Ainars Galvans's Blog (39)

Mission impossible: serving all the stakeholders

Disclaimer: what follows is a semi-real story, I've made up a few facts to sound it more dramatical (I'm a writer at the end, not a reporter).

It is very hard to write test cases in a way useful for experienced tester, possible to execute for newbie, understandable for business, impressive for manager and smart… Continue

Added by Ainars Galvans on July 1, 2010 at 11:00am — No Comments

Is your boss a manager or a leader?

Do you know the difference and do you care? I did early in my career, because my primary goal was to advance: to improve my technical skills. I liked my first boss (I was a programmer back then). He wasn’t very good programmer, but was well aware of technology available and challenged me to use whatever he found useful. He let me feel smart, but be kept under control at the same time. My next boss only helped me to feel smart and eventually slowed down my progress…

It seems to me t… Continue

Added by Ainars Galvans on June 14, 2010 at 1:42pm — 6 Comments

Selenium VS WatiJ

My ultimate goal in the last week was to automate smoke tests. 70-80% of the tests involve message sending and reading from message queue (JMS) and the necessary message content string manipulations (parse, find, replace,etc.) only 20-30 % involve UI (i.e. testing cases when wrong message must be fixed manual… Continue

Added by Ainars Galvans on April 16, 2010 at 9:30pm — No Comments

Why learning from mistakes is (sometimes) so hard

If you analyze your mistake and understand how to avoid the same mistake in future, it is not always enough. Some mistakes are part of our habits. It requires practice (and wasted time) to learn to avoid them. Sometimes we don’t want to waste the time, especially when impact of the mistake is trivial.
I remind it whenever I see developers making the same mistakes over and over again. Especially mistakes that is trivial for me to catch in form of a bug. We are all humans.
The same mi… Continue

Added by Ainars Galvans on February 26, 2010 at 3:30pm — 3 Comments

When someone doesn't make sense, maybe you don’t know details

When I read anything: weather it’s my next task description (i.e. written by PM who knows little about testing) or blog (by a person who probably know less than me about testing) and it does not make sense, seems stupid or wrong … I try to remember that this is my first reaction. Even if PM is amateur at testing they know ab… Continue

Added by Ainars Galvans on February 22, 2010 at 7:30am — No Comments

Sometimes doing the right thing isn't doing the right thing.

Sunday night I was watching S.W.A.T movie enjoying home made wine. Only the next day I realized that I still remember the phrase by Capt. Thomas Fuller: Sometimes doing the right thing isn't doing the right thing.. Captain formed a diverse team watching people attitude rather than reading dossier. He including some people demoted for not doing “the right things” such as obeying commands.

Career for a tester with an attitude?
James Christie saved my time by writing a… Continue

Added by Ainars Galvans on February 10, 2010 at 2:56pm — 7 Comments

Even jester has morale principles

In comments to my previous blog Joe raised the question of tester’s honesty. In blog I’ve analyzed reasons for postponing bug reporting and he asked if it is honest to postpone it at all. Another question may be – is it honest… Continue

Added by Ainars Galvans on February 5, 2010 at 1:30pm — 5 Comments

Bugs I choose not to report YET.

In my recent blog I mentioned an extreme test reporting case - bugs hidden from some stakeholders. I want to continue this topic. Because my blog motto this year is writing what guru testers don’t typically talk about. Today I want to admit my biggest sin – sometimes I report test passed although I know or at least suspect there is a bug. Some bugs need to mature just like a wine…… Continue

Added by Ainars Galvans on January 29, 2010 at 10:30am — 9 Comments

Test Conference in Riga –Call for papers

Haven’t been in Riga yet? Want attend a cheat test conference? Attending 11th test conference in Riga this summer is for free. Language – English. If you are interested to talk - Call for papers is just announced. One of topics – post agile testing I’ve been talking on this conference for last 8 years already. One thing intrigued me this year. Call for papers recommend (among other) a topics post agile testing. I think what th… Continue

Added by Ainars Galvans on January 26, 2010 at 12:48pm — No Comments

Different test reports for different stakeholders?

I just spilled my coffee on the table… what a shame. But wait a bit – I’m the only one in an office and if I clean up before anyone notice - the shame would be all gone, wouldn’t it? If we fix bug in a sprint where it was introduced then our customer don’t need to know about the bug,… Continue

Added by Ainars Galvans on January 21, 2010 at 9:00am — 3 Comments

The Truth about test estimation

Management asks you to estimate testing. You try hard but your estimate is declined because it significantly extend what they had in mind before asking you.... Ever been in such situation? There is nothing wrong about it! The goal of test estimation isn’t always the estimate. “Test estim… Continue

Added by Ainars Galvans on January 15, 2010 at 10:00am — No Comments

What’s so different in SOA performance testing?

I’ve been skeptic about articles talking about SOA performance testing special challenges. Last project experience showed I was wrong. There is a specific. It is not directly related to SOA. It is related to fact systems exchanging information must be emulate along with user load. Some of them could create unpredictable load to your system. Besides synchronization process performance may vary a lot depending on the size of delta between systems. In general SOA performance testing isn’t anyth… Continue

Added by Ainars Galvans on January 7, 2010 at 1:11pm — No Comments

Exploratory Testing can’t be done under pressure

Blogging is my way of thinking about testing and learning more about testing. I’ve been thinking why I’ve not been blogging almost a month. Is not learning a problem for me? Is not learning a problem for an Exploratory Tester?! Yes it is, because learning is part of Exploratory Testing. Read on more of my conclusions I’ve do… Continue

Added by Ainars Galvans on December 11, 2009 at 1:00pm — 2 Comments

Another excuse for bad testing: don’t have a tool

3 year ago I wrote For functional testing excuses like “we can’t do good tests without detailed requirements, or too late code freeze” don’t work any more..

But there is an excuse still seem to work – “we don’t have the appropriate tools purchased… Continue

Added by Ainars Galvans on November 12, 2009 at 3:30pm — No Comments

Why should exploratory tester salary range?

I’ve seen companies that differentiate salary based on list of “responsibilities”. Only execute written test cases - junior role and salary is low. If you design tests – intermediate, able to define approach/strategy/plan – senior. However doing Exploratory Testing requires single person to do everything. So everyone deserves the same salary, right?! Wrong! What’s a difference between junior and senior ET? The difference is skill, right? Now what difference does it to the project? More bu… Continue

Added by Ainars Galvans on November 10, 2009 at 11:21am — No Comments

Providing your test visibility: self criticism lesson

No, not again! I was told by a customer management to provide more visibility into test process. Recently I’ve blogged series of providing visibility into functional testing, but I was so busy with functional testing that forgot about non-functional. I’m still working on ways to provide the visibility, so today I only wanted to blog about how essential it is to be able to provide it. Who is your Dr Watson? We learn a lot about Sherlock Holmes from… Continue

Added by Ainars Galvans on October 5, 2009 at 8:40am — No Comments

How I manage ET using JIRA TC

This is my yet another attempt to understand how to manage Exploratory Testing. I try to learn from how would i "manage" exploring a territory. This blog contains details of managing Requirements Based Exploratory Te… Continue

Added by Ainars Galvans on September 1, 2009 at 7:00am — No Comments

Requirements Based Exploratory Test Management: overview

So as a tester I’m a big proponent of Exploratory Testing. But as a test manager I know it’s hard to manage. Even harder to describe what’s done. Yet harder: to understand and describe what’s left. The hardest: to do it so that both developers and customers would understand. I don’t fool myself anymore hoping they understand the QA language. I know: everyone have their own interpretation of test case and bug statistics I’m providing. I've realized that my real problem is translation between busi… Continue

Added by Ainars Galvans on August 24, 2009 at 8:30am — No Comments

Requirements-based exploratory testing: Intro

In my last blog I promised to describe my test management approach: an alternative to the well known best-practice – manage it using “test cases”. I try to keep promises especially those I give to myself. However I realized it’s quite a topic so I split it into several parts. In this blog I’ll introduce my approach by metaphor. Metaphor: shopping list I’m used to take the list going to supermarket. List is a shopping requirement: it tells me what I must put into my shopping-cart. A… Continue

Added by Ainars Galvans on August 13, 2009 at 7:06am — 5 Comments

Test Case management using JIRA (and wiki): experience

Why do we write test cases? To manage testing? Yes I used to believe it is easier to manage defined test cases rather than people. I’ve developed a different approach. However you will have to wait for my next blog to read about it. In this blog I want to share my (2 years of) experience with managing test cases in JIRA. Hint 1: JIRA is for management, not for content First of all we don’t store test case content (sometimes referred to as test steps though I don’t like this definition as… Continue

Added by Ainars Galvans on July 20, 2009 at 7:30am — 2 Comments