><strong>#3.</strong> The Gambler has to find his way through the traps, identifying and clearing them to reach his target. He has to make moves under condition of uncertainity. Uncertainity should not be mistaken to randomness. It requires dedicated practice and planning to play moves under uncertain situtation. Even the game of chess is uncertain until one of the Kings is check-mated, but the moves made are not random (infact it depends on the moves you make as per the given context).</span></p><p align="justify"><span style="font-family:georgia;color:#000000;">Given an application to Test, an Expert Tester first tries to learn the application and establish a pattern for the way application works. He tries to identify the Traps and ways to clear them. Powered with his oracles and heuristics, he tries to find ways to break the application in a carefully planned and systematic manner (and not by Ad-Hoc appraoch).</span></p><p align="justify"><span style="font-family:georgia;color:#000000;"></span></p><p align="justify"><br /><br /><span style="font-family:georgia;"></span></p><p align="justify"><span style="font-family:georgia;color:#000000;">Disclaimer : All contents in this article are my personal views.</span></p>M.V.Manojhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09922734628562805382noreply@blogger.com5