Smarter Test Engineering

I have seen many teams using the same process to design test cases without considering the fact that better Test Design can yield more defects and reduce Test Execution time. When I look at the Test Cases they all look similar to me. Same design techniques are used for all the test cases. Testers are more likely to use the design techniques which are easy, but they generate numerous test cases which will increase Test Execution Time. In Decision Tables technique we consider both data and logical dependencies, hence the resulting test cases are complete and minimal. The number of test cases generated by Boundary Value Analysis and Equivalence class techniques are more when compared to the number of test cases generated by Decision Tables. With the combination of above Test Design techniques it is always important to use Pairwise Testing to cover the interactions between fields. The combination's that yield from pairwise test case generator will increase when the fields and field values increases but we can reduce the number of combination's by using pairwise Test Case Generators available at Testersdesk.com and find more bugs in less time.

My Previous post was all about "Things we hate in Testing", While thinking about that post I questioned myself that "If there are such things that we hate in testing than what is that makes me so much passionate towards Testing? or am I telling this only because I am a software tester. I went into my past when I got this question raised in my mind.

My Bachelors Degree (non computers) gave me no idea of what Software Testing is all about. The only thing that I knew (but cannot do) about IT was programing at that time. I learned C, C++ but could not find any job. I joined Testing at Valueminds and from day 1, I was so much passionate towards testing.

Whenever I write some code to automate or find a defect, the only thing I remember is that "I am Testing". I can become a developer (may not be in Microsoft) but the challenges in Testing, the scope to learn new things in testing is huge. There is always something to learn in testing and everyday you here a new thing about testing. One of my friends used to say that "tester should be like a sales man". When he listed the skills required for a Tester, I just got a feeling that a Testers job is more challenging than others. I also recollected some incidents that made me so much passionate towards testing. There are many people who find bugs wherever they go and even list them in their blogs. The most interesting thing I like in testing is to debug an issue. I like if it takes more time to debug and if it is more challenging. I feel myself as owner of the application when I perform adhoc testing. I like the defects that come out in this phase. I feel proud when I catch some bugs before the release which are not covered in the test cases. I have noticed many times that I speak very loud and confident when I talk about Testing. This is what makes me a Test Engineer and I am so much passionate about it.

Happy Testing,
Bhagawati

I was reading a post "5 Things I hate in testing"
(http://www.softwaretestingclub.com/forum/topics/5-things-you-hate-about and below are the common things that I liked from that post:

1. Crappy, unreliable test environments where most of my time and effort is expended identifying environment issues rather than product issues.
2. Code that isn't architected in a testable manner, causing testers to have to write integration tests when simple unit tests could find the same bugs.
3. Testers who get comfortable with what they already know and stop pushing themselves to learn more.
4. Unproductive test-tool, which was historically over-purchased and still, swallows a recurring chunk of budget.
5. The lack of standard education around the field.
6. Management focus on numbers (without considering context)
7. The perception that a career in testing is somehow of less value
8. Testers doing some manual mundane tasks repeatedly, where technology can be applied and used. (For example preparing a 1 GB file manually or typing 255 characters). We are solving the problems in Technology and we are not using Technology to solve our problems.
9. Testing team not informed about the changes.

In this post I came across many things that testers hate in testing.

For point # 5 mentioned above, one solution can be introducing “Software Testing” as a Subject (both theory and practical) in all professional courses. Many Students don’t know what Testing is until they join some training institute or forced to do a testers role.

For point # 8 mentioned above, one solution can be using tools like http://www.testersdesk.com/ or scripting some programs to reduce our effort. For example if you need to check the files installed in some part of your system you can write a small vbscript to see the folder structure and its contents by just inputting the path.

My dear readers please give your solutions to avoid the above listed things.

Happy Testing,
Bhagawati