BWT - Do you wanna Rock?

A strong passion to test within a group of tester friends ignited an idea of testing for a couple of hours over the weekends very far away from the pressures of a regular full time job. It started off with myself and Ajay testing a website and posting results of our testing efforts HERE. The subsequent weekend had Ajay, Sharath and Manoj testing another website. View the Experience Report HERE. This gave birth to 'BANGALORE WEEKEND TESTERS'. It is a group of people who will pick any random open source project and test alongwith other testers all in a virtual setup, and publish Experience Reports.

When is the next BANGALORE WEEKEND TESTERS Session?

Date: Aug 15th 2009
Time: 09.30pm IST

If you want to join the session or need more details, Send an email to weekendtesting@gmail.com

It is Indian Independence Day on 15th August. Lets fight for Indian Testing Independence. Lets work towards better testing community. Come join hands with Us. You can be from any part of the world, not just Bangalore.

We need more and more BAD Testers (Bringing Awesome Defects Testers).

Happy Testing,
Parimala Shankaraiah
http://curioustester.blogspot.com


P.S: BAD Testers(Bringing Awesome Defects Testers) is a term coined by one of my tester friend RaviSuriya.

The Silent Spectator – Please Speak Up

Until recently, I used to ghost follow several blogs. By this, I simply mean that I read a lot of blogs, absorbed them if I liked them or ignored if I didn’t. While reading one particular blog post, I realized that I had faced a similar situation in the past and I felt that I had to share that story. I even thought that my story was better than the story of that blog post. I made up my mind to write my story in the comments sections. Hurray! The blog owner was amused and got interested in knowing more about it and hence started our journey of ‘Learning from each other’.

How many of us add comments on the blog posts we read? I am not saying that the blog reader should just add some random comments like ‘Great Post’, ‘Nice Read’ etc etc(I have done this in the past too). Though such comments do appreciate the blog owner, it neither helps the blog reader nor the blog owner in terms of learning. All I am saying is that if you have a better story to share and you think that it will do good to a larger audience, do share that story. Who knows 'yours could be the best story ever thought or heard of'. You could be sharing it on your own blog or on different forums where people are involved in discussions or by adding comments to the blog posts that you read on different blogs.

As a blog reader myself, I used to think what do I gain by sharing my side of the story on someone else’s blog? Trust Me, Its human to think this way. I realized slowly that by doing this, I was waking up myself from the close knit shell that I had limited myself to. I started asking a lot of questions to myself. I started questioning other testers/bloggers. I started challenging what I already know. I started challenging others about what they know. And finally, I started Thinking in the right direction(As a human, I could still err. but that would be fine as long as I learn from them).

There could be Deep Thinkers who do not blog. There could be bloggers who may not be thinking effectively(if that is the right word to use). But all this is just part of the Learning Curve. Sooner or Later, everybody is going to learn from their experiences and mistakes, the easy way or the hard way. This is my side of the Story? What's Yours?

Happy Testing,
Pari

Paired Testing at a Distance - Part 1

Yet another TE(Thriller Experience) in Testing. Myself and my friend Ajay teamed up on Saturday night at 8.15pm to test a website. Website testing - A lot of us would have tested several websites both big and small. Now the website we thought of testing was http://www.vischeck.com/vischeck/vischeckURL.php (It was Ajay’s idea to test this website).

What is Vischeck?
Vischeck is a way of showing you what things look like to someone who is color blind. The first thought that came to my mind was I am not color blind! As a person who is not color blind, testing a website which is caters to color blind people seemed a little unjustified. However, it challenged me to figure out what a non-color blind person like me could infer from such a website.

Summary of Paired Testing
Myself and Ajay agreed upon a particular page http://www.vischeck.com/vischeck/vischeckURL.php for testing. The Duration was 30 minutes for testing and 30 minutes for discussing the issues we found. It was a challenge to interact with each other as we were not face to face, but on Google Chat! Start 8.36 pm and we got disconnected from each other and started testing. We decided to regroup(via chat) at 9.06 pm and discuss the issues. At 9.06 pm, we stopped our testing effort and started discussing the issues. Please find my experience report HERE. You can find Ajay’s experience report HERE.

What went right?
1. Good number of defects in 30 minutes time
2. Good quality of defects in 30 minutes time

What went wrong?
1. Limited knowledge of the website which caters to color blind people
2. Limited knowledge about the expectations of the color blind people
3. Limited time. I think 30 minutes was too short for me to absorb information about the website and test it at the same time
4. Did not test with multiple browsers
5. Was suffering with severe backache(probably slightly reduced productivity)

What could have been better?
1. Should have brainstormed about the product before testing
2. Documentation could have been better for the defects
3. Screenshots were not captured to detect more defects (Hunger for more defects stopped me from taking screenshots of the issues)
4. Wasted some time in the 30 minutes of testing getting some queries answered and doubts clarified(Unclear mission). I would have loved the idea of being seated next to Ajay and validate each defect as we find them, but in this case we were interacting on chat which ate up a little time exchanging information during testing.

To summarise, it was encouraging to see how the defect count can go up while two or more testers pair up to find issues at the same time. For myself and Ajay, it was Different perspectives, Two People and One Mission. This worked really well, Looking forward to a lot more testing challenges as part of Paired Testing.

I would like to thank Ajay for his Valuable Time and Passion :-)

Pair up while testing - it ROCKS!
Happy Testing,
Pari – http://curioustester.blogspot.com

Akashwani - Voice from the Sky

I learn/unlearn something new everytime I visit a Bank/ATM/Post Office. I had been to HDFC bank recently to open a Term Deposit. While submitting the application form, I was told that my PAN number was not updated in the bank records(I had given my PAN number at the time of Account opening. Wonder what they did with that?) and that PAN card photocopy was mandatory to make a Term Deposit. I walked away disappointed that I had to visit the bank again. A few minutes later, I got back to office, logged into my HDFC netbanking account website, filled the Term Deposit form and hit 'Submit'. Wow. Term Deposit accepted!

Oracles are very helpful to identify problems in circumstances where the products are inconsistent in their behavior in one way or the other. An Oracle is a principle or mechanism by which we recognize a problem. We can identify that there is a problem with a product if there is an:

1. Inconsistency with its history
2. Inconsistency with the organization's image
3. Inconsistency with Comparable products
4. Inconsistency with the Claims made about the product by very important people
5. Inconsistency with User Expectations
6. Inconsistency with Presumed or Intended purpose
7. Inconsistency with Standards and Statutes
8. Inconsistency with itself in two or more places

Here is an interesting fact about Oracles from India. In ancient India, an Oracle was known as Akashwani, literally meaning "Voice from the Sky" and was related to the message of God. Emotions(Voice from within YOU!) of a Tester play a key role in using oracles effectively. It enables the Tester in going through the same feelings that an end user or potential customer would go through while using the product. The outcome of these feelings can either construct/destruct the future of that product. Get Emotional while testing because its a powerful tool.

Listen to Akashwani - the Voice within YOU,
Happy Testing,
Pari

Addendum on 8th Oct 2012
Being a Woman and a mom of 2 children, I find it extremely normal to be forgetful of many things in life. Forgetting a few things helps as it avoids burning down energy on some useful and some not-so-useful stuff. One such thing happened last week. I forgot my netbanking password. Again, one of the banks I bank with provides following options to regenerate the password:

1. Generate the password online instantly
2. Generate the password online instantly after two level authentication process
3. Generate the password by submitting a form online
4. By calling them on their support line
5. By visiting the bank and raising a request

Options (3), (4) and (5) obviously come with delays. I started with option (1). Here goes my experience:

While generating the password, I keyed in all details after which I was asked to select my Debit card number. The debit card number continued to reflect the old debit card number issued to me by my first company and not the recent one I had.

I jumped to option (2). Still, the same problem. Interestingly, my first debit card had expired and I had got a new one. Another interesting part is the fact that my second girl had hid my debit card in her secret cupboard  (TV cabinet). I had blocked it thinking I had lost it :-). No card, no netbanking option, no money!

I received a new debit card a week later which I activated by using in the ATM. Immediately, I rushed back to my netbanking page. My account continues to reflect my first debit card. I am procrastinating about checking (4) and (5) for now. Good reason to take a day off! :P

Keep listening to this Akashvani. Lots of stuff coming!

Regards,

Parimala Hariprasad

Book Review: Are you a Buccaneer-Scholar?

I just finished reading James Bach’s new book ‘The Secrets of a Buccaneer-Scholar’. It is a MUST READ for all the Learners out there, not just Testers! James gives away a lot of his Time Tested Secrets for the betterment of the Learning Community. He also advices the readers to become Buccaneer-Scholars and how wonderful it is to get there and be there just as the true Buccaneers thrived!

This book also helps the readers to learn what to LEARN, why to LEARN and how to LEARN. It is a MUST HAVE/MUST READ for Testers. Can’t wait to buy the hard copy of this book! I am also tempted to read James Bach’s other books now!

Happy Testing,
Pari – http://curioustester.blogspot.com

Never Give Up – Atleast I did not!

Recently, RaviSuriya who is one of my blog readers reported two observations that he had encountered on my blog which are listed below:

1.‘Subscription Links' gadget not displaying all the 6 available options to Subscribe for Posts and Comments
2.Date field was missing for one of the posts on the blog

There were a few email exchanges between me and Ravisuriya during which I gathered information about his observations. I was very glad when he sent over a detailed investigation report for the first issue.

Whew! I had got some food for my brain. I started off on my second attempt at Session Based testing. This time around, I was very firm on working in isolation so that I would not be interrupted for any reason whatsoever.

Day 1 – Just played around the blogspot.com features on my blog as well as by creating a brand new dummy blog and noted some basic observations using OFAT (testing One Factor at a Time)*

Day 2 – Started testing blogspot.com with regard to the above 2 behaviours, this time using MFAT(testing Multiple Factors at a Time). Spent around 5 hours testing different scenarios and each time I discovered something new about the behaviors. It was taking a lot of time to pinpoint when exactly the above behaviors were encountered. The report of this amazing testing experience is HERE.

*Factors in this case would refer to Widgets on blogspot.com.

Token of Thanks: I thank Ravisuriya for reporting the above 2 behaviours. In general, I am amazed by the openness of the Context Driven Testing Community to take time to read fellow testers’ blogs, share their personal opinions/views, provide live examples to learn, and in the meantime encourage countless upcoming testers to pursue testing with utmost passion. A Big Thank You to all the Context Driven Testers who are selflessly helping a lot of fellow testers knowingly and/or unknowingly. I foresee a wonderful Testing World already of which we all are part of or going to be part of.

"There is only one way to learn, It's through action. Everything you need to know you have learned through your journey” – from the book ‘The Alchemist’ by Paulo Coelho.

Keep your feedback pouring in here :-)
Happy Testing,
Pari - http://curioustester.blogspot.com/