Thursday, May 31, 2007

Skill Vs Technique ...

Mathew Heusser, wrote following lines for an article for Better software..

“…..instead of listing specific techniques, we might be better off listing skills …Once we have the skills, the techniques and terminology can help. After all, our community created test terminology as a servant …”

That is excellent point. In the industry like our where “terminologies and jargons” rule, focusing on skills would be greatly useful.

Skill - A skill is an ability, usually learned and acquired through training, to perform actions which achieve a desired outcome. It is more of a subjective attribute.

Example:

Writing
Speaking
Problem solving
Critical thinking and General system thinking
Modeling
Questioning
Creativity

Technique - A well-defined procedure used to accomplish a specific activity or task. More than one technique may be available for accomplishing a specific activity or task. Selection of the technique should be based on project approach, available tools, cost and time constraints etc.

Note that a skill denotes an “ability” where as Technique is a “procedure”. It becomes very easy for a technique to be lost in the jungle of jargons and terminologies – for skill it is less likely so …

Invest time in identifying and developing skills are important to your job …

Shrini

Sunday, May 13, 2007

Tester's Tool kit ....

James Bach mentions about a tool kit - a small set of utility programs that every tester needs to have to help in his/her testing, here ...

Programs like perfmon, burp poxy, filemon, regmon etc can be really useful and check here for other windows platform utilities

So far I have been using ethereal as network monitoring tool ...

Here is an improved version from microsoft Netmon 3.0

Shrini

Friday, May 11, 2007

Michael Hunter Interviews me for DDJ ...

Michael Hunter aka Braidy Tester, interviewed me for DDJ. See the interview here

With this I have joined illustrious list of Whos who in software Testing arena...

Michael has interviewed following people earlier (few notable ones) ... When you have time, go through each of these interviews and figure out how each one of following thinkers and great visionaries in testing present their views and their world of Testing ...

Gerald M Weinberg
James Bach
Michael Bolton
Jon Bach
Brian Marick
James Whittaker

I interacted with Michael from my Microsoft days. My first ever blog (on msdn) mentions Michael as sole inspiration for me getting into blogging. I enjoy reading Michael's blog and I keeping checking it once in every 2-3 days to see if anything has come up new there...

Michael hunter represents a unique testing culture within Microsoft and it is good see him working with people in context driven testing community. That makes him more special as a context driven microsoftee ....

Thanks Michael for featuring me in your 5 questions interview series ... I hope that will inspire many more testers in India, especially, to embrace testing and grow this community

Shrini




Thursday, May 10, 2007

Reliving TASO ...

Ben Simo and Sam Burgiss reminded me about "mother of all" paper on Test automation.

Yes, I am talking about James Bach's Test Automation Snake oil ... It is kind of bible for all Test automation professionals.

This is nearly a 10 years old article (original in Nov 1996 and a rewrite in June 1999) - I am surprised to see, like Nostradamus (a Famous a French apothecary), James, 1o years ago predicted and neatly articulated "wrong" ways of applying automation. The statements and observations made in the paper are mostly valid and applicable in Automation world even today.

I have started learning about Automation from this paper in a “real” way. Before I got into what I call it as "Holistic Approach to Automation" (for the lack of any better word) I did some automation here and there using some tools and later I realized how bad that was.

Today, I see so many young and upcoming testers falling into the trap and start learning Automation tools straight without knowing about Testing and how automation affects human testing. And there are tool vendors, training institutes and recruiters/head hunters – all just look for few words “automation" and names of some leading GUI automation tools - you got a job.

My advice to all who would like to pursue the career in Test automation...

1. Knowing tool is a very small part of you as automation Engineer.
2. Invest time in learning "Testing" especially human side of it and practice
3. Pick up a programming course - learn programming - C, C#, Java, VB, PERL can be good candidates.
4. Read anything by TASO by James and his other articles ... When I say read - don’t just go over them once and discard them ... Understand them deeply, discuss them, if you have question - share it with others in the community -- write to me I can help you with my views ...
Every time I read James' articles - I get new ideas, new thinking, new interpretations...

After doing all above - if you get time - use (I say use) an automation tool ...That is last thing that you require in the path to success in Test Automation...

You might also want to have a look at following noteworthy references related to Test automation...

Seven Steps to Automation success by Bret Pettichord
High Volume Test Automation Cem Kaner

James - you should seriously consider writing a sequel - TASO part II ...

Though you say Agile Automation is your TASO II, the plot appears to be not the same -- we are carving some more on the lines of TASO ....

Shrini

Monday, May 07, 2007

I will be presenting at STAR EAST ...

I am pleased to announce that I will be a track speaker for this year’s STAR EAST conference at Orlando, Florida May14-18. I am very excited to speak this biggest and most popular conference dedicated to software testing. I will be speaking on “10 classic Reasons why Test Automation projects fail” (Track T17- on May 17th) - one of my popular paper till date.

I also excited to get on stage for 2 other occasions other than my presentation –
Lightening talk for 5 minutes on “Traps in test estimations” - see the announcement regarding this by the moderator “Mathew Heusser”, here. It is really privilege to be in the line up for lightening talks that includes “who’s who” in “Software Testing” world – James Bach, Scott Barber, Michael Bolton, Mathew Heusser …

I will be chairing the session for “Test outsourcing track– Track F8” helping the speakers with introduction and time keeping.

This conference being my first STAR EAST conference (first ever) will also is a special one as I will be meeting some special people whose work has greatly inspired me …
I hope to see and chat with people like Cem Kaner, Jon Bach, and Ben Simo and off course James Bach , Michael Bolton and Scott Barber

Drop a line to me if you are interested to meet me and discuss the common passion - software testing…

See you there …

Shrini

Tuesday, May 01, 2007

Story around a bug ....

I found this interesting, lucid and narrative story related to a software bug (or bugs) here. Something on the lines of Story of testcase that I wrote sometime back.

Happy bugging ...

On a different note, do check out Jonathan Kohl's post on "Getting started with Exploratory Testing Part 1" here

Shrini