All Blog Posts (200)

Many thanks...

Just a quick thank you for those who have signed up as paid members. Do keep them coming please. Matthew Heusser has been kind enough to buy an extra membership package to be given to someone as a scholarship. More details coming soon. More Flash Mob Testing stuff coming very soon too.... Continue

Added by Rosie Sherry on July 8, 2009 at 1:08pm — No Comments

QTP help

Hi all, I am facing a problem in tree control in an application. Earlier version of the application was having only one item under the tree control, which QTP was easily recognizing. Now the new design allows many items under the tree. The QTP does recognize the tree, and the first child but it does not allow operations on the second child. I will give an example to elaborate the problem, we are having a tree structure inside a window. The QTP recognizes the window by its title. So the window is… Continue

Added by kalpana dixit on July 8, 2009 at 8:54am — 1 Comment

Are we all hypnotized by term Feedback?

It seems to me that word feedback was adopted by software development field so quickly that it became a buzzwords with the typical issue of using it loosely or carelessly. Am I wrong? Analyzing cases where the word was used turned out to be so exciting that I want to share my observations. Why I do so? I don’t care for term usage I care that we are careless about the bigger story behind the term. And there is big story. Are you able to give and receive meaningful feedback? I’m still learning. It… Continue

Added by Ainars Galvans on June 30, 2009 at 12:38pm — No Comments

Tag it for the Software Testing Club

Ever seen something out on the web that may be of interest to us software testers? You want to let people know about it, but not sure how? Well, now you can :) If you use delicious and tag a web page with softwaretestingclub it will now appear on the right hand column under the heading 'Tag it for STC'. Continue

Added by Rosie Sherry on June 29, 2009 at 8:48pm — No Comments

Knowledge is not wisdom

James Whittaker writes that we (software testers) lack a body of knowledge that is passed from wizard to apprentice. I may agree with that. However knowledge (spell books) alone is not enough. It is dangerous, very dangerous to assume that it is enough for wizards to write the spell-books so that apprentices could read the spells from them. That’s actually how a lot stories in fantasy books (yes I’v… Continue

Added by Ainars Galvans on June 26, 2009 at 7:23am — 5 Comments

Project feedback, pondering while driving to work

Driving on my way to work yesterday I started thinking about ‘feedback’ on projects and how often we’ll give feedback to a Project Manager on a traditional project. My experience has been that the feedback is generally given once per week, at the Monday morning Project Management meeting. I’d almost forgotten that this had been the way I used to provide feedback on how testing was going. Feedback once per week would see me having kittens now. I’m so used to the agile style of running a daily st… Continue

Added by Mark Crowther on June 22, 2009 at 7:00pm — 2 Comments

Book Review: How We Test Software At Microsoft?

I ordered the book when I searched on Amazon for books on Software Testing. I tend to do that every so often as it provides me information if there is anything new! The difference this time was that I really wanted to read something different, basically to give myself a break from reading research papers! What really got my attention was the title! It is simple, but yet every tester would be curious to find out how they test at Microsoft! Yes, we can be sarcastic and ask ‘Do they Test at all at… Continue

Added by Sarah Salahuddin on June 19, 2009 at 7:46pm — 11 Comments

Thoughts and reflections after SIGIST

I enjoyed SIGIST this time, last time I went I had the overwhelming urge to scream, something like "What are you people thinking!?" or maybe just ""STFU!" which may have ruined what little reputation I have as a thoughtful individual. Thankfully Michael Bolton was there this time so the bar was raised. I was also seriously pleased to have a few beers with him and other folks last night and today just spend time absorbing what he had to say. James Lyndsay was there today too, I think he sneaked… Continue

Added by Mark Crowther on June 18, 2009 at 12:36am — 2 Comments

V&V is not all a tester does

I associate Verification and validation with process of comparing documented requirements with code. However if we want to create software that users is willing to pay for (instead of simply protection from being sued for low quality software) then perhaps testers should do something more…. Let me tell you what I do and why The gap between requirements and user needs I believe everyone have seen tire swing joke abou… Continue

Added by Ainars Galvans on June 17, 2009 at 12:30pm — 4 Comments

You don't need a time machine to change bad career decisions...

Lots of people are looking for work right now. Are you one of them? Is it possible to know what are you getting into when you go for the QA interview? The answer is No. Too many times people accept a job thinking it’s something they want only to quit a few weeks later. And that’s e… Continue

Added by Georgia Motoc on June 15, 2009 at 5:30pm — 1 Comment

How to measue Tester performonce

I read an article from Cem Kaner, in this article he talked about measuring performance of Testers. I am sharing my thoughts about this topic. “We can not measure performance of Quality engineer/Test engineer”. We often used to encounter such statements from project managers or QA managers. So the question arises that how we can measure performance of QE. We can consider “Bug Count” as a measure of QE performance but consider a situation where we assign two different modules, Module A and Module… Continue

Added by kashif ali on June 15, 2009 at 10:53am — 11 Comments

Recovery of lost QTP scripts

The testing team at my place told me that they had written some QTR scripts earlier but which are now not being opened. In QC center it will show QTR icon next to the test name but on clicking it, nothing comes. How to restore these old scripts. Continue

Added by kalpana dixit on June 9, 2009 at 3:09pm — 7 Comments

Test Conference in Riga goes international

10th Annual Conference for Software Testing Professionals in Riga, Latvia is somewhat unique event as it is free of charge (venue, proceedings, coffee breaks, handouts), thanks to sponsors and enthusiasts organizing it! This year I tried to speak English as many other Latvians did. We hope to attract more testers from Baltic region in future.

… Continue

Added by Ainars Galvans on June 8, 2009 at 9:00am — No Comments

HP's QTP automation script

Hi, I have been in development for last 12 years. Recently I am given the charge of software testing. The team already in place is using HP's QC/QTP for testing. but i have observed that they are not using the scripts for testing, instead they are using manual methods for testing. When I enquired about it, I was told that as graphical user interface is not freezed, they are unable to use scripts for testing as scripts rely hevily on UI. I really want to know is that is the actual scenario or the… Continue

Added by kalpana dixit on June 7, 2009 at 4:57pm — 10 Comments

Risk Management - understanding necessary quality levels

As a Test Analyst, I'm always striving for that perfect bug free release. However, in an industry where traditionally test time is squeezed, it's not always possible to perform 100% coverage. More often than not, I have to call upon my risk management skills to make the best judgement call. Software… Continue

Added by Ray Claridge on June 6, 2009 at 2:16am — 2 Comments

Ignorance is a curse for the profesionals

My blog title does not actually desribe half my frustration ! I was recently appointed as the QA and Test manager of one of my countries major retail companies . There is not a day that goes by that I dont discover another "Test Manager " in the company .. to date I found 5 Test Managers. Now I reached a point where I have to "school" my superiors and explain where the QA Manager role fits into the management layers. Currently I am a middle management but to be effective enought , to have the… Continue

Added by Paul Visagie on June 2, 2009 at 6:55pm — 2 Comments

I Need a tool for specification based testing

I have been wondering for years why some tester cultures keep copy-pasting text from requirements into their test cases (sometimes adding “validate that” word or something like that). And later on spend a lot of time updating test cases because requirements keep changing. I have a better idea, which seems so natural to me that I can’t understand – either this is discovered by other people already (any links, please) or I’m just so blind and don’t see potential issues using such an approach… Plea… Continue

Added by Ainars Galvans on June 1, 2009 at 6:30am — 5 Comments

GWT performance test hints (and grinder script samples)

I had a trouble with performance testing GWT. Some of the problems were solved by correcting char-set and removing encoding – i.e. turning off data zipping. So I’m successfully testing GWT using grinder now... See details below (they are described for grinder, but I believe the same could apply to JMeter and other tools. More over I want to share the story of why client-side performance becomes an important part of performance testing in case of GWT. What’s so special about GWT ? I’ve b… Continue

Added by Ainars Galvans on May 29, 2009 at 9:00am — No Comments

ISEB Intermediate

In the past, I've criticised the structure and purpose of the ISEB Foundation course and exam. However, If you asked me about the Intermediate follow on, this would be the complete opposite. Last year I reluctantly agreed to take the ISEB Intermediate course and exam. I say 'reluctantly' because I'd… Continue

Added by Ray Claridge on May 28, 2009 at 5:55pm — No Comments

FireBenchmarks - NUnit-based performance testing

Some weeks ago, I published on The Code Project a tutorial about a new NUnit addin I wrote to execute performance testing.
Since the addin had got a good feedback from the community, i decided to give it a name, "FireBenchmarks", and to create an official website where I will publish the next improvements and extensions.
As now,… Continue

Added by Federico Coletto on May 28, 2009 at 2:24pm — No Comments