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)…

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….

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: …

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. …

Meeting James Bach

You heard about him, read about him, read his work… and you think you know what to expect. But nothing really prepares you for it. He’s intimidating and overconfident and at the same time passionate and charming. He’s everything you would like to be one day and he makes you believe you actually have a chance at it. All you have to do is think for yourself and question everything.
James Bach came to Romania for the first time for a workshop we organized in Cluj Napoca …

Buying train tickets in Romania – a tester’s story.

This year (or maybe at the end of last year) the Romanian national railroad company (CFR) introduced a new payment method: by bank card. I know we’re in 2010 and that this system has been in place for several years in many parts of the world, but in Romania it hadn’t been before. The thing I like most about this is that the option is only available in one ticket office from Bucharest Central Station – Gara de Nord – the one for international tickets, and nowhere else in Romania, as far as I know.
For the first seven months of this year I traveled almost weekly with the train, an 95% of the time I paid the ticket with a bank card. During this time, I observed the following process for POS ticket payment: …