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TestingGeek has mentioned it many times about its philosophy of Learn, Share and Keep Learning. We feel that it is very important to learn from the people who are expert in the field, interact with them and think about how they approach a given problem, question or suggestion. Fortunately, with so many usenet and e-groups around, you can get in touch with most of the experts in the field. You will be surprised with the level of discussion and interaction happens on some of the e-groups. Some time conversation on some of the seemingly trivial questions bring you very good insight on the subject that you feel, Aha glad I came to know that. Best part of these conversations are different point of views that you get to know and different skills you acquired. TestingGeek has learnt tremendously from these discussions, some time as a participant, and some time as an observer of the different type of problems, different types of questions and solutions offered or suggestions given by various experts. On this page, you will find interesting conversations which can give us some new insight, on the topics we think we know and understand well. If you have some interesting question or came across some interesting conversation, share with us. Following example will give you hint on what you can expect in these pages. Happy Learning. This example was given in response to the question that what should we do if it is not possible to test the system we are building. There is the known story of Dr. Parnas, who refused to build a defense system software against nuclear missiles, stating that "The inability to test a strategic defense system under field conditions before we actually need it will mean that no knowledgeable person would have much faith in the system.". He was right, the developers/testers would be able to test and simulate some parts of the system, but the final system as a whole would be impossible to test until a real war was in course and you had nuclear ogives being shot at you. (You can not even test in at a desert location with test-intended- nuclear-bombs, because the Nuclear Test-Ban Treaty prohibits.) While Parnas is right about the ability to test the system, I think he kind of missed the point. IOW, a variant of Pascal's Wager applies. If somebody is going to be throwing nukes at me I would rather have a defense system up that will work with 0.0 < P < 1.0 than have no system up that will work with P = 0.0.
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Software Testing - Increasing Perceived Value of Tester
General Testing -
Questions & Conversations
This discussion is a bit old, but you will still find it relevant if you have not read it earlier on sqaforum. Original question from Elfriede was as follows I am preparing for a feature presentation on the topic of "Increasing a tester's usefulness as QA becomes less valued."
Right before the year 2000 testers were in high demand. However, after the big hype, the .com bust and given the current state of the economy, software testing is now outsourced and is often seen as unnecessary overhead.
How do you increase your perceived value as a tester in this current market? Are you still in the testing field? Some of my tester friends are now doing Sys Admin and other type of work. How has work life as a tester changed for you? Here are some of my suggestion - the more detailed reasoning for these suggestion is provided in my presentation:
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Installation Testing Challenges
General Testing -
Questions & Conversations
This question was asked by John in Software-Testing yahoo group. Whole discussion was around, what are the different challenges associated with installation testing and how people have solved problems associated with the installation testing. Excerpts from the original question goes like this - Currently, it is the test team's job to verify each installation in various ways. This includes running every new installer that is created and then using a tool called Beyond Compare to compare the files that are installed with the build folder to ensure all files are identical. Secondly, for each build, the testers must compare all files of a new installed build with an installed build of the last version and note that all changes are expected.
We often find problems when we do these checks, and it will come back that the install developer left something out or had the wrong version of a file and we will need to do the whole process over again. Some of the interesting responses were as follows
Scripted Testing - Good or Bad
General Testing -
Questions & Conversations
CONTEXT - I am responsible at my organisation for reviewing test scripts for a software product in the Healthcare Arena. I have noticed a lot of repetition in the scripts.
Read more...
Software Testing - A Creative Career
General Testing -
Questions & Conversations
This question was asked by Dina in SQATester yahoo groups. Various reasons were discussed on why software testing is a creative career. This was the original question I'm a senior computer engineering student and I'm really considering testing as a career. I did an internship last summer and as fun as it was, I was disappointed. My question is this: I felt the problem is that the software produced are very much alike and so it turns the testing process to a routine. if you have this, you do that, end of story. I'm not sure if that was related to the whole career or was it just because the project I was working on was like that? Because the main reason I went into the testing career (or looking into it to be exact) is the creativity, not to mention that (I was told) I fit the description. I'd appreciate some guidance :)
Future Of Software Testing
General Testing -
Questions & Conversations
This question was asked by Mr. Satish in Software Testing and Software Quality Assurance google group. Discussion was centered around four main questions that Mr. Satish asked. - In the event of any bad patch for software industry, testers are the first one to get fired.
- Developers can also do job of testing as well as their job of coding.
- There is very good focus on the development of testing tools, and eventually tools will replace the testers.
- Testing is not drawing any more investment.
There were some very interesting points discussed in response to these questions. TestingGeek has tried to capture some of them to give you different view points.
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