Practical Techniques to Keep Mind in Tune for Testing :)

Software testing is not a job, it’s a responsibility

These day have been really hectic for me but I tuned my mind to overcome the stress of testing work by changing my daily activities and try keeping my mind calm. Here are my experiences on this:

Either you are doing manual testing or you are writing complex automation scripts, you are the authorized person for the quality of that particular web page / module / overall product.

Why Software Testing is challenging?

Software testing is challenging because we have to keep up ourselves updated with latest knowledge as well as you have to continuously provide more qualitative inputs to make product better (in short, find more bugs). How can we keep up with this kind of stress?  It’s not a one time learning. It’s a process and believe me, by following some simple practices daily, you can do it easily.

Think testing about everything around you

Think how can you test a spoon, how can you test a book, how can you test a jar, how can you test a cable, how can you test a remote….endless list it is. After following these practice for 15 days (I personally did), see the difference in yourself.  You will be full of ideas. You will be able to understand things properly and will be able to co-relate the things.

Learn a new thing everyday

No matter whether it’s a small testing technique or an automation tool, you must have at least one item to list as “Learned” every day. Small amount of knowledge when accumulated creates an ocean of the same. Try it!!!

Keep diversified interests

It’s not easy to learn something else, while we are already busy testing. But at the same time, you cannot take a risk of pulling our career chords downwards. You cannot learn everything but you definitely can have some idea about some of the important things/domains other than the specific one, you have been working on.

Play games

There are numerous strategy games, pattern finding games, missing letter games available for free (I am using PEAK). Use the opportunity and learn from them. Games make your mind sharp and alert.

Read

Read whatever you can. It’s not necessary to read only software testing books to become a good tester. If you are able to co-relate things correctly, books on any subject will be a treasure for you.

Take breaks

We humans has a tendency of getting used to. If you look at a broken piece of furniture for longer time, our mind, at one point will start thinking about how perfect that piece was rather than the broken part. Don’t stick your eyes, constantly on the same thing. Take breaks, observe surrounding, discuss knowledge and resume work. Difference? A lot.

Keep a note

Everyday, in a notepad, jot down minimum two points about what you learn or what you did to make things happen or what did you find or what ideas did you implement. It would be a treasure on re-visit.

Learn management

To manage something you need not to be a manager. Start from your work and time. Try to help others and take help when required.  The management skill will grow with constant practice but will surely take out the best from you.

'Stay tuned and enjoy life'

Think again when you say "Anyone can do testing but not development"

Why don’t you want to join software testing?

Answers were interesting and hilarious

People's who ask these type of questions looks like:

• Anyone can do testing but not development (good to know)
• Testers are paid less (slightly true but not always)
• It’s a thankless job (totally agree but that’s not the valid reason)
• There is nothing to learn about it (Hooh……who said that?)
• There is no reason to choose software testing as a career (the worst reason)

                              Software testing helps software in being better

1. Software testing is not waste of time:

What happens when you have guest at home and you hurriedly prepare lemonade for them and serve them? When the guests leave the glasses unfinished, you feel that something must have gone wrong and when you taste the lemonade, OMG……it felt stinky. You wish you would have spent only 10 seconds more and tasted the lemonade before serving. While being in hurry to deliver the project in timeline, companies/management/anyone gets ready to compromise on the time for testing because the perception about software testing really takes long time than required is still alive in people’s mind. But isn’t the time taken for testing is worth compare to the customer’s call at midnight to let you know that he is going to cancel the next assignment as the current assignment delivered exhibited more than 5 critical bugs within first two hours of internal usage. Bang!!

2. Software testing is mandatory:

Software testing is an un-avoidable part of software development life cycle. The way

• Editors help in making the movie better.
• Proof readers help in making a book better.
• Security guards help in making people’s lives peaceful and secure.
• Oil helps in running machinery faultlessly.

                              

3. Unit testing is a complete responsibility of developer:

When you develop something, you need to check it before asking someone else to check it. The way

• The chef always tastes and smells his/her recipe before serving others

Developer is completely responsible to test his/her own code before sending it to testers. Testers are there to help you in improving quality of code and ultimately product and not to find out the silliest mistakes you did while writing the code.In addition to that, never assume that quality is the responsibility of testers only.In today’s agile world, developers and testers are supposed to take combined responsibility of product quality. Developers are expected to do pair testing with tester and provide insight about what and why something can go wrong and encourage tester to generate testing ideas based upon your insights.

4. Developers and testers are equal:

Any work/project is a combined effort of team and that means each and every person is equally important. If a developer thinks that he is doing best and should be given more importance because he is creating something from scratch, re-consideration of the thought is required. Yes, developer develops something from scratch but he is not able to complete the creation without help of tester.

Tester provides a user’s eye for the product. A well-trained and experienced tester can show the loopholes in the product, a developer can never think off. A tester brings in new ideas about how product should be, how it should look at particular instance, how it should work, how it can behave and how it can crash.

The way it is important to add salt to every recipe to make them eatable, testing is needed to make the product deliverable. And therefore, developers and testers are equally important. They are the left and right hands of body called project.

5. Tester should be involved from first day of project:

As a developer, you should never make that mistake to assume that there is no need for a tester to become aware about something like requirement analysis, logic applied while writing code, change requests by client, feedback's by client etc.Tester is a stack holder and should be involved from kick-off the project. Initial involvement of testing team gives them confidence, constant discussions nurtures an understanding between development and testing team, kind help boosts their spirit to do something better, demands for suggestions make them feel worth.

Bug and Loss

 Hi,

Greetings!!

We recently had a case study of Disney that what happens when a software fails. It can cost pennies to fix but millions of dollars to distribute a solution. Most are simple, subtle failure, with many being so smell that it’s not clear which ones are true failure and which ones aren’t.  A software bug is a problem causing a program to crash or produce invalid output. The problem is caused by insufficient or erroneous logic. A bug can be an error, mistake, defect or fault, which may cause failure or deviation from expected results.

There’s an old saying ‘If you can’t say it, you can’t do it.’ This applies perfectly to software development and testing.

Coding errors may be familiar to you if you’re a programmer. Typically, these can be traced to the s/w’s complexity, poor documentation, schedule pressure or just plain dumb mistakes. It’s important to note that many bugs that appears on the surface to be programming errors can really be traced to specification and design error. It’s quite common to hear a programmer say,” Oh, so that’s what it’s supposed to do. If somebody had just told me that I wouldn't have written the code that way”.

                                              The cost to fix bugs can increase dramatically over time

Software Testing Background

Hi,

Greetings!!

It is a common approach of human being to relate the functionality of software by their day today life. You might be wondering Why Software Testing? Answer lies in its background. Let’s understand why there is need to test a software or anything by which stakeholders earn money from public.

For better understanding of this, let discuss a case study of the world famous cartoon industry i.e. “The Disney”. This case study is old of 1990’s.

The Disney Company released its first multimedia CD-ROM game for children, 'The Loin King Animated Storybook'. Later the year in December, Disney’s customer support phones began to ring, and ring, and ring. Soon the telephone support technicians were swamped with calls from angry parents with crying children who couldn’t get the software to work. Numerous stories appeared in newspaper and on TV news.

Ever wondered why this happened?

Disney failed to test software on a broad representation of the many different PC models available in the market. The software worked on a few systems likely the one Disney programmer used to create the game but not on the most common systems that the general public had.

It was obvious that the software didn't operate as intended. As a software tester you’ll discover that most failure are hardly ever this obvious.

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Approach of QA in Organization

Hi,

Greetings!!

 From today onwards I will start blogging about Software Testing practices which a QA must follow as per their role in the organization. QA is divided with different roles and responsibilities from 1^st day till n^th years of their experience, first to trainee, then to engineer, afterwards to Sr. Engineer then Lead carrying forward to Manager and this journey ends by getting involved in BOD (Board of Directors) of the organization. The road from Trainee to Manager is very long, it approximately takes 4-5 years of your professional career. But what if you can do the same in 4 years or lesser? Isn’t that sounds amazing. In order to prove this statement true, lot of experience is required which can only be received if you remember rule of 10,000.

It’s a common approach of a human being that after performing a task twice or thrice, they think they are master of that work and here the rule of 10,000 comes in action. It states that whenever you do any work and think you have become a master of that then think have you performed that task 10,000 times?. If no, then you need to rethink, participation and 24*7 availability can get you to Managers post very early then then the common folks.

Thanks!!

Community Learning in Global Village

Hi,

Greetings!!

Yesterday night after my 1st post on blog, I interacted with Mr. X, QA Engineer on Facebook, ice breaking conversation initiated from my reply to one of his question asked on social forum. It was a nice experience talking to him. Our talk continued nearly 3 hrs (11:30 PM to 02:45 AM), we both tried to understand the basics of ‘Automation Testing using selenium’, with hand on sessions on both machine. It was a wonderful experience for me to utilize my free time effectively.

I was looking for code reduction and the other he was finding difficulty in understanding my approach about codes. We then used Skype, Facebook chat and Team Viewer to match the frequency. It was pleasure interacting and helping him in resolving his issues. The community based learning holds sense in this global village, we live in.

Introduction to Me and My Work

Hello Everyone,

Before my introduction allow me to introduce you  to my blog which is for software testing trainee initially to come up to a level, so that they can perform good in organization and blog will grow for professional testing engineers as well. During my blogging I will be sharing my experience in my 1^st organization; time to time. 

Extending the same, blog will be about relevant software testing practices, with hand on sessions which will be supported by video, wire-frames and many other. 

I Ramandeep Singh, Author and Founder of https://ramandeepqa.blogspot.com. I did my graduation in Information Technology from IEC College of Engineering and Technology, Gr. Noida. Current placed in a leading corporate of software testing in India. It’s being 6 months I am working over there. I am passionate about technology; this is the inspiration for the foundation of blog because I think: 

“There is no better insurance than the knowledge of how to do something the right way. There is no greater peace of mind than knowing you did it right way”. 

I know this blog is new, but I request you to ‘Stay tuned as there is a lot more to come’.