Software Quality and Testing

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Types of Testing / Testing Techniques
2007-09-06 06:27:00
The different "Types of Testing " are listed below. The list should provide a fair indication of the breadth of activities that a Testing Professional may engage in .. did someone ever say that Testing was not challenging or there was very little to do in Testing ? I can hardly think of any other domain that offers so much leverage and affords such wide opportunites to specialize in & work on ! Acceptance TestingAd hoc TestingBuddy TestingPaired TestingExploratory TestingIterative / Spiral model TestingAgile / Extreme TestingAesthetics TestingAlpha TestingAutomated TestingBeta TestingBlack Box TestingBoundary TestingComparison TestingCompatibility TestingConformance TestingConsistency Testing (Heuristic)Deployment TestingDocumentation TestingDomain TestingDownload TestingEC Analysis TestingEnd-to-End TestingFault-Injection TestingFunctional TestingFuzz TestingGray Box TestingGuerilla TestingInstall & Configuration TestingIntegration TestingSystem IntegrationTop-down...
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Test Case Design
2007-09-03 18:35:00
We look at a list of methodologies used in the process of designing test cases. The obvious questions that folks new to / not too familiar with testing tend to ask is ... why Test Case Design and why all of these methodologies ? The answer to the why is based on a fundamental premise of Software Testing i.e. "Complete" or "100%" testing is not possible. Yep, sounds a little negative to the uninitiated, but thats the fact. The derivative of the above statement implies that "all" Testing is incomplete, although the degree of incompleteness varies. In reality, testing is performed within various limitations and boundaries defined by variables such as resources, time, cost, etc. Given these constraints, Testers need to come up with a set of Test Cases that has the highest probability of unearthing the greatest number of defects. This is where Test Case Design plays a significant role.In this post, we'll keep things short and only take a really quick, v...

REMEMBER, You are unique ... just like everyone else !
2007-09-03 06:42:00
Giving it some thought made me realize the paradoxically true nature of the title of this post ... while on the one hand we are each one of us "unique", on the other hand everyone around is also "unique" ... it no longer seems to be such an exclusive club after all !So, whats the big deal about being unique, would'nt it be easier to simply imitate someone else ... a role model perhaps ? Ralph Waldo Emerson has a few interesting words to say about this ..."Insist on yourself; never imitate. Your own gift you can present every moment with the cumulative force of a whole life's cultivation; but of the adopted talent of another you have only an extemporaneous half possession...  Do that which is assigned to you, and you cannot hope too much or dare too much."If you still doubt your uniquely "unique" status and if the "unique" you can really hope to achieve anything or make a difference, then you need to hear what Edward Ha...
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The best estimation technique ?
2007-09-02 11:48:00
What's the "best" technique to estimate the time it will take to do something .. especially when it comes to Testing Software, this is one of the questions that gets asked quite a bit ... so whats the "best" answer to give to this question ? Depends ... a likely and quite a workable + stick-able answer at times, might seem to be to go and actually ask the person who will be doing the actual testing. Well, this is the first step .. once you have a reasonable estimate from the actual person who will be doing the work and who would also be held  responsible for meeting the deadlines, the next step is to address any mis-match in expectations from what the Manager "thought" it should take and what the Engineer has expected it to take. In case of gross discrepancies, rather than dismiss the engineer's estimate, the recommended practice is to understand why and all of the variables involved in arriving at the Engineer's estimate. This could...
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The enemy of "Great" is "Good" ...
2007-08-31 06:20:00
OK, I borrowed that title from Jim Collin's book, Good to Great : Why Some Companies Make the Leap...And Others Don't. I think the fundamental principle of greatness tends to apply to people as much as it does to large groups of people a.k.a. organizations. Its so very easy to see the truth in the statement that "good" and "good enough" is the enemy to being "great". Jim Collins goes on to state that ... "We don't have great schools, principally because we have good schools. We don't have great government, principally because we have good government. Few people attain great lives, precisely because it is easy to settle for a good life. The vast majority of companies never become great precisely because they become quite good. - and that is their main problem." Ditto for most people, especially in companies, to reach the point of being good and then like the proverbial hare (in the race with the tortoise) to take a break and ...
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Am having "attrition" troubles at home than in the office !
2007-08-30 18:48:00
If you're wondering what i'm blabbing about here ... well, i know attrition is an issue that we need to and are tackling at our workplace ... with significant amount of success i must say. But that same success eludes me on the home front ... ok, before you start off on tangential imaginary voyages, let me clarify ... i'm talking of attrition related to members of the four-legged variety. I'm fond of cats ... so much so that last year i had close to eleven cats (ok, several kittens were part of that number) ... anyways, the fact remains ... I had eleven cats. As in the corporate world, there was a fair degree of poaching / head-hunting .. by some of my neighbors who developed a liking for these furry bundles of joy ... nett result of their activities was that some of the cool cats decided that the grass (er.. milk and food) was greener on the other side and left. There were also a few that wanted to explore the big bad world on their own ... these adventurous cat...
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Sun is amongst the Top 20 best employers ..... in India
2007-08-28 19:00:00
The current year's dataquest survey has ranked Sun amongst the top 20 best employers in India .  The seventh annual Dataquest-IDC survey was participated by 2,844 software, hardware and marketing professionals from 33 IT companies, totally employing 3,04,834 people in seven cities. The rating of employers was done upon the basis of employee satisfaction and HR scores."According to Pradeep Gupta, publisher of Cybermedia, multinational employers IBM, Capgemini, Sun Microsystems and CSC have mastered the art of managing Indian employees to rank among the Top 20 best IT employers in the country." http://www.ptinews.com/pti%5Cptisite.nsf/ 0/C86A541CC698BF9C65257345003D5D40?OpenDo cumenthttp://news.oneindia.in/2007/08/28/ idc-dataquest-survey-infosys-slips-wipro- no-where-among-top-20-1188291846.html&nbs p; |   Slashdot It! | Submit to del.icio.us 
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When a Test case passes, is it "successful" ?
2007-08-28 17:55:00
One thing thats interesting to observe when interacting with folks on the subject of testing is the use of the words - "successful" and "unsuccessful" when talking about test cases that have been executed on a particular product / feature. Generally, people tend to associate the term "successful" with a test case that has "passed' without encountering any bug / error during execution and "unsuccessful" with a test case that "fails" due to a bug / error during execution.From a Quality / Test ing perspective, the above reasoning sounds counterintuitive and contrary to what we should really be saying which is ... a test case that fails is in reality "successful" and a test case that passes is actually "unsuccessful". Lets imagine this scenario - my car leaks oil, belches dark fumes, rattles and makes enough noise to wake up the dead. Sensing that something could be amiss, I decide to take the vehicle to...
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Test the tests ...
2007-08-26 13:24:00
When an entire organization relies on the Test s of the Testers, how much thought is given to the reliability of the Tests themselves ? The fact remains that Tests too, like the programs they are designed to test, are artifacts created by human beings .. is'nt there a saying ... "To err is ..." So, if the applications being tested can have bugs, why would the tests / test scripts not have bugs ? Are we doing "enough" to ensure that our tests are "worthy" of testing the applications they are intended to test ? Lets first test our Tests ! |   Slashdot It! | Submit to del.icio.us 

Thoughts ...
2007-08-25 10:08:00
"Do not let your fire go out, spark by irreplaceable spark, in the hopeless swamps of the approximate, the not-quite, the not-yet, the not-at-all.  Do not let the hero in your soul perish, in lonely frustration for the life you deserved, but have never been able to reach. Check your road and the nature of your battle. The world you desired can be won. It exists, it is real, it is possible, it is yours."-- Ayn Rand  Do not settle for the "good enough"; its neither ! |   Slashdot It! | Submit to del.icio.us 
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The Testing team does not assure quality ...
2007-08-24 18:12:00
The term Quality Assurance, when applied to the Testing team, is a misnomer. Its far too easy for a tester especially someone relatively new to testing, to think that the testing team is responsible for "assuring" product quality.If the testing team is seen as the ones assuring quality, it tends to show the testers as the final line of defense, the ones responsible for "protecting" the customers from the "other group" that produces "poor quality" software. I can already envision warriors wearing flowing capes, masked faces and outrageous outfits with their swords drawn, all set to slay the dark forces of "bad quality" !Reality tends to portray a slightly different picture ... while it is easy for us testers to assume that we "break the product", the fact is that the product is delivered to the testing team in a broken state ... oops, there goes our chance to claim credit for breaking something thats broken already ... In es...
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Software Testing ...
2007-08-24 11:17:00
Is operating a System or Application under controlled conditions, evaluating the results and checking if performance meets expectations  Is "Organized Skepticism"; an inherent belief that things may not be as they seem Is the process of executing a program with the intent of finding an error Is comparing the ambiguous to the invisible, so as to avoid the unthinkable happening to the unknown Is about reducing uncertainty about the perceived state of the product Is a vital support function that helps developers look good by finding their mistakes before anyone else does Is a key element in determining whether a product release receives brickbats or bouquets Commenting on Testers & Testing , a bright bulb once remarked ... "To err is human; to find the errors requires a tester". One of the jobs of a tester is finding errors a.k.a. bugs and as most...
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