Tuesday, August 25, 2009

Facebook Overlook

The other day I had to change my job duration at facebook; Its duration was initially stated as May, 2007 To Present.
As I have quitted this job now therefore needed to change it as May, 2007 to May, 2009 but look at what facebook communicated with my friends regarding this change:



It was really annoying for me because my ex-colleagues thought (hence asked) as if I were not on good terms with my previous employer and thus removed the record from my work information.

Bad, bad way of communication!

Is it a testing overlook, a usability issue or just facebook don't think its something to ponder upon?


|-- Quality lies in the eyes of customer --|

Thursday, August 20, 2009

Testing As a Career

Here's the communication I had (with some alterations) some months back with a newbie to testing, he asked me to help starting his career in testing field at STC. I am sharing it here with a belief that it might help my local testing community however these are just common steps one should take to start.

/----------------*-----------------/

I strongly discourage people getting into testing field with reasons like not getting another job or its the most simplest job on earth... but I believe you aren't from one of them [wish I am not wrong :)]
One more thing... I am not amongst professional trainers; the category in which bucks are charged for sharing every single moment [may be someday i will be:)] but just wanted to help our local testing community in any way I could...!

Anyways, lets scratch the things...

1- Mr. Ahmed Mubbashir at STC gave a very good startup tip for you to start reading some good testing professionals blogs, you can have a very good real time scenarios insight by going through that blogs.

2- Testing is not like Mathematics which you need to learn any kind a formulae for.. its a part of everyone's nature i guess; you complain about anything that bugs you (Inspired by James Bach's definition of Bug).
Just jump into it... browse different websites.. Examine their working.. Try uTest for freelance testing... you can also get register with Kasepersky for the very reason.

3- Try learn some basics about testing/QA to get a background knowledge of what testing is all about. Google, wikipedia are best sources believe me. I am jotting some testing terms down here, search 'em n learn 'em; though i am not from 'a tester must learn all testing terminologies by heart' school of thoughts but one needs to understand the terms to speak in favour or against of it.
  • Black box testing
  • White box testing
  • Grey box testing
  • Unit/Integration testing
  • Performance/Load/Stress Testing
  • Usability Testing
  • Acceptance testing
  • Security testing
  • Regression Testing
  • Software Development Life Cycle
4- Practice, practice n practice hard. As you are not currently working as a testing professional in any organization that's why you have to practice testing at your own.. take any windows application installed at your system n just dwell into it.. try every explorative/destructive action you can make on it. Reckon yourself as an end user of an application.. don't think how an intelligent user will behave while using an application... just be a child - a somewhat sensible child who can remember things and able to drive results from them.

5- Here are some mentors' blogs links that are worth reading:
6- Get to know about what could be an error here (i.e. usability testing).

7- If ever you get yourself out of ideas about how to start test or you stuck-up while testing something; visit this.

8- You asked about some automated tools in your email; i myself worked on Quality Test Professional and Loadrunner... I can somehow guide you using these tools but i strongly believe in manual testing rather than to work like a feeling less n senseless robotic arm. Well you can also Google these terms to get such a wonderful tutorials though I believe you have had.

9- Testing is all about you.. your perception of things and your passion to become a positive vandal. Make reading, practicing and suspecting every single thing you see your habit from now whether it’s an ATM machine, your rooms' furniture setting or any food you are eating right now.

Good luck with the hunt!


|-- Quality lies in the eyes of customer --|

Friday, August 14, 2009

To Blog or Not To Blog?

-- My first post is dedicated to Pakistan's Independence Day(14th August) --

And finally I am here to blog...

The credit goes to Kashif Ali Habib who urged me consistently for starting my own blog, sharing my concerns on some specific channel/mode. Infact I was never against starting this great opportunity to express yourself but was (and somehow I still am) pre-occupied with thoughts like I wont be able to do justice with my blog. Starting a blog is not actually hitting the jack pot but updating it with useful knowledge is actually reaching the mile stone.

Anyhow, I aim to share useful + precise (i.e. not essay like) information here and I truly hope my friends help me getting it together.

|-- Quality lies in the eyes of customer --|

Thursday, August 13, 2009

Bug Rejected – It's Unable to Reproduce!

One of the most hazardous hurdles for a software tester is ‘hard to reproduce bugs’ which truly scrapes up as a nightmare until resolved (At least to me it really is.)

These bugs gave a very tough time during initial stage of my career. I still remember the times when I managed hard to find a severe bug and when tried to proudly show it to my manager or developer, it suddenly got disappear. I used to try every possible way to reproduce it again but most of the times I came up with an embarrassing note (i.e. O God, where the bug gone?) and bashing my head with keyboard in front of developers/manager’s devilish smiles. Though it happens once in a blue moon now too but now I have learnt how to cope with these devilish gestures.

But eventually I realized it’s me who is missing the most important step of s/w testing and thus providing a chance to developers for their gem stones to remain undiscovered. I got to know the importance of ‘Test Reporting’ then. A tester’s efforts can never be termed as complete until unless she is not well equipped with pre and post notes of her test case.

I tried myself hard for being detailed-oriented. It’s my routine now to jot down all important information on my notepad before starting test an application. I follow this technique in every type of testing I do; whether its exploratory testing where you have full authority to play with the build or regression testing where you are already over burdened with testing both old and new features at the same time.

For instance, I try note following information as my Pre-Notes/Steps while testing a web application:

1. Type of browser (IE, Firefox, Chrome, Opera etc.)

2. Version of browser

3. Any extra browser add-ons installed (I often noticed ‘IE Developer toolbar’ messing up with ASP classic applications and generating an IE Explorer error)

4. Java script ON/OFF ( I had to test an invoice print report which had a bar code and it took me time to investigate why this bar code is displaying correctly at developer’s machine but not on my machine. It was a Sun JAVA applet that needed to be installed at my browser to display bar coded labels.)

5. Load images automatically ON/OFF (Must look into this utility before start testing because if you unchecked this utility there could be possibility that your image buttons will display their ALT text and the ALT text sometimes isn’t hyperlinked to correct path at all.)

6. Cookies ON/OFF ( now a days 80% web development is done using cookies capture, be sure about the option you have set for it before start testing)

7. No. of steps you ran through and the exact order in which you carried them out.

8. A short detail of files/folders/a third party utility used with the application being tested (if any).

Etcetera

And information below as my Post-Notes/Steps:

1. Try reproducing the bug again with your written steps and clues to make sure whether you hit the real blind spot?

2. Precised error description and/or error cause (if known).

3. Application version in which you reproduced the bug.

Though it seems time consuming and lengthy but guess what… It really works!

Whenever I try to reproduce any hard to reproduce bug; that childhood story of an ant always sparks in my mind. It was a part of my 6th standard course book and was entitled as ‘Try Again’. The moral of the story was an ant never gives up while constantly falling down the wall and tries to get up the wall each time with a new hope.

I bet there are a lot more things that need to be noted as Pre/Post notes and to know these all I am looking forward to your comments.


|-- Quality lies in the eyes of customer --|