Heroes of software testing - Do you know about them and their work?

My initial plan was to board the flight to Toronto on July 11th from Mumbai to attend CAST 08 software testing conference. Sangeeta, a tester from Mumbai influenced me to change my plan and organized a lecture in Ness Technologies in Mumbai.

I liked the offer and accepted it, as I knew I would enjoy the experience. It's fun to meet new testers, talk to them and learn new things. I am in constant search for budding testers like Sharath Byregowda , Ajay Balamurugadas , Sathish Kumar Chinappa , Sangeeta, Sandesh , Girija, Bhargavi and Nattu ( who accompanied me to CAST 08 ) and those who are passionate and do things about seeing a better tester community like Mohan Panguluri, COO of Edista Testing ... I never know where I can find similar ones. One of the ways that has been of great help to me, to find such testers and thinkers is, while at lectures and my workshops. I offer whatever help I am capable of doing to expose them to good stuff and I do it when they ask me for it.

Here is an excerpt from the talk:

"We are in India, the land where cricket is considered close to being a religion. It has super heroes like Sachin Tendulkar and Dhoni who have inspired a lot of people in India to play better cricket. They could inspire because a lot of people spent their time watching them play great cricket at tough situations. As Indians, you might have seen a lot of people who enjoy playing cricket the way Sachin and Dhoni play. As testers, have you seen anyone doing testing that has inspired you to test better?"

Response: Silence

and then a question comes up from a corner, "Who did Sir Don Bradman see as an inspiration for he is the best known cricketer of centuries?" and all other testers burst to laughter thinking that I was cornered with that question.

I took a while for the audience to settle down and replied,
"I know who inspired Sir Don Bradman" and then a pause to add, "It was himself."
"How many of you are inspired by your own testing?"

Response: Silence

End of excerpt

Reading good stuff as a bad practice and reading bad stuff as the best practice

The above state is what most Indian testers to my knowledge are stuck in. This state resulted because most of testers don't have the habit of reading as though its a bad practice. Most of those who read, are the ones who search in Google and land up at bad sites ( that includes my blog at times ). Most of those who Google search are the ones who are not interested at better thought process but at ready made best practice answers.

There are good and great stuff from internet. I once searched for expert testers and found James Bach. That google search changed my life and the way I test. There were a lot of junk stuff written to attract such search results that I had to pass through before finding James Bach's website. I was sure that I needed help about thought process from an expert tester and not ready made solutions from time to time.

The road to Toronto

I had to face a lot of trouble to get to Toronto. My Visa was rejected ( at the first attempt ), I didn't have sufficient funds ( as per the VISA officials and my bank statement ) , I was denied permission to board the plane as my ticket was booked via United States and I didn't have a US Visa. The Canadian customs had a discussion that bothered me if they would let me in after I landed at Toronto and then my baggage went missing and finally landed as the last one on the belt. Amidst all this was my hope to meet the heroes in real space who have inspired me and to meet those whom I can draw more inspiration from. I believe in God and also believe that God takes a human form to help humans. A great human who lives in 61, Ashburnham in Toronto and the one who lived in my house ( my dad ) helped me and cleared traps so that I reached Toronto and was able to attend CAST 08.


Chasing dreams

Finally I got a chance to meet the heroes who have been inspiring me to test and think better. My super hero James Bach wasn't present at the conference and hence I couldn't meet him. I would be meeting him in November at a conference where we both are invited to speak on testing at a developers conference in Malmo Sweden.

By meeting my heroes, I learned some important things that I could not have learned, had I not met them. I got an insight into the way they live, some ways they think and they communicate. It was several dreams of several years that came true, all in one place - CAST 08.

Not all learning is fun.

If you have understood what I have written in this post so far, then my English writing skill has improved a lot since I wrote my first blog post. It pained a lot to know that I was writing terribly bad English but had I not learned it, I wouldn't have been able to make sense to you in this post.

One of the important things I learned in CAST is the cost of making a few mistakes and the cost of wasting someone's time. I did some mistakes a few months ago but experienced the cost of making those mistakes when I could not stand in front of those people whose time I had wasted. I felt too ashamed of myself but I know I would not feel ashamed for a life time as I am recovering from those mistakes.

Learning is fun as long as you don't learn about yourself and how bad you are in somethings that you want to be really good at. The more I learn that I am bad, I am inspired to work hard enough to get over it. Being a student of James Bach means I keep searching for the answer, "How do I know what I know?" and often I discover what I don't know when I meet and discuss with great minds like the ones I met in CAST 08. I make it a practice to learn what I don't know or what more I'd want to learn on what I want to be good at.


Not all pain is bad

I went all way from Bengaluru ( Bangalore ) to Toronto to know more about myself and how bad I am in things I want to be good at. It hurts but there is no short cut to learning. For those who might disagree that learning could hurt - as testers we provide information about the quality of the product to the management. If we find a lot of bugs, it might hurt the management when they know it especially when it upsets their shipping schedules. It hurts them because they have learned something about their own product. This pain is then converted to measures to not get into a similar situation again. That is what I think some great man said, "No pain, No gain". The things that I learned from my heroes at the conference and other discussions would be reflected in my blog for years to come, so unfortunately keep reading them.


Person dependent software projects and organization

India depended on Sachin Tendulkar for winning a lot of matches. Cricket ( a team sport ) became a person dependent one. Is it a problem for Sachin?

Not really. Actually it demanded him to be at a very good knock and he loved that challenge as it challenged its consistency. It could also be stated that - he faced tough situations and cleared balls beyond boundaries which is why he is admired by millions worldwide.

Similarly, if your organization doesn't want to make their testing a person dependent thing it is because they don't like you to be Sachin Tendulkar . They can't stop from you becoming a Sachin of software testing because it depends on your learning as a tester and not they giving a learning opportunity to you.

You will be interested to read what James Bach wrote about the need for super heroes for software projects long back.

--
Pradeep Soundararajan - http://testertested.blogspot.com - +91-98451-76817 - pradeep.srajan@gmail.com

"The test doesn't find the bug. A human finds the bug, and the test plays a role in helping the human find it." --

It's a "tester" who finds a bug, even with the robust Google Search

The image you might see above is a screen shot of what I saw after hitting the 12th page for the search results of "tester". I am not sure if you can reproduce that because I haven't investigated on it but I did plan to capture it to demonstrate:

"The test doesn't find the bug. A human finds the bug, and the test plays a role in helping the human find it."

Be it with the robust systems like Google Search Engine or with weak systems that we might be using, it is always a HUMAN who finds a bug. A lot of testers I know think of "test case" finding a bug.

There is a test case document that consists of 9856985956895869698569956985698459698 test cases and no tester executing it wouldn't find bugs by itself. There is a test case document with 3 documented tests and a tester takes the help of that to find bugs when he executes, observes the result and recognizes a bug.

A test case is an extension of a test idea. What matters to a tester is a test idea and not the test case. Skilled (exploratory testers ( humans ) use tons of ideas ( heuristics and oracles ) to find and recognize bugs. That's why they can find more bugs that matter than those running thousands of test cases over and over again.

Honestly, 99% of testers I have come across didn't say - "I read each test case each time I have to execute it after I have done it once. Also, I religiously follow what is written in the test case".

What happens when they deviate from the documented test case is, they are exploring and running different test. Maybe they don't like to call it that way because their management who pays wouldn't like to know that they are not executing the "test cases".

That's how customers are fooled by management saying "yes, we are running test cases" and yet benefited by the testing community by running more tests.

A test idea can be executed in hundreds of different ways. Check out the deep analysis made by James Bach and Michael Bolton on What Do Scripts Tell Us?


--
Pradeep Soundararajan - http://testertested.blogspot.com - +91-98451-76817 - pradeep.srajan@gmail.com

"The test doesn't find the bug. A human finds the bug, and the test plays a role in helping the human find it." --

Graphology, Music, Chess, Cooking, Drawing and becoming a better tester

I am observing that every passionate learning tester have tried doing things that are not testing and try to bring in some learnings to testing from doing them, to test better. For instance, Michael Bolton has tried cooking and theater and has benefited by it in testing, you could read his interview in which he mentions that. Michael Hunter (a.k.a The Braidy Tester) has recently blogged about Drawing and how it has been helping him to test and think about testing. Jonathon Kohl's Exploratory Testing-Music of Investigation is no exception. Bach brothers ( James Bach and Jon Bach) are active in Chess.com and you could read how playing Chess helps to test better by reading Jon Bach's post.

CAST 08 has its theme "Beyond the Boundaries: Interdisciplinary Approaches to Software Testing". Interdisciplinary approaches drawn from diversified branches of learning or practice, such that insights can be drawn upon and synthesized to influence a particular craft.

Anuj Magazine, an experienced tester from India has been working for quite sometime on Graphology and Software Testing.

I wanted aid his research and agreed to share my handwriting because his research is to identify the traits in successful testers. You can read the analysis of my handwriting by clicking on this link. I hope you'd enjoy reading the analysis and might be of help to Anuj if he approaches you.

I am sure there a lot of untold stories of what else other than testing has helped them to test better. I hope a lot of other testers come out with those stories that might benefit the community.

--
Pradeep Soundararajan - http://testertested.blogspot.com - +91-98451-76817 - pradeep.srajan@gmail.com

"The test doesn't find the bug. A human finds the bug, and the test plays a role in helping the human find it." --

Educating customers on testing

Everyone has heard about testing and unfortunately everyone has heard about it from different sources that say different and contradicting things.

• One of the customer I worked for thought - testing is about delivering bug free product - which, in my opinion and many other experts with whom I interact is an impractical idea about testing.
• Another customer I worked for thought - testing is about delivering quality - which, again, is a bad idea.
• Another customer thought - testing is about executing test cases and based on the test case pass/fail ratio decide to release - even if the test cases isn't helping testers catch bugs.
• Another customer thought - testing is a job of repeating tests to compare build quality and take a decision to release a specific build to his/her customer.
• Another customer thought - testing is meeting specification.
• Another customer thought - testing is satisfying the customer.

Working with multiple customers is a huge challenge for test managers or testers like me and you. I have so far been repeating the word "customer" and whom do you think I am referring to?

I am referring to the manager we report to and the manager we report to is also our first customer. When testers quit their job and join another one, they never ask their customer (manager) what he/she thinks about testing. That's why some people feel they were performing good in their previous company or they are able to perform better in their recent organization - reason being - their idea of testing matched with that of their manager's idea.

If our idea of testing doesn't match with that of your customer's ( manager ), you and I seem to face a lot of trouble in meeting our customer's expectation and are unable to satisfy them.

Everyone, including you and me might be thinking that the idea we have towards testing is the right one. I have been realizing and teaching that there isn't THE RIGHT WAY to do something. Rapid Software Testing taught me cost v/s value and I took it very serious and I am practicing it.

All customers, irrespective of what definition they have towards testing look for cost v/s value. I am striving to deliver a fabulous value to my customers and I am facing a challenge since I realize what value means to me is different from what value means to my customer (manager).

That's why I was looking as a bad tester (despite finding a lot of bugs) to some of my managers in the past. They think the value they wanted to get out of me is - to execute thousands of scripts or test cases.

Unfortunately I wanted to add more value to the testing efforts which wasn't liked and was fired for attempting to do that. They weren't wrong - they just cleared a trap that they dug in when they hired me.

I learned - what I think as value might be a threat to someone else's idea of value and I value this learning I had about value.

Once I (and my team) found a lot of bugs, so much that there weren't as many bugs that the test case document had helped the team catch in the past. The questions from our customer started to focus on why we had a bad test case document and *not* "Why can't we do more of what you guys did?"

A definition, customer has towards "value" doesn't appear to change despite showing enough evidence. Its hard to continue working for such a customer but there is another dimension to think - money.

Some of those who attend my Exercises for a testers mind - A Rapid Software Testing Approach workshop say, "Well, this is great. I am excited to do testing this way but I suspect the problem is - I don't think my manager would be interested on any of these things I do"

I have had different replies to the above:

• Stop thinking that your manager would not be interested. That's the first step.
• Convince your manager to take this workshop.
• Educate your manager on this.
• Just do it and make your manager ask, "How are you doing these things?"

Here is a list that I suggest you to use, if you realize facing similar challenges: (I practice the same, too)

• Educating your customer, starts with you.
  
• Stop thinking that your first customer wouldn't be willing to see more value.
• Provide evidence for him/her and ask her to critique the evidence you provide.
• Request for a discussion about - What you think of value v/s What your first customer thinks of value.
  
• If it fails the first time, provide repeated evidence and suddenly do things the way your first customer wants to do - see if your first customer comes back asking why suddenly things appear not so good.
• If you have been successful educating your first customer, then motivate your first customer to educate his/her first customer.

BTW, what do you plan to educate your first customer on?

Here is a list of heuristics about educating your first customers:

• Educate yourself before you educate your first customer.
  
• Testing is questioning a product in order to evaluate it AND testers provide quality related information to stakeholders/management to help them take better informed decisions -- James Bach & Cem Kaner
  
• 100 test cases might not help a tester catch 1000 bugs and if you want more bugs, exploratory testing ( with a mission/charter) is an important approach to be incorporated. Adding another 1000 test cases is not a solution.
• Specification document is just one or the oracle that helps a tester find bugs. End users or your customers never use specification oracle to spot bugs and hence going beyond specification can help in finding more bugs.
• Session Based Test Management is a way where Exploratory Testing can be tracked and managed more efficiently.
• Spending less time on documentation that's going to end up wasteful is a nice way to get more time executing tests to find more bugs.
• "If you are too bothered about repeatability of tests - then it is good to have a document of test ideas and *not* test cases that tends to have more ambiguity."
• "Diversification of approaches and techniques helps testers find more and different bugs that otherwise might be caught by a customer."
• Software testing books are not the *only* books that helps tester find bugs and hence the library should stock a lot of books on thinking, ideas, pattern, philosophy, psychology, humans, communication...
• We didn't appear to find a bug because of one or all of these:
  
• We did not have the skill.
• Someone did not let us know when they put it.
• A stakeholder asked us not to report it although we found it.
• We didn't intend to find that.
• We thought it is OK to not to find that, if it existed.
• We were finding other important bugs thinking opportunity cost.
• We didn't have the right oracle.
  
• { You might want to try a lot more, provided some of the above works for you. Sometimes I am aware that I am going to fall into a trap but that's a way I choose to avoid bigger traps }
  

There might be a trap you may fall into. Some of your first customer's might not deserve/ might be reluctant / be egoistic - to such an education, sense it out smartly and stop educating him/her to get more time to educate yourself. An indication that you fell into a trap is when your first customer fires you.

+ A heuristic is a fallible method of solving a problem
++ An oracle is a principle or mechanism by which we (humans) identify problems.

--
Pradeep Soundararajan - http://testertested.blogspot.com - +91-98451-76817 - pradeep.srajan@gmail.com

"The test doesn't find the bug. A human finds the bug, and the test plays a role in helping the human find it." --

Test Case Passed! Who cares?

This will take away at least 8 minutes and 24 seconds of your time, so please be careful if you'd like to spend your time on a thing that potentially has a risk of not yielding any good thing for you as a tester. Maybe you might want to continue executing test cases instead of going through this. Click on the image to waste 8 minutes and 24 seconds. You are lucky if you don't have a MS Powerpoint or Open Office suite or anything of that sort because without that you can't waste 8 minute and 24 seconds that I am repeatedly mentioning.





-- Pradeep Soundararajan - http://testertested.blogspot.com - +91-98451-76817 - pradeep.srajan@gmail.com

"Pradeep's first language is not English--his first language appears to be testing." -- Michael Bolton

Notes from spying test experts

This is a top secret post and be very careful with the information. I am not sure if I can expose my notes to my dear blog readers but I am taking a risk of doing it.

There are some secrets of test experts that not many know. I had a mission sometime back to spy about how test experts actually find many important problems, quickly.

Many people think ( that included me, too) that Test Experts do lot more tests and have more fantastic test ideas and that's why they find many important problems, quickly.

I was hoping that there is more information hiding than what is visible about test experts and spying helped to uncover those hidden secrets.

This post is all about the secrets that I found spying test experts and the secrets of how they find many bugs?

You can trust me about the information to an extent that I and many other testers have been practicing the secrets that has resulted to our success of finding many important problems, quickly.


They just do one test to find many bugs!

Now, I am sure you don't want to believe me because my finding says that they do just one test to find many bugs. I am sure you have seen testers finding one bug per tests that find a bug and that makes you not believe this information but... you must understand that the secrets are always unbelievable.

You can feel safe after knowing a fact that I too didn't trust the secret of one test finding many bugs but my spying mission was to find out more granular details about it.

Looking more carefully into it, you might discover that it is not a test that finds a bug but it is a human that finds a bug and a test plays a role in helping the human find it. So there is something with humans that is helping to find bugs and not completely with the tests.

When I collected this much of information over months of spying, I was invited to be a part of the round table conference of experts as I had posed myself as a test expert from India (I knew I wasn't a test expert and even today I am too conscious that I am not one such) but you know... I am a spy and had to pose that way.

Over the round table conference, test experts started discussion about ORACLES* and I didn't know their terminology and just took notes. That evening, when I returned to my hotel, I was trying to connect ORACLES and the spying mission I had in hand.

* Oracles - principle or mechanism by which we (humans) identify problems

I was perhaps lucky that James Bach and Michael Bolton were staying in the same hotel that I was put up and we caught up at the dinner table.

I had an idea that I hope it worked. I was hoping that James Bach is a kind of person who would spill off the secrets in a context to prove me wrong and help me learn the secrets if I talked nonsense about ORACLES, because his passion to the craft of software testing is something that I am trying to match. Michael Bolton, the Birbal of North American software testing was a person whom I had to handle very carefully as he is more likely to identify me as a spy. At the end, I assumed that I was able to outsmart Michael in not letting him know that I am spy.

Going back to the hotel room, I started writing my discoveries about the secrets of test experts and the granular details of how they find important problems,quickly.

Before I publish a report to end the spying mission, I was sure that I had to practice the details I collected. I did practice and was excited that those ideas really worked and I found more bugs by executing one test.

Why many testers might not be able to practice the secrets that I am unlocking here is because they have a fixed expected result that is derived from a specification document that the tester thinks is The Holy Bible for the project.

Specification Document - is one single oracle and hence you might find one bug per test you execute.

The important thing is experts define a bug as "anything that threatens the value of the product" (-- James Bach)

Here are a list of Oracles that experts use with every test they do:

Consistency with the Image: When I execute a test, I try comparing and contrasting it with the image that my company or stake holders have been projecting about the product or the company.

For instance, if my company has an image in the market as people who produce software whose performance is good, and I execute a test whose documented expected result is "This functionality should work", I ask question, "Well it works but didn't it take too long to perform the operation?" and then I find a bug and say, "Although this operation goes through the time it took to complete the operation exceeds beyond the image the market has about us"

Consistency with Similar Product(s): When I execute a test the functionality might work as expected but I ask a question, "Well it works but doesn't it seem to perform in a way that users who are used to similar products might expect it to happen?" and then I find an important problem, quickly.

Consistency within the Product: When I execute a test that appears to have passed, I ask a question, "Well it works but doesn't it work in a different way than other areas of the same product?" and then I find an important problem, quickly.

Consistency with Claims: Marketing personnel and my manager are making certain claims about the product. When I execute a test and the test appears to have passed, I ask a question, "Well it works but does the way it works go against the claim that they make?" and then I find a bug.

Consistency with Statutes: When I execute a test that appears to have passed, I ask a question, "Well it works but does the way it works go against a law that an organization or a certifying authority might have?" and then I find a bug.

Consistency with User's Expectation: When I execute a test that appears to have passed, I ask a question, "Well it works but does it work in a way that the users whom I am aware of might not want it to happen?" and then I find a bug.

Consistency with History: When I execute a test that appears to have passed, I ask a question, "Well it works but does it work in the way the previous releases of this product work?" and then I find a bug.

While writing this post, I got an e-mail from James and Michael that reads...

Dear Pradeep,

We knew that you were spying us for a long time. We also saw the way in which you took notes, asked questions and drew inferences from what you could capture and that impressed us to help you learn more about testing because those are some important skills that a tester needs to have, to add good value for the cost customers pay for. We consider to hire you and we recommend you to quit spying profession and take up testing where you might get more laurels for your skills. Here is a link to know more about more secrets : www.satisfice.com/rst.pdf

Good luck!

-- James Bach & Michael Bolton

I was excited and I did quit spying, to take up testing as a full time activity. I thought I shouldn't post this in my blog because I didn't want those secrets to be given away for free and saved a draft of this post. I am afraid if Blogger has a bug that publishes drafts that are not intended to be published.


-- Pradeep Soundararajan - http://testertested.blogspot.com - +91-98451-76817 - pradeep.srajan@gmail.com

"Pradeep's first language is not English--his first language appears to be testing." -- Michael Bolton


Update : Michael Bolton, blessed me with a post on his blog for this article of mine. I was jumping in joy for at least half an hour reading that and I am pleased to share it with you: http://www.developsense.com/2007/09/if-test-passes-in-forest-and-no-one.html

A good tester clears traps. Who are you?

There is no standard definition of a "good tester" to my knowledge but I am sure there are ways to say if I am doing a good testing. I self certify as a "good tester" and I *think* I am respected because my standards are higher and growing!

Years back, I fell into a lot of testing traps and I fall into fewer testing traps today. The traps that I fall in decides how bad my testing is. It certainly takes time to recover from the traps and hence I lose time which otherwise could have spent adding value to the project.

Customers aren't happy to pay for the time we spend to recover from the traps we fell into. There are times where we ourselves set traps (and jump into it) and there are also times where others or situations sets a trap. Whatever is the source of the trap, we fall into it and the biggest and dangerous of all traps is this: To not realize that we have fallen into a trap or to be reluctant of having fallen in a trap.

Here is an exercise that I worked on, which I think, helps in demonstrating the art of clearing traps in testing. I would call it : 100 questions in 20 minutes - The Art of clearing traps in testing [ PDF file : 104 kilobytes ]

Wishing you a good learning experience!

Do you think I had a specification or requirement document when I took up the exercise?

-- Pradeep Soundararajan - http://testertested.blogspot.com - +91-98451-76817 - pradeep.srajan@gmail.com

"Pradeep's first language is not English--his first language appears to be testing." -- Michael Bolton

Letter from India

This letter is targeted to managers in North America and Europe who outsource their test execution work to India. If you happen to know such a manager or such a manager is your client, you might want to share this letter with him, after reading it. That doesn't mean, you shouldn't share it with others ! :-)

Without killing your curiosity ( or to build your curiosity ), here is the letter from India that I am talking about.

In the movie - Shawshank Redemption, Andy Dufresne ( Tim Robbins ), wrote one letter every week from jail for years together, to get funding for the prison library and when it happened, the jailors felt a "miracle". I don't know if I want miracles to happen but I am sure, Andy has inspired me to write more letters in future.


-- Pradeep Soundararajan - pradeep.srajan@gmail.com - +91-98451-76817

"Pradeep's first language is not English--his first language appears to be testing." -- Michael Bolton

Mixing Scripted and Exploratory Testing

Over the past few days, I have been talking and listening to a lot of testers, leads and managers in Bangalore IT organizations through my Mirchi Test Masala talk and it's a great experience.

I solved interesting problems that boosts my confidence of solving testing problems that Indian IT companies face and I have already started to receive great feedback from testers and managers who attended my talk. I usually don't believe on the feedback forms but I do believe when people talk the change happening in their workplace and that is always a true feedback.

One such problem that I solved for an organization is this:

Manager: I usually ask my testers to focus on finding issues that are important to the release and I see that not everyone in my team finds those bugs that I/management/customer is interested to see with that particular release we make.

Tester: Well, we do follow what he says but he is not being convinced about the work we do. We are finding problems but the problems we find are not of the stake holders interest sometimes.

Manager: There was once a design and code change to optimize performance and we did not have the test cases ready and I had to ask them to do it in an exploratory way but I could see that it did not work well for any of us.

Tester: Thanks that our manager communicated that he is interested to listen more about performance related issues on a specific release and we did exploratory testing but we are not sure why we couldn't find bugs.

Pradeep: Ah! Interesting problem!

This is what I did:

1. First I launched an explanation of my understanding of the problem and asked them, if I understood the problem.
2. On getting a go from both sides, I started to question them individually.
3. The questioning skill plays a vital role, in seeking more information, analyzing the problem and get hold of contexts in which they are speaking.
4. I asked the manager and testers a couple of common and uncommon questions and made them to listen to each other.
5. A specific question that I asked, "What is your definition of performance and exploratory testing?" revealed the solution to the problem for everyone in the room.
6. Interestingly, the manager had a different definition of Exploratory testing from each of the tester. The testers too had their own definitions of Exploratory testing and it differed from each other.
7. I insisted the testers to hereafter ask for what the manager meant by a word/terminology when he assigns them to do a specific task.
8. After that I got them off to a discussion based on a topic over which the manger thought his testers fumbled upon and did a bad job. Interestingly, both ends were now convinced that they could find those important problems quickly since they questioned each other.

Now, there is another problem that testers in all organizations I have been so far and I am going to be for my one day testing exercises workshop will ask my help to solve:

How to mix scripted and exploratory testing?

I understand the fact that Indian IT companies do not want try exploratory testing as a full fledged activity for their projects unless they see results for themselves and they still want to try it out to see if it adds value to their testing.

In one of the projects I worked, I mixed scripted and exploratory testing and the results that the organization saw was amazing. Ah! it worked for me but I can't guarantee that it would work for you but I can guarantee you that it's worth a try.

Before you know how to mix scripted testing and exploratory testing, I suggest you to go through Jon Bach's video on Exploratory Testing and RST appendices . Now, if you crave for more you might want to have a look at Elizabeth Hendrickson's Test heuristic cheat sheet and form something like that to suit your project needs. Of course don't forget to run my screen saver which is now installed and used by all testers in an organization and I am happy to hear that it has been helping them.

Now, it's time to know how to mix it without adding too much cost to the organization and yet find those important problems, quickly.

For every scripted test case you execute, run a test that is not documented in your test case suite, which is fast enough to run and yet not add too much of time. You might want to consider using heuristics for getting on the fly ideas to test the product that you have been asked to.

It's left to you and your skills, to decide the ratio of mixture of Scripted test and Exploratory test and also don't get surprised at the results as you keep practicing this and learn to do it much better.

Rakesh VK, a Senior Tester in DELL is well known within his company for being the tester who finds most number of important problems quickly. While delivering my talk at DELL, I had a chance to talk with him over the secret of being the tester who finds problems that matters the most.

He simply had to say this: "I mix scripted and exploratory testing and I always have been a tester who finds most number of important problems and I enjoy remaining in this position. Also, this has led my manager to get convinced that ET adds great value and he now is happy of other team members doing ET"


Wow! So who is the next Indian tester to become one like Rakesh?

-- Pradeep Soundararajan - pradeep.srajan@gmail.com - +91-98451-76817

"Pradeep's first language is not English--his first language appears to be testing." -- Michael Bolton