TestingGeek

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" :)

Thank you for all the birthday wishes. My third ebook is finally released.
It is titled - '50+ tips to boost your productivity'

I want to keep this post short and sweet.
My special thanks to Jon Bach for inspiring me to write the blog post on tips/tools/tricks which later gave me an idea to expand it to this ebook. He also agreed to write Foreword to this book.
I am honored. Thanks Jon.

What is this book about?

This book is a small collection of tips, tricks and list of tools to help boost your productivity. This is entirely based on my experiences in software testing as well as using computer. Internet is so powerful. A simple Google search will yield you so many search results. Google for “Screen Capture Tools” and you will find a minimum of ten tools in the first page itself. Which one do you choose? Do you have the time to try each one of them? What about Windows command prompts? There seems to be more than fifty commands. Which one is useful for us, especially for a software tester?

I feel that one learns the best based on personal experience. Remember the time when you lost all your data and the lesson along with it - “Save your data frequently” Or the trick to use notepad as a diary. Some of the tips might be known to you but I hope that some of them are unknown to you as well. I have not written this book keeping a specific audience in mind. Anyone who uses computer should be able to benefit from this book. At the same time, I have tried my best to bring my experience as a software tester to the forefront.

How do you learn new tools and tips? Do you follow any specific websites? Do let me know. After my first e-book - “What If…” and the second e-book - “What If… 50+ tips to win testing contests” which can be bought from http://bit.ly/HKvTn0, I hope that you enjoy this book too. Hope you enjoy the snippets while I wait for your comments…

Without any delay, here are the details to buy the books:

Please transfer INR 150 99 (Ninety Nine only) to the following bank account.


If you are using Paypal, please transfer USD 2.5 to ajay184f@gmail.com

If you want to buy all my three books, please transfer INR 385 or USD 8.5
Details about the previous two books is here:
http://enjoytesting.blogspot.in/2011/11/release-of-my-ebook-what-if-50-tips-to.html

Thanks to Jon Bach for the inspiration behind this blog post.
This blog post is an attempt to tell you the different tools I use and how I learnt different tips & tricks useful for testing. Feel free to comment with your choice of tools/tips/tricks.

The first time I switched on a computer was the time I joined a computer course. The class was about DOS and MS-Office. That day I got to know what Ctrl + Alt + Delete did. It was like a magic combination. I did not know anything about what an operating system did. All I knew was that, you needed to press Ctrl + Alt + Delete to unlock the computer. Then I happily played Dave for the next one hour.

After few months, I understood the joke about a software engineer shouting "F1" when in danger. Well, he needed "Help" and the most common key associated with Help was F1. As I typed my college assignment in MS-Word, I found it difficult to edit long sentences. I pressed the left/right arrow keys till the cursor was at the right word and then I edited the word. My friend then showed me the power of Home and End keys.

During college days, me and my friends used to watch movies on friend's computer. Windows Media Player or VLC were the most commonly used tools. I was surprised when Alt + Enter changed the mode to Full Screen. Then I got to know what PrntScr did. I was always hesitant to use those keys - specially the F1 - F12 and the Insert, Pg Up, Pg Dn, Home, End. I did not want something bad to happen as most of the savings went into buying a computer.

Then I joined as a software tester in a company. The first day in training, the application was not responding. It was happening only on my machine. The programmer was called for by my trainer. He came and pressed some keys and Windows Task Manager popped up. I asked him the combination. It was Ctrl + Shift + Esc. That key combination was the first combination I learnt as an employee. Then, he right clicked on the Application name, Go to Process and clicked 'End Process'. This was how he force closed the application.

I spent more time observing the programmers. I did not know how to check the version of any application other than using the About/Help menu. The programmer taught me to check using the Add/Remove Programs window to note any application version. When I made a note of the flow to get to Add/Remove Programs from Start > Control Panel, he immediately showed me an easier way. He asked me to try 'Run > appwiz.cpl'. When my eyes asked the question "What?", he told me that appwiz = Application Wizard and cpl = Control Panel. I smiled and thanked him. My other friend taught me what Run > temp and Run > %temp% did.

Then I started using more tools. I used CCleaner. I was surprised by how much space it cleared for me by deleting the temp files and fixing some registry related files. The amount of free space increased. This tool was specially useful to me who never cleaned the temporary files. It cleans up your computer in minutes. As a tester, I have to take many screenshots. My friend suggested Greenshot and it was quite good. I used it for some time before I found Jing. I think it was Elena Houser who introduced me to Jing at CAST 2011. Yes, it was Elena. We used it for the testing competition. I continue to use it.

As I tested more and more applications, I found many application crashes. Then my programmer friend taught me how to use DrWatson. He was happy that I attached the logs and I was happy that I learnt something new. In one of the applications I tested, I found that the logo appeared to be a bit different from the one on the company website. When I showed that to the programmer, he attributed that to my machine display settings. I was not convinced. I searched for a tool which will let you know the RGB values of the color and also the hex code. I used ColorCop and proved to the programmer that there was indeed a difference.

After attending Rapid Software Testing (RST) workshop, I started using Perlclip a lot more. It was easy to generate lots and lots of text very quickly. Some of the programmers were impressed and the testers surprised. :) I started attaching video files to my bug reports. WebEx Recorder proved to be a very good tool for this task. The only drawback was that you could play the recording only using WebEx Player as the output file format was .wrf . So, I started using Jing to record the videos too.

I started registering on many social networks. The number of open applications too increased. While I knew that Alt + Tab switched between applications, I faced a lot of difficulty when the number of tabs in my browser increased. A browser is a single application and Alt + Tab did not help. Accidentally, I discovered that Ctrl + Tab switched tabs on a single browser instance. It was all good until Ctrl + x opened the xth tab where x was a number. Example: If you had ten tabs open, Ctrl + 2 opened the second tab. Ctrl + 9 always opened the last open tab.  Well, it doesn't open the respective tab, it just brings the focus onto the tab.

There were instances where I used Ctrl + to zoom in and Ctrl - to zoom out on a browser window. But I did not know how to view the original size through any shortcut. Ctrl + 0 seemed to be the shortcut.
I received a lot of emails with broken hyperlinks and I had to manually copy the entire link text and paste on the browser. Then, my friend showed me that using "" and typing the text between the quotes and pressing enter would turn the entire text into a hyperlink. This helps avoid broken links specially for network paths. Try it on Outlook.

There was an informal group in my company started by me and my friend. We called ourselves the Mission group. There was no hierarchy and we shared useful information about testing via emails. As we shared lot of article links, we used bit.ly a lot to shorten the url. I used to take a printout of the article and write just the 6 characters of the bit.ly link at the top of the page. We used typewith.me a lot to take simultaneous testing notes sitting at different computers.

Sometimes, the visible screen on the browser was not enough to highlight the problem. I used F11 to view full screen and then take screenshot. I have also used the website PDFmyURL to convert the entire page to a pdf file.

And for mind map lovers:
Don't forget to comment with your choice of tools/tips/tricks. Thanks.

To be continued...

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?

Michael Bolton describes Blink Test and many other quick tests here:

Blink Test
Find an aspect of the product that produces huge amounts of data or does some operation very quickly. Look through a long log file or browse database records, deliberately scrolling too quickly to see in detail. Notice trends in line lengths, or the look or shape of the data. Use Excel’s conditional formatting feature to highlight interesting distinctions between cells of data. Soften your focus. If you have a test lab with banks of monitors, scan them or stroll by them; patterns of misbehaviour can be surprisingly prominent and easy to spot.

I had to test the (supposedly) same registration form across different services.
Here is the image of the different services that we support:

I followed the second approach and opened each form on a new tab.

Then I thought of checking if there was any inconsistency across forms. To start with, I clicked on each tab using the mouse. As it was time consuming and distracting, I switched to Ctrl + Tab. There were six tabs open. I pressed Ctrl + Tab to move to each tab. Slowly, I increased the pace. Then it was fast. I had the keys pressed and it was a blink test in action.

Here is the sample video highlighting the Blink test.The test was quick and highly valuable for the cost involved. Apart from checking the basic look and feel of the form, position of different elements, I tested for error messages for each field.

The only issue I faced was that I had to align the screen's position after every request sent to the server on each tab so that there was very little difference in the position of the screens. Once the position was set, it was easy to concentrate on the different elements.

Have you tried any similar tests? What was your approach?
I would like to hear about your experience.
By the way, I thought I will name the test as Blink Tab Test :)

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?

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

After I resigned from my previous job on Jan 27th, I did not take any break. I joined the new company on Jan 30th and was excited as this was the first time I changed company. Its been three weeks as of today and I thought that it would be a good blog post.

Strange Day 1:
I got a laptop and there was a welcome email sent to the entire company. I received few skype contact requests and I immediately accepted :) For the next six hours, there was zero disturbance. No one gave me any tasks, no emails, no phone calls, no meetings, nothing. I was chatting with my friends in my previous company. There was popcorn, biscuits, juice and chocolates to give me company. Finally, my manager asked me if I can start training from the next day.

I was happy that I would get a chance to learn about their product. But I was supposed to conduct trainings and not attend :) I sent an email with the topics and the meetings were scheduled.

Testing Classes:
I started taking classes for the QA team. It was a different experience as testers from US joined through a conference call. There were testers attending the session from the same room and at the same time, multiple testers calling in. I had to take extra care of the pace of the session, voice clarity and the examples used in the session. Luckily, the sessions are going well. I don't use presentation slides. I use a lot of maps and practical testing sessions to highlight the point.

Testing Competition:
After two weeks of training, I conducted a testing contest for the testers. Close to thirty testers participated and presented their reports using Rapid Reporter. Yes, Rapid Reporter :) It was good to see different and new test ideas from different teams. Prizes were distributed to the winners.

Arranging sessions by testing experts:
We were so lucky to have a webinar with James Bach and Michael Bolton last friday. An inspiring session and the best part was the interactive audience. Those who never asked any question were curious and asked few questions. Everyone liked it and we will continue to ask many other testing experts to conduct webinars or testing sessions with the testers. I am so lucky to be in touch with many great testers :)

Creating Mindmaps:
When I highlighted the benefits of mindmaps, I was encouraged to create maps based on the product. Different testers liked the concept of mindmaps for different reasons - tracking results, understanding product better, training purpose, taking notes :) When I was asked to write user stories, I started with a map first.

Session using HTSM model
We had one session where we discussed the HTSM model. Now, we will analyze the requirement document using the HTSM model and come back with a list of questions. Hope the session will be benefit everyone - the testers as well the managers.

Designing tests for interviews
I started designing tests for the interviews. This was a good learning experience. You need to design tests based on different experience levels. Also, you need to be careful on what you expect from these tests. You need to try them on yourself, other testers and then improve them based on the feedback.

Taking interviews
I also took an interview - my first formal interview :) Though I can't reveal much details, it was again a good experience. Meeting someone from the other school of testing proved to be an interesting interview experience.

Ordered books:
I ordered books authored by James Bach, Jerry Weinberg and Dr. Cem Kaner. The management approved the order and paid the full amount. As soon as the books came, curious testers jumped on it. :) Hope to have some good discussions from the book readings.

Three important goals:
The fourth day at the new job, director calls me for a meeting and highlights the three challenges the company is facing. So, I have got three important goals to work on. I have set two months time as a deadline to achieve some measurable results. I submitted my first report at the end of first week. He sent it to the appropriate team and forwarded the report to the entire company. I liked the appreciation :)

Exploratory testing sessions:
There are testing sessions dedicated to exploratory testing sessions. There are a list of special missions to concentrate on every session. The energy and the atmosphere is amazing. Though the debrief isn't the ideal but its a good start. I hope to blog more on the learning from these sessions. And yes, it was here where Rapid Reporter was introduced. To my surprise, everyone accepted the tool immediately and now everyone uses the tool!

On a personal note, I continue to play table tennis. And I have started doing something which I have not done for the past 26 years. I have participated in a gym contest and today is the fifth consecutive day where I have exercised in a gym :) It feels very good.

Thanks for reading this post. Let me get back to mind mapping.

2011 is history. At the start of 2011, I wrote this blog post:
http://enjoytesting.blogspot.com/2011/01/peek-into-future-bold-attempt.html

2011 was a great year for me. Here is the mindmap for 2011:

Year 2011

Its time for new goals, new plans and new expectations.
Here is the mindmap for the year 2012.

I have not planned 2012 like the last year. I have learnt that new opportunities come up from nowhere and old goals give way to new goals.

It is better to be well prepared than well planned. I am prepared for 2012. Bring it on :)

Wish you all a very happy new year. May you create all the opportunities you need to make 2012 the best year so far. And once you create the opportunity, just grab it :)

This is a quick post in between a testing session. Right now I am testing www.ibibo.com and they have a 'Friend Suggest' feature where ibibo suggests friends for you.
Here is the screenshot from ibibo.com

Friend Suggest

I assume that friends are suggested based on some algorithm. The number of mutual friends is also highlighted.

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

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

Contents page

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

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

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

How can I buy your books?
1. Please transfer INR 200 to the following bank account.


If you are using Paypal, please transfer USD 4.5 to ajay184f@gmail.com

2. Once I receive the money, I will email you the book.
Any questions, feel free to email me at ajay184f@gmail.com

Do I get any discount?
Buy both books at INR 285 or USD 6.0
If you have already bought the first book, please pay INR 160 or USD 3.5
Special Thanks to
Praveen Singh - Director of www.99tests.com for founding 99tests. It is an excellent platform to participate in testing contests and learn from other testers. I learn from every contest at 99tests.

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

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

Today is a special day. It is my mother's birthday.
To celebrate the birthday, I released an ebook :)
  

About the book:

Elena

Thanks to Miagi-Do school members who have spent their valuable time to review my book. Special thanks to Alek, Huib, Elena and Jeroen.

My sincere thanks to Satish from Jumadi.in for listing my book and helping me launch in time for my mother's birthday.

Hope you like the book :)

1. Browse to http://eurostarconferences.com/content/teamstar-2011.aspx
2. Click on the link 'Click here to vote' and enter your email id.

3. Click on the Register button once you enter your email id.
4. Vote for 'A License to Test' video.
5. Complete the question, captcha, click on Submit and send the link to your friends.

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

Summary Slide of my presentation

The Bach Brothers' Award



Weekend Testing Facilitation

I wrote articles for Testing Planet and Testing Circus.

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

Lost in your steps - I realized the severity, tried hard to reproduce but you were developed by someone else. What could I do?

I cannot remove you from my memory, you have been saved as a known issue. Just wondering if I should let her know about you because she is very tough on those who bug me... I want you back in my life... I want you to get fixed and come clean to me...

I searched for you in my entire system but you hid so well... I cried & cried, fought for you in the bug triage, went back to my old system to retrace our sweet memories but no use... You taught me the value of patience and observation. I stayed awake whole night waiting for the one call, one message but your new partner took away all your attention. I am a stranger to you now...

Remember the first time I saw you, the first screenshot I took, the first letter I wrote to your developer?
Why me dear? Why me???? Come back please!

I'm sorry dear. I should not have shouted in front of everyone. I realize that mistakes happen by everybody. Next time, I will not stress your system, I will not make you run so fast, I will give enough memory, enough hard disk, but give me just one more chance!

I can't spend my weekend without you. If you want, I am ok to meet all your relatives. I am spending time reading our old conversation logs, the tickets we bought together,,, please onde ondu salla plz (Please Only chance please).

thank you so much friends. She came back to me this morning. Her developer fixed her thoughts on me & made me understand the importance of Dev relations. She is going to introduce me to her relatives today. Nervous & excited at the same time. Its going to be a great weekend! :)

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.

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.

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.

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.

What are you waiting for? 

Click on the link http://db.tt/xcAYzF1 , install Dropbox and enjoy the benefits! 

Post your questions about Dropbox as comments to this post and I will answer them for you. 

If you are someone like me who can't live without Dropbox, feel free to share this post or comment on how Dropbox helps you. 

Image Credits: https://www.dropbox.com/tour#4

Should the testers test with a competition mindset once a while? 

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 :)

Today I am very happy. What is so special about today?
I came 4th in the recently concluded security testing competition held at 99tests.

So, what? How does this make special? You are not even in top 3!
This competition is special for many reasons.

First Time - Security Testing

• I don't know Security Testing.
• I am not skilled in Security Testing and I will never be skilled at Security Testing.
• I need to have strong programming skills. So, no security testing for me.
• No one asks me to perform Security Testing for this application. Why should I test for this criteria if the customer has not asked for it?
• The programmers will not fix the security bugs.
• The books & resources on Security Testing are many & very costly.

Competition ends on 16th April - 3 days and 6hrs left

I registered to this competition as I wanted to learn about Security Testing.
How can I miss this wonderful opportunity where testers compete and log some cool bugs. Then a thought struck: What is the fun in watching others log bugs? Why be a silent spectator?

I am aware that I can't run as fast as the security experts but I can crawl if not walk!

So, I decided that I will compete as an active competitor instead of being a silent spectator!
A plan was drafted right there!

• Convert the .chm to pdf [Converted on April 13th - 07:00 AM IST]
• Print the book [Printed on April 13th - 01:00 PM IST]
• Read the book [April 13th - 11:00 PM IST for half an hour]
• Apply leave for Friday [April 14th 05:30 PM IST]
• Sleep well [ 4 hours]
• Read the book [April 15th 11AM IST onwards]
• Update the computer software [April 15th 03:15 PM IST]
• Test & log bugs [April 16th 01:30 AM IST - 08:00 AM IST

With the goal in sight, passion inside, silence outside, I started security testing.

The BIG day - Friday April 15th!
I had not slept on 14th night as the build was released to us and I was on leave the next day. When I woke up at 11 AM IST, the body was happy after a well deserved rest of 4 continuous hours.
The book Web Security Testing Cookbook was easy to understand, to the point and very informative.

There were so many topics, each topic teaching me something very interesting. As I had applied leave to office, I had the time and the resources. No disturbances. It was easy to make my family understand about the leave [They are used to my strange ways of working by now].

Lunch Time: 12:20 PM IST
After many days, I had the chance to feast on home food. I love my mother's cooking and it had its own sweet effect. I was feeling sleepy and I had two choices:
                     Sleep now when there is no disturbance or sleep when there is noise/power cut
I did not want to waste time, motivated myself to concentrate, focussed my energy on the goal!

I did not sleep. Slowly but steadily, I was getting confident about my chances in this competition. Time was ticking by, I finished a major part of the book.

Break time: 06:00 PM IST
I took a break. I went for a bath and imagined finding bugs in the application and winning the competition.
Mind was fresh after the bath. I continued reading the book along with comparing notes from OWASP guide.
This continued till 11:00 PM IST. The only breaks were for lunch or drinking water or for toilet.

Trust in Alarm: 11:00 PM IST
I was tired. I wanted to sleep but again the 'What if' question came to my mind. What if I overslept and by the time I woke up, the competition ended? As I had not logged even a single bug by now, I was nervous to sleep. Should I stay awake or sleep for two hours?
I trusted the alarm and the alarm info popped up: 2 hrs 20 mins remaining.
Alarm was set to 01:30 AM IST

Final Push! 01:30 AM IST to 08:00 AM IST
I logged seven bugs - read about the topic, tested, investigated, read, logged.
I was not sure if I had done enough. Should I log three more? Should I log 30 more? No answer as my body was searching for the nearest bed!

To be frank, I was very tired and could not concentrate. I had to sleep. The battery of 2.5 hrs could last only 6.5 hrs. Though I would have loved to log more bugs, i was happy that I gave my best!

Results
I woke up at 12:30 PM IST and first task I did was to browse to the competition page to check out the results. This was the screen displayed:

I was so happy. I am still happy. This competition and the entire 4 days effort would motivate me to achieve my goals. And I want to dedicate this victory to one person who kept on encouraging me right from the moment I registered for this competition. Thanks Krishnaveni.

I have taken the first step - I have conquered my fears of Security Testing. What about you?

I am Back!