Category: Testing Insights

Testing Insights

Help us get to EuroSTAR!

We entered a video competition to win tickets to EuroSTAR 2012! We made a short documentary about the newly discovered testerus sapiens (played by us) as they go about their daily lives. They are presented in their natural habitat, the jungles of software development, where they test software either as a group or alone, living for the thrill of the bug-hunt…

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Testing Insights

How to use an iPhone packaging box to make an iPhone testing sled

While testing an iPhone application that is part of a bigger solution developed by teams in different locations, I came across a few issues that made me look into some of the available options for recording the application in use on a real iPhone and I decided to try to build my own testing sled using parts I already had around the office. It turned out that the original iPhone packaging had everything I needed.

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Testing Insights

My BBST experience – the musings of a student

This is an account of some of the activities I wish I had focused more on during the one-month Foundations course. The article is peppered with nostalgia for my fellow students and the activities we did together, but it ends with something awesome to look forward to: signing up for Bug Advocacy, the second part of the BBST course…

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Testing Insights

Exploratory testing – a rookie’s thoughts (part 3)

Q: What other testing activities have you done besides pair testing?

 

A: Well, we also did something I named parallel testing, which involves less teamwork but can be just as engaging as pair testing. I’ll try to explain what this means using a similar analogy I used for pair testing. I compared pair testing to a car ride, where one tester is the driver, while the other is a passenger in the same car. Parallel testing is similar, with both testers being drivers (both with their own keyboard/computer), in slightly different cars (this can vary between using different browsers/OSs/computer configurations), driving parallel to each other (testing the same piece of software/section of application), with a communication link between them (both testers are within earshot of each other – in same office or room)…
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Testing Insights

Exploratory testing – a rookie’s thoughts (part 2)

Q: How about reporting issues? How did you go about logging bugs while pair testing?
A: Logging the bugs we found took longer than expected. This means, that we found something, determined that it was a bug, investigated its cause, then spent too much time logging the said bug (even if we agreed on the cause and the effect of the bug, as well as on the steps to reproduce it); I guess you could say we didn’t agree on what information to include in the report, what order was the most appropriate, and what was relevant as far as that particular bug was concerned…
I don’t have a concrete example for this, but I seem to recall logging a tricky bug that overlapped with another one and my testing partner suggested adding information from one bug in the other’s report, while it was clear – to me at least – that the piece of information they wanted to add was not relevant to the bug report at hand. I realize this is quite biased, seeing that this is only my side of the story I suppose….
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Testing Insights

Exploratory testing – a rookie’s thoughts (part 1)

Here are some of my thoughts in the form of questions and answers, which mostly come from feedback I gave Alex and Oana on exploratory testing when I first started out as a tester, and although much has changed since, I still have a lot to learn in order to become better at my craft… Enjoy! 😀

Q: So… pair testing; comparing the experience to testing alone, what are the things you did differently when testing with someone else?

A: Pair testing? Err… don’t you mean peer testing? Hm…

*thought about this for a while, then googled a bunch of stuff regarding peer/pair testing*

Okay, let me try to explain why naming it peer testing makes sense to me: …

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Testing Insights

Letsdoitromania – a great testing exercise

This weekend Altom participated for the second time in LetsDoItRomania! The program is part of http://www.letsdoitworld.org/, started by the Estonians in 2008, that has the target to clean the country by involving a big number of people. This year we didn’t have the time to get involved in the organization of the event, but we managed to gather a team of 5 people: Ionela, Levi, Ramona, Oana and myself :D. …
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Testing Insights

2011: A CAST Odyssey

Last week I had the chance to be in Seattle for CAST2011 and I think it was definitely worth the effort to apply for a US visa, travel for 30 hours to get there, and another 30 to get back.

 

The conference was fully organized by volunteers, people that gave up their free time to make sure that the others enjoyed the conference.

 

Two days before the starting of the event everything was on time. Please read: “everything that the organizers had thought of”, as…

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Testing Insights

BBST Foundations a.k.a my testing bass line

I have just finished the BBST Foundation course from AST and it has been such a powerful motivational booster that I have to tell the whole world (read “testing community”) about it.
I have been a tester for almost ten years now and I’ve always considered myself one of the few that are still very much enthusiastic about testing. But this course has been like a wake-up call. It felt like an “intervention” coming from well-intentioned friends, meant to remind me that sometimes you’re so focused on what you’re doing that you forget how to do it well. It basically blew my mind.
Let me try to explain: …
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