Software Testing

What do you think are the 3 most important Software Testing skills and why do you think so.

In today’s world Software Testing industry is growing at a very rapid pace. The number of people pursuing software testing as a career has grown immensely over the years. The need to deliver quality products has become the foremost goal of the software testing companies. So in order to achieve this, need of good software testers is tremendous.
Hence the 3 most important skills which a good software tester must possess would be:

1. Out of the Box thinkers: A good software tester should be able to create multiple what if scenarios. S/He should be able to put him/herself in customer’s shoes and apply all the scenarios in the workflow of the application.

2. Excellent Communication Skills: To be able to communicate the issue to the development team is the most important job of the tester. Hence every tester must possess excellent communication skill (Oral and Written both) in order to communicate the issues faced by him/her in the most effective and efficient manner.

3. Quick Learner: This is last and most important quality that a tester must have is the ability to adapt and learn quickly. The 2 applications for testing given to the tester may of completely different domains. For eg. One A Banking Website and another A Learning Management System. So tester needs to adapt himself quickly and should be able to switch quickly from banking website to a LMS.

4. Analytical Skills - An important goal of testing is to identify the hidden errors. To be an effective tester, the person must be able to analyze the given business situation and judge all the possible scenarios. He should have the capability to identify and test unfamiliar scenarios. Creating logical scenarios and validating the application under test before releasing it to production. This can be done effectively only by a person who has strong analytical skills.

5. Creativity – A person should have the out-of-the-box thinking so that s/he should exercise the system which requires one to try non-intuitive ways of accomplishing tasks. Those who are Task-oriented and receive a set of instructions and follow the given instruction every time cannot become good testers.

6. Communication Skills - Excellent communication skills are very important for reporting bugs. A tester must be able to effectively communicate his thoughts and issues encountered in the application. Arguments should be supported by facts; the language should be pragmatic rather than philosophical.

7. Ability to think out of the box, if a tester has the ability to think and apply such scenarios which are covering a vast logical area then the chances of finding defects increases.

8. Passion and Enthusiasm, as testing is a repetitive activity so sometimes it becomes very boring and tester losses its interest in finding bugs.

9. The most important skill is communication, as it is very important to communicate your findings to the developer so that it can easily understood to the developer and can fix it quickly

 QA Thought Leader- LinkedIn Group

SOFTWARE TESTING

What are the Pros and cons of requirements-based software testing? Requirement based software testing is testing of product based on requirements provided in requirement documents like Use Cases or 3Cs to ensure all features are developed as per the requirement or not. Test cases are created and executed based on requirements to make sure each and every requirement is covered correctly. However, requirement based testing is not effective if requirements are not provided in detailed or defined properly. Sometimes, requirements are missed by Business Analyst and hence will not be developed and tested. Many times, real world business scenarios are not covered in requirement documents which are left undeveloped and untested. So, requirement based testing is effective if requirements are documented properly. In the beginning of the testing cycle, it is important to first validate the requirements and check their correctness, unambiguity, and logically and practically its consistency. In validating the requirements and verifying the build product, a requirements based testing is done. To achieve this, testers write a sets of test cases on all functionalities on the basis of the requirements outlines and provided by stakeholders. As every coin has two sides, thereby requirement based testing has its own pros and cons, that are outlines as below: Pros: 1) Firstly, As requirement based testing demonstrates that the software meets the requirement or not, so by this it adds value to the product/software if meets the requirement, so this leads to the building of an accurate and reliable product/software . 2) Secondly, there are always a variety of tests involved with requirement based testing like Black Box, Integration, System, Coverage testing with which the quality is ensured 3) All the requirements are validated, if the product is build as per the requirements. 4) Logical consistency of the application is checked. 5) Acceptance of the application is marked from the stakeholders perspective. Cons: 1) As most of the requirements are poorly defined, or even not defined as it should be, hence requirement based tests can never be better, because if the requirements are poorly defined , it would never be exact what to develop and what to test. Everything would work on guesses. 2)  As, Requirements-based testing is a black box testing. So till the application is producing the expected results, the test cases are passed. Requirement based testing is not concerned about how the results are produced, or the effects/impact it may show on other parts of application. 3) From RBT, how much a requirement is valid is not considered. No feasibility analysis for this done. 4) RBT should not be completely depended for the Pass/Fail of the application.

Based on your Expertise please share what will be the top 5 Trends to drive market for Leading software testing Companies in 2012-13.

"I, see some major trends in business and information technology, and drive market for software testing in 2012-13. Some of these shaping trends are:

1)Mobility Application Testing : Since the smart phones have become more accessible, the convenience of using the internet on the move has seen many people use this platform as opposed to the PC for accessing the internet. So business demand develops application portable to mobile. Smartphone’s are on a rampage and are dominating the market. Mobile apps of various OS are popping everywhere. Thus, there is a huge scope of mobile app testing. Now-a-days, mobility is not just limited to receive/make calls on-the-go, but has transformed as an essential living style. Mobile/Smartphone testing assures the quality of mobile devices, like mobile phones, PDAs, etc.

2) Testing-as-a-Service/Cross Cloud computing: With TaaS or cross cloud computing, organizations are benefitted huge cutback in infrastructure costs, immediate access to a range of testing scenarios and capabilities, and reduces resolution time for critical and non-critical defects. TaaS stands for Testing as a Service. It is one of the platforms provided by the Cloud Infrastructure. It is a type of software testing which ensures the quality of the process through which the organizations can use applications on the internet without investing in new infrastructure and licensing new software.   

3) Business Intelligence Testing: Data is increasing in huge volume hence filtering meaningful data is huge challenge. The efficiency quotient of a business intelligence tool lies in its ability to crunch huge loads of data, present meaningful results that can be used by top business users. Some secure web applications contains classified data and exposure of the same to the test engineers may be harmful for the enterprise. Thus, there is a need to generate and manage test data so that it can be used by the test engineers without leaking vital information.

4) Crowd sourced Testing: Crowd sourced testing is getting pace across the industry to perform testing to uncover bugs and suggest new ideas. And enterprises now prefer a crowd sourced marketplace so as to get access to global talent and different set of skills. It is the process of outsourcing various tasks and activities to a group of teams or individuals. In testing field, a group of professionals are invited to find loopholes in the application and provide concrete suggestions to improve the user experience.

5) Test data generation and management: Test data creation and management would ensure the best use of filtered test data. Here, mainly the efficiency of the tool is put to test. Performance test engineers check for slowness of the system when huge volume of data is processed.

6) Agile Testing:  This evolving methodology helps to release the product in the market ASAP by continuous releases of functional software (rapid agile sprint process).

7) Web Accessibility Testing: It is a division of usability testing where the targeted users have disabilities that involve how they use the application.

8) Independent Outsourced Testing: It provides a neutral and fresh approach which is essential for the market success of the software product.

What Happens when a QA Testing Company Introduces a New process within Ongoing Project? Share your Experience with us.

What Happens when a QA Testing Company Introduces a New process within Ongoing Project? Share your Experience with us.

                    

Introducing a new process within an ongoing project in an organization is a sensitive decision. Various highlighted points which should be kept in consideration while introducing the new processes to the current process within an software organization are summarized as follows:

1: Size of the organization plays a vital role in introducing the new processes within an organization and subsequently risk associated with the organization is a major factor. Larger the size of the organization greater is the risk involved in implementing the new process to the ongoing processes.

2: Balancing should be maintained with productivity and the output of the organization. Management should be smart enough to decide the goal of project, Test requirement specification documents being used to create design documents for a project.

3: Sometimes performing Ad-hoc is well enough and all this depends on the size of the project with which the organization is dealing with. There should be a fair channel for communication within Team leads, Managers, Developers, QA Team and the end users so that the scope and the progress of the project is well defined and there is no discrepancy within various phases of project.

Injecting new Software QA Processes in an existing organization depends upon:-

a) Organization Strength: For large organizations with high risk projects, serious management buy-in is required and a formalized QA process is necessary.

B) For small groups or projects, a more ad-hoc process may be appropriate, depending on the type of customers and projects. A lot will depend on team leads or managers, feedback to developers, and ensuring adequate communications among customers, managers, developers, and testers.

For more on this, please log on to:- http://www.qainfotech.com/

Test Automation Framework

Can you differentiate between Test Plan and Test Strategy? Do we really need Test Plan documents?

Test strategy is a higher level document defining “How to test”. However; Test Plan defines “What to Test”.

Test strategy defines how different functionalities will be tested and testing tools to be used. Also, it provides test cases designing methodology that will be used. But test plan defines; features to be tested (In –scope), features not to be tested (Out scope), risk analysis, entry and exit criteria, Roles and responsibilities of each and every team member and Project Schedule It is a set of guide lines that describes test design. Test strategy says - How testing is going to be performed? What will be the test architecture? Test Strategy Document describes what we are going to test and what all are the testing approach to be followed by the Test Engineer.

Below are some more points that can be included in Test Strategy Document:

a) Defect Report and Tracking
b) How to communicate between Team and Status reports

Test Plan is the set of ideas that guide or represent the intended test process. Test plan is the sub set of Test Strategy. Test Plan covers – What needs to be tested, How testing is going to be performed? Resources needed for testing, Timelines and Risk associated. A test plan acts a guide in the project. It ensures that a project meets all of its specifications and other requirements. It is really good to have a test plan in a project. More than having it, it’s more important is it being followed. A Test Plan is document that is usually prepared by Manager or Team Lead. A software project test plan is a document that describes the objectives, scope, approach, and focus of software testing effort.

Different types of Test Plans
a. Unit
b. Integration
c. System
d. UAT

The way tests will be designed and executed to support an effective quality assessment is called Test Strategy.


Mentioned below are some points that a good Test Strategy should follow:

A. focuses most effort on areas of potential technical risk, while still putting some effort into low risk areas just in case the risk analysis is wrong.

B. address test platform configuration, how the product will be operated, how the product will be observed, and how observations will be used to evaluate the product

C. is diversified in terms of test techniques and perspectives. Methods of evaluating test coverage should take into account multiple dimensions of coverage, including structural, functional, data, platform, operations, and requirements.

D. Specify how test data will be designed and generated.
Different test techniques ( Ad hoc, Exploratory, Specification based, code based, Fault Injection and etc) and test methods (Black, White and Incremental) is used while designing test cases and execution

Few says that Test Plan document is required for testing as it really contains some useful information such as What needs to be tested, How testing is going to be performed? Resources needed for testing, Timelines and Risk associated.

Do we really need Test Plan?

Test Plan covers:

a) What need to be tested
b) When to start testing
c) Resources needed for testing
d) Risk associated etc?

But most of the people says that, for efficient Test Planning we do not need Test plan document. Just identify your test strategy and carry on with your testing. No wonder that Test Plan documents are not required formulating a plan. Planning can be done without the Test Plan documents. However, from a systematic point of view, having Test Plan documents is preferable.

For more details, please log on to: http://www.qainfotech.com/eLearning.html

 

Outsourced Testing: The future ahead

What is outsourced testing?

Does it mean hiring a third-party vendor and entrusting them with the responsibility of the testing division and holding the vendor responsible if something goes haywire? It means much more than that. Before going into the intricacies of outsourced testing, I would first like to talk about how specialization plays a major role in every one’s day to day life. It seems weird but outsourced testing and specialization have a very deep correlation.

Since the beginning of the human civilization, an increasingly complex division of labour is closely associated with the growth of total output. Someone once said "To specialize is to brush one tooth. When a person specializes he channels all of his energies through one narrow conduit; he knows one thing extremely well and is ignorant of almost everything else." For example, what happens when your water tap breaks down or for that matter one of your electronic equipment stops working.

What comes to our mind if something like this happens? Do we start repairing it on our own or do we immediately call for a plumber or an electrician. Have we ever thought why we do that? I know it is a stupid question to ask but they are the first person that comes to our mind because they specialize in their job. Thus in a way we are outsourcing a job to an individual that specializes in that job.

To read more click on: http://www.qainfotech.com/white_papers.html

original source from : QA InfoTech Website

QA Thought Leaders discussion forum

Our QA thought leadership ensures that we take a step forward towards client benefit.  You need to go an extra mile being a seasoned QA professional along with end to end software quality assurance and testing expertise.

To know what our QA Though leaders share, join our discussion forum at: 

http://www.linkedin.com/groups/QA-Thought-Leaders-3936004?trk=myg_ugrp_ovr