Are you one among the lucky 20 testers of the world?

Hi Reader,

On August 27th I wrote, Gold mines opening up for Indian testers and many Indian testers did contact James Bach for the online seminar he was planning to offer. The gates are open now to 20 testers worldwide.

James Bach is offering a 2 free webinars, one on Rapid Software Testing - V2.1 (new!) and another one on The Unbearable Lightness of Model-Based Testing.

If you are interested to be one among the 20, hold on for a while before you e-mail James and look at the following information.

First Webinar - Rapid Software Testing - V2.1 (new! - updated by Michael Bolton and James Bach)
Date - 4th January
Time - 1: 30 AM ( Indian Standard Time )

Second Webinar - The Unbearable Lightness of Model-Based Testing
Date: 9th January
Time: 7:00 AM ( Indian Standard Time)

Of course, James has blogged this information - My First Webinar !

You have a reason to read further

As a student who interact with James Bach on a daily basis, here is my recommendation -

1. If you get a chance to be one among the 20, try using a very high speed broadband or the one that might be available in your office. I use BSNL broadband 256 kbps speeds and yet I face issues like connectivity problems, call drop and so on.

2. Keep your PC up to date with latest versions of Skype, IE updates / Firefox / ActiveX plugins that might help you avoid surprises in the last minute.

3. I recommend you to purchase a 10 Euro calling facility from Skype that helps you for all future webinars,too. You get close to 600 minutes to US/any country in that 10 Euro, so it's cool.

4. Keep a notebook and pen ready. It might help you as a tester, if you have downloaded the RST slides and or Appendices even if you are not lucky to get an invite.

5. Test your headset - speaker and microphone well in advance.

6. Prepare a list of things that could go wrong and look for work around and have them ready with you.

7. Keep yourself fresh even despite the webinar being midnight for India.

I am sure, you wouldn't want to miss this opportunity in any form! If I were you, I would request an invitation from James through a polite e-mail. For any further information or clarification on System and internet connectivity, you are free to e-mail or call me.

What James Bach has not mentioned in his blog is, "This free webinar is the Christmas/ New year gift James Bach is offering to testers worldwide".

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

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

Rapid answers to rapid fire situations a tester faces

Hi Reader,

All the testers I have spoke to (in India) have these issues in common -

1. I have never got the release on planned time and my manager expects me to do a good job.

2. When we are not given enough time and the customer finds a bug, the managers come running and question, "how did it slip?".

3. I am getting no time to improve my skills as a tester, work is so much that I dont even get time to check my mails.

4. I quit my previous job thinking a new place would be better but it looks to me the new one is taking a lot of my time in generating metrics/preparing report/creating graphs than testing.

5. I am watching a script run for days together, in a few days I might feel the script will get smarter than me. ( for me not doing anything other than watching it play)

The Test Managers I have come across have these issues -

1. I am unable to gain confidence on my testers report and I need to keep my fingers crossed for each release.

2. How can I measure the productivity of testers? I use - number of test cases executed per hour or number of bugs found for a release or number of bugs found by the customer to evaluate a tester.

The customer have these issues -

1. I want as many tests to be automated, that gives me more confidence.

2. I am not happy about the testing that has been done by the company I have outsourced testing to.

There is a way you can deal with these situations my dear testers, test managers and customers!

Play football (soccer)

Aren't you thinking "This guy is stupid?"

Well, you might not think that after going through this post carefully and completely.

When you are on field as a member of a soccer team and the ball comes to you at a heated time where the opponent is two goals up, you are at a situation described above.

1. You start to think where you are standing in the field.
2. Where are your team members?
3. How many opponents are trying to attack you?
4. Whom should you pass the ball to?
5. How far is the goal?
6. Is your coach watching you?
7. Are your country fans going to kill you if you dont help to fetch a goal?
8. Will you be selected for the next match if you fail to give a good pass?
.
.
Diego Maradona, Pele, Ronaldo, Baichung Bhutia... handles these situations good enough and so they are the best. If you need to be good enough, you too need to be one among Maradona, Pele or Ronaldo.

Yes, I have started to like you as you got the hidden message saying, "A tester needs skill to handle and win these situations".

"Pradeep, is knowing definitions, getting certified and finding more bugs enough to handle these situations?"

Ah! you broke the ice by that question. Time to say, " you might be wrong" and if you want me to say the way, its "Rapid Software Testing" .

The complexity of products has grown as a monster in the past few years and you still want to keep following the approach that was formulated long back?

In some countries like India, we are angry against the government sometimes (many times, actually) for having companies/ tax/sales Act dating 1952 - 1957 which does not suit the 2006 and 2007, without even looking at ourselves that we haven't changed the age old traditional testing process.

Wait a minute, let me grin and get back to writing. ( he he , My pay slip has so many columns than the one mentioned in Salary Act!)

The picture you see in this post is of James Bach's identity plate. What he means by that is "Testers light the way". The project or product has a lot of dark corners and areas, which testers light the way they go and help the management take better decisions. ( Note: Its not the process that lights the way, sometimes testers might even light the darkness present in the process, accept them to improve your organization and product quality)

Its high time for you to ask me "Hey get me onto Rapid Software Testing"

Here it goes - Rapid Software Testing Slides by James Bach and Michael Bolton .

Rapid Software Testing - makes you skilled, if you are a tester. If you are a Manager, it gives you ample information in a short time that helps you take better decision on the product/release. If you are a customer, you would want this to happen in the company where you have outsourced your testing work.

Remember, I talked about the football/soccer game to give another hidden message that - Rapid Software Testing encourages skilled testing and also encourages an entire team to be skilled and tells you how to tap the skill of a team member to give better information about the quality of a product.

Yesterday, Manjunath, a tester from IBM - Bangalore met me and he couldn't believe the demo of Rapid Software testing, I gave him. When he left, he had to say, "This is great! I am a CSTE certified tester and we never get through all this that really makes a tester skilled" .He also said, "It looks to me that certification just shows that a person has interest towards testing". I was happy that he re-stated what certification means to him.

The reason why I had to put "It looks to me" in bold is because I passed on a couple of lessons that I learn't from James Bach and Michael Bolton to that tester. ( Psst! dont tell anyone that skilled testers speak that way)

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

Indian testers STEALING a testers creativity - STOP THEM

Hi Reader,

It is very disappointing to note that my article Technology that failed in India (Testing Bowl of the world) is under circulation among Indian testers through e-mails.

Now, why am I disappointed about my article being circulated all over India?

The people who are forwarding it are changing their own name and forwarding it. Now, if you are a Tester Tested reader and want to encourage me to share such learning I had, you should take this seriously and pass it on to all those who have got the mail and also to those who are about to get the mail.

If Indian testers play such a spoil sport, its going to hamper the growth of Indian Testing community.

Hey come on, its my brain child. I cant let you steal the credit!

I am writing this pretty strong as I cannot find and catch all those Indian testers who are displaying the act of plagiarism.

This blog of mine has been encouraging so many Indian testers and if you disappoint me by plagiarism, I am sure you are making me hesitant to share my future learning.

I am not sure how serious you are going to take this since you are not affected yet. I just hope Indian testers themselves do not become a barrier to other Indian testers to achieve something that India can be proud of.

This is what Michael Bolton had to say on hearing this - "A tester without integrity is a tester without credibility--and a tester without credibility won't have a career for long."

He also mentioned that such an incident happened to Cem Kaner and the community of testers there in US and Canada took it up strongly to the person who plagiarised and the author had to step down from the association and the online magazine was held.

This is India, I cannot expect an immediate revolution, yet I am hopeful.

Lets not kill each other, Lets build each other!

With tears (for fellow Indian testers behaving this way) and disappointment,

Pradeep Soundararajan
pradeep.srajan@gmail.com

The tester who tested his testers

Hi Reader,

This is an interesting story that came alive during a heated discussion with my manager Srinivasa. The discussion was on "bias" that multimedia testers are prone to while testing a product. (I shall talk about that in detail, in some other post but for the time being the focus is on the the story.)

Its story time again in Tester Tested!

There were two multimedia products under test, lets say Bino and Nino. A tester was testing both of them. Bino was started earlier than Nino and had reached a state where the subjective quality of the product was good enough. Bino on reaching a good enough state was made the benchmark and Nino's quality was tested against it. Bino was talked all over the company for its quality.

Each time the tester tested a release for Nino, he used to report Bino was still better than Nino. Of course, mulitimedia quality is all about subjective view but as testers we need to quantify; why we rate something poor.

For some releases, Nino was not as good as Bino and hence the testers view was acceptable. After a few such iterations, the manager felt Nino's quality had improved a lot but the tester kept rating Bino to be much better than Nino.

The manager performed a trick to find out "what is going wrong with the testers decision despite the quality seems to have improved?"

He labelled Bino as Nino and Nino as Bino and gave a release of Nino to the tester.

This time the tester gave a report saying "Bino is still better than Nino" which means the tester was biased to Bino and had formed a pre-concieved notion that Bino is the benchmark.

Now, that was a great story about "bias of a tester" and the risk of "bias" on a tester. The manager was none other than my current manager Srinivasa.

Now, some of you might form an opinion that my manager was doing a micro management. Actually if you look closer, my manager helped the tester to come out of the bias.

Now my manager has set an example to other test managers as to how they can help their testers to look into themselves. I am sure if your manager gets to read this, he would have something to learn.

This story reminds me of one of the lesson I learnt from James Bach - As a good tester, you should never say "I am sure" since what you say is what you have observed/conjecture/infer but the truth could be different.

As a tester, you do not know whether you are being tested by the product or manager and it is recommended to say "I conjecture/infer/looks like Bino is still better than Nino".


Thanks and Regards,

Pradeep Soundararajan
pradeep.srajan@gmail.com

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

Disclaimer: Do not get biased by the title of this post. It is not to mean that test managers test their testers, it is a style of expression I used to make the learning a joy.

A study on Test Coaching in India

Hi Reader,

As I am exploring the options of coaching testers in organizations through workshops that exercise a testers mind (that includes me too), I had a learning that I value and I am sharing with you here.

I never received any training as a tester in all the companies I have worked for but did train few people as an employee of a company. I have seen e-mails from the HR - Training, announcing coaching on programming languages from external people who have a reputation of handling the class well.

Does this happen to testing too?

Yes, it does but what is being taught is a traditional approach and concepts of testing. Many Indian testers think there is nothing beyond "SDLC, V Model testing, Types of Testing and Testing definitions" to learn in testing.

I wouldn't say the above training is not good enough but instead I would say, "there is more important thing that a tester should be trained on, *acquiring new skills* to test any product". ( provided you would want your testers to do a skilled testing)

We define, a good tester as someone who knows all the definitions and is able to clear a few certification programs.

Certifications arise for a commercial value and I am not sure how much value it holds except that it can fetch you a job if the person who interviews you also holds the same certification. I know a person in India, who has 14 brainbench certifications on fields like Software Testing, Project Management.... and I am not sure what this certificate means. Does it mean you know something about the syllabus or you know most of the things in the course.

When experts like Cem Kaner, James Bach, Jerry Weinberg, Michael Bolton, Mike Kelly, Jon Bach, Mike Kelly, Elizabeth Hendrikson... might say, "there is lots to learn", I am not sure if the certification really matters when you yourself know you are a good enough tester.

In the last one year, the awareness to become a skilled tester is rising amongst testers in India and by the end of 2007, "skilled testing" is the way any Indian tester would want to think about testing.

Who is helping testers to become high skilled?

There are 5 people -

• Tester
• Manager
• HR
• Training and Development department
• Test Coach

I could see testers who have interacted with me or are my blog readers, proposing my workshop to their teams and across organization. The chain reaction came from their managers by proposing the same to the HR and or Training and Development department. Now the HR is going to play an important role in providing the workshop to the testers in their organization.

I am sure all the above 5 people would work hard enough to grow skilled testing within you and me. James Bach once coached testers in Wipro and Mindtree during his visit to India in 2003 and since then many testers in India have been awaiting his next visit. Michael Bolton too presented Rapid Software Testing in India last year and now he is going to speak in the international testing conference, Hyderabad - Dec 8 and 9. Shrinivas Kulkarni has spoken in a lot of conferences worldwide and to me he looks someone has been living with automation for a long time and that is cool to live with what you are passionate about.

Its mercury rising, Catch up with the heat!

I love to share my experiences and learning with you all. Now that I am becoming an independent test consultant, it helps me do this much better and efficient. Help me to help you ;)

Thanks and Regards,

Pradeep Soundararajan

pradeep.srajan@gmail.com or +91-98451-76817

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

Indian testing community - start blogging!

Hi Reader,

It has been a great learning for me and I am sure you wont deny that, as you have been reading my blog. My effort to become a Test Consultant is just to benefit the Indian testing community and in turn learn from you all and contribute to the testing community.

In the last few months, many Indian testers have been contacting James Bach for an individual coaching as how I have been receiving but it is the time that is a constraint for James, otherwise he loves coaching testers and it is his passion too.

Now, if you are so keen in getting trained from an expert, you need to prove to them that you are worth their time. How can you do that?

Blogging, is the way!

Dedicate a blog to testing. Show your passion, share your learning and encourage people to comment and do lots such. Who knows an expert might read your blog and like it!

I see many testers in western countries have a blog of their own and you might also know that companies like Microsoft encourage their employees to have a blog. There are lot of Indian testers who do blog on testing but a major part is a copy-paste stuff is what they do and interview questions and answers as their blog posts which does not stand as a proof that they are passionate about testing.

I consider this testing blog as a successful one. I don't have a million readers a month but have some good testers and experts as my blog readers and that is what I want.

I can show you many Indian testers and some developers blogs who have started their own after seeing my blog. I do not want to link them now since they are in a bad state. Excitement was the reason they started blogging and wrote one or two posts but they were unable to go beyond that because only enthusiasm can keep you blogging and not excitement of seeing a blog's success.

Don't start blogging just because you want to become a successful blogger but start blogging when you want to learn and better yourself as a tester.

This is how I started my blog -

• My friend Preetam Modur, who had been listening what I think about testing and has seen me testing products, asked me to start a blog to share my thoughts with many testers. He also explained me the power of blogging.
• I decided to start a blog and started a study on blogs. I started looking at a lot of blogs in testing. I found the ones who have shared their learning and thoughts as very interesting ones. I found nothing interesting in the ones that had a copy-paste of some information available on the net. I decided, I should not be doing that since it does not suit me.
• I wanted to use this blog as a channel to express my passion towards this testing craft.
• I wrote a few posts and I myself read it more than a 100 times. I tested my posts by forcing a few people who critique me for whatever thing I do and got good results out of it. My posts improved as days passed.

Why testers who tried aping Tester Tested unable to continue? ( could be one of the following...)

• They wanted to get success in a short span without putting much effort.
• They thought it is easy to write a blog and maintain it.
• They started with an intention to have a huge reader base.
• They started because it worked for me.
• They weren't passionate about testing

Recently a tester from Chennai named Debasis recieved a surprise comment from James Bach on his blog and that must have made him one of the happiest tester for the day.

Another Indian tester who has blogged with real passion is Shrinivas Kulkarni . He is a Senior Test Manager in iGate, Bangalore. He gets James Bach to comment on his blog on a regular basis.

Remain passionate and blog!

Start blog and let me know your link after you write a couple of posts. Even today, I keep visiting the blogs of those testers who have started after looking at mine, to see if they have posted something new although they themselves do not seem to visit their own. That is the kind of encouragement I can offer you too.

As I realize that Brazilian testers too have become my regular readers, I equally encourage them to start blogging.

Invent your own way or writing and blogging, what rule applies to you does not apply to me.

Thanks and Regards,

Pradeep Soundararajan

(Anything on testing there is - pradeep.srajan@gmail.com , At least I reply, "I don't know")

Test Consulting in 2007 by Tester Tested!

Hi Reader,

In 2006 many of you who popped into my blog were able to return with a satisfaction of learning something.

2007 is approaching and what is in store for you from this blog?

Yeah, I have something more exciting and wonderful learnings to share with you.

Pradeep, how are you confident about that?

Yeah, I am positioning myself as an Independent Test Consultant in 2007

How does that benefit Indian Testers or any tester for that matter?

I am a good enough tester and I have helped many testers, coaching them online and through face to face meetings. I have held a peer conference kind of stuff in Bangalore that encouraged testers to meet, interact and learn from each other. As I am on my own now, I got the freedom to coach and learn from you all out there.

So, coaching is your only service?

While coaching is one of them, I love testing assignments and exercises that challenge me as a tester, so if you or your company is interested in making me test your products, analyze it, profile it and add further value to the product, I do it with great zeal.

There are a whole lot of things, I can do for you when it comes to testing.

Can we have your profile to share it with our management to let them know, you are "good enough"?

Yes, sure. Save a copy of this pdf - Pradeep Soundararajan - Profile June 2007 and pass it on to your management.

I am an individual, what services can I get from you?

No worries, I would love to help any tester who wants to better himself as a tester since coaching such testers help me better myself too. I learn from anyone and anything and moreover, I practice the things I learned.

If you are an individual from any place in India, team up with other testers which makes the cost cheaper.

I think I know better than you, what should I do?

Great! Irrespective of who you are, I like to learn from you.

Does this kind of a consulting thing works in India, while it is working in Western countries?

Yes, it works! (provided we try)

How do we get in touch with you?

pradeep.srajan@gmail.com or +91-98451-76817 ( haven't you looked at my profile yet?)


Thanks and Regards,

Pradeep Soundararajan

Yahoo! we crashed the Messenger

Hi Reader,

On November 13th 2006 9:30 PM IST, I noticed Prashant Kumar online in Yahoo! Messenger. Prashant is a passionate tester working in Bangalore and I've known him for the past 6 years, since we both are from the same batch of engineering and we lived nearby.

I engaged Prashant to take up a testing exercise to help me practice conducting an exercise. We were having a voice chat through Yahoo Messenger conference and I asked him to test the window through which we were chatting.

He was smart enough to start with questions like:

Prashant: Do you mean the voice conference window between us?

Pradeep: Yes!

Prashant: Okay, what do you want me to test in this?

Pradeep: "Send File" feature.

Prashant: Okay, let me start off with something like this... ( he listed out some types of files he would send.. *.exe, *.doc, *.zip, *.mp3, *.xls... corrupt files, sizes of file 0kb .. 1kb, 100 kb, 1MB, 1.1MB and started doing it )

Pradeep: ( Meanwhile, I too started exploring the feature. I noticed that I was able to invoke more than one session of "send file" for the same user)

Pradeep: Prashant, try doing this ( I explained to him what I did).

Pradeep: Prashant, don't you think it is a bug if windows are over lapping over each other, which blocks the end user to be unaware of the multiple sessions that has opened on his own multiple clicks of "send file"?

Prashant: Not sure, but wait let me investigate.( He goes offline suddenly)

Pradeep: (Meanwhile, I tried clicking on "send file" option multiple times., My Yahoo Messenger disappeared too) We both logged into Yahoo and got into a conference again.

Prashant: Hey, lets say it together... ( we both knew, the observation was obvious )

Chorus: Yahoo! Messenger crashed. Pradeep: Are you sure, you know the steps to reproduce?

Prashant: Yes, I do know.

Pradeep: Go ahead!

Prashant: ( narrates what he did to observe Yahoo! Messenger crash )

Pradeep: Oh! I thought it is something else, wait let me try the steps you mentioned. ( I followed and went offline)

Pradeep: (I did try the version of "steps to reproduce", I had in mind, the issue was not reproducible. So pair testing worked well)

--

Deep investigation starts... My learning from the exercise I took on investigating a bug as a part of James Bach's coaching, came handy...

1. We both made an attempt to arrive at a conclusion on "steps to reproduce" the issue and verified the same with each other.

2. The bug was easy to reproduce on our configurations. We saw it happen about thirty times.

3. We checked with ourselves, our PC and Laptop configurations to ensure we both did not have any other application/program causing this crash other than Yahoo Messenger. Hopefully no virus/spyware that does not like Yahoo! (I used MSINFO32 to find out my laptop configuration and Prashant used DX , I compared both to see, they were different configurations. It gives evidence that it can be reproduced with more than one configurations or could be all. I applied an update to my AVG Free version anti virus and performed a quick scan for virus/spyware, I am not sure whether I asked Prashant to do this.)

4. We added another user to the chat session and discovered that the problem still occurs with three. We extended the experiment upto 5 users in the conference. The crash was seen each time by Prashant and me.
Voice was enabled in our original session, so we disabled voice and repeated the steps to reproduce the issue. Yahoo! crashed again.

5. Now we both started asking ourselves and each other; is there something that we could have missed? ( I am sure, we could have )

6. It is then an idea struck both of us; let's Yahoo and Google to check if this issue is already under "known limitations"? We could not find any such for the version we were using. Yahoo Messenger: 8.1.0.195 and MyYahoo Module 8.0.0.1. ( Its 1:20 AM IST, both of us remember our office work and the pending work we have tomorrow and set off to bed, Good night!)

7. (Nov 14th 2006, 10 30 PM IST) We craved for more evidence that could help to prove this bug and improve Yahoo Messenger. We then hit upon C:\Program Files\Yahoo!\Messenger\logs\ . Ah, at least I could not understand those logs, so we decided to store that as a supporting evidence since as testers we claim to know, why someone (dev_guys) would have enabled logging for.

8.All done. Not yet... we wanted to have screen shots but the learning from - Tools For Recording Exploratory Testing was applied. We used Wink to record our test and provide a visual of our steps to reproduce and make you all witness Yahoo disappearing :)

9. The report... which I am doing now...


Title: Yahoo Messenger crashes when multiple send file option is initiated for the same user from a conference window.

Steps to reproduce: ( pretty simple )

1. Download Yahoo Messenger latest version in your PC.
2. Log in/Log on with your user name and password.
3. Find a buddy online and invite him to a conference ( with or without voice enabled ).
4. Once your buddy joins the conference, click and highlight your buddy's id on the conference window.
5. Initiate a "send file" from the conference window.
6. Despite a "Select the file to send" window being opened, initiate "Send file" from the conference window for 7 times without selecting a file to send.

Observed result :

Yahoo! Messenger crashes.

Video link: Coming soon... ( Upload failure - My 14 upload attempts failed, am not giving up)

Yahoo Messenger logs collected from PC (C:\Program Files\Yahoo!\Messenger\logs\ ) : Linked here

_ _ _

I am sure, we could have done a lot more but for me, my approach was good enough, just that I need more practice to become "very good" on investiagating a bug.


Regards,

Pradeep Soundararajan
http://www.testertested.blogspot.com

Pradeep's first language is testing and not English - Michael Bolton

First attempt at Test Consulting : An experience report

_ my post in software-testing@yahoogroups.com a group owned by James Bach and Cem Kaner _

A start up company in Bangalore who were impressed by my blog Tester Tested , invited me to test their products and train testers. I decided to do it in parallel.

Here goes some notes ...

I reached the place around 10:30 AM on Nov 4th, got a brief introduction to the company and the team. I went through the documents they gave me pertaining to the products I was supposed to test. The documents were not in detail but gave a general overview and yet I identified some key areas to test. I talked to the testers and developers to know the current state of the project and the need for calling me. That's like quickly getting to know the context.

I tried getting my mission as quick as possible and succeeded to get it at 11:15 AM. I wrote down the mission and asked them to check if I went wrong in understanding it.

Next move, I approached the tester and asked him to show me a demo of their product. I started digging for more info by asking questioning the testing. I found that the testers there had no clue what testing was and that is not surprising. Plus, they were sitting close to the developers that helped them to be biased.. "I saw it working on the developer's PC, so I did not test that" were the words from a tester. :)

The software is supposed to be sold to schools and colleges for the management to facilitate all the paper work to go online.

Some features of the software are

1. Admission process
2. Student attendance records
3. Library Management
4. Question paper generation

• I questioned the need of every feature , every radio button, every format, every assumption from the developers, everything that I could see, everything that I could not see too..
• The application was written in Java, and uses a Tomcat server to access the database ( MS Access ).

Two amongst many other interesting bugs I found helped me arrive at better informed decision about the product were.

1. The administrator was able to delete his own account details and whoosh.. There is no other power user than administrator, so the application became useless.

2. There was a "book search" option in Library Management, The field was not accepting more than a word, a developer's countered his assumption that it is a feature which makes the search simple for students to search for "java" , "testing". My counter counter argument was "If there is a book on testing which has a title "The craft of making good software", will a search on "testing" reveal this book?

• This provoked me to make the developer list out all assumptions he had made to develop the software. I started testing all his assumptions and without surprise, most of his assumptions deviated the software from its purpose.
• Every few minutes once, I kept saying to the testers there "Do not accept if I say something is wrong, I encourage you to argue with me on the point I say". ( The secret of getting better as a tester, learnt from James Bach)
• It was around 1:45 and we all dispersed as it was late for lunch. 
• 2:15, I am back, with a higher level of energy after lunch since I wanted to dig the software much deep.
• I do not know what discussions the developers had during lunch but there were more people joining to see me test and discuss the issues. It gave me more confidence, since I made an assumption they were interested to see " how is this guy able to dig all this?"( Sometimes it is better to motivate yourselves, as a tester, by saying this "wow, developers too are interested to listen to me" )
• I added great humour now and then and made the developer laugh at his own mistake than getting disappointed/frustrated in front of his seniors, internally felt "wow pradeep, you seem to be a good manager too"
• I also helped them see the product in a number of ways, they might have not thought. I developed a good eye to eye contact with the 10 people I was surrounded by and whenever someone said "yes", I was convinced that they said "yes" from heart since their eyes too had the same expression.
• Well as we were so involved with the discussion on issues and finding new bugs, we were surprised the bug count had gone beyond 50 or 70 after a while by around 4 O clock and out of them, many show stoppers.
• I showed them at least one database corruption, tomcat server crash, multiple application crashes, multiple cosmetic bugs, requirements missing, design defects, multiple wrong assumptions.
• At around 7 PM, I stopped by re-stating the mission I had and how much of it I felt, I finished. I also requested for feedback from them on their views on my results v/s mission objectives.
• I motivated all the developers to challenge me the next time I drop in. I motivated the testers to challenge me and not even let the developers say "I can challenge pradeep".
• At 7 25 PM: "Pradeep ... Pradeep" a voice came out from a guy who seemed to be chasing me from another bike. I stopped my bike to discover he was one of the developer who followed me for a distance. After we stopped he said, "I was impressed and never knew testing was so creative, I want to shift to testing"
• He asked for the books he has to read and I suggested the two books I feel are bible for starters. Of course, the two books are Learning Software Testing - Dr Cem Kaner, Jack Falck, Hung Ngyuen and Lessons learnt in software testing - Dr Cem Kaner, James Bach and Bret Pettichord.

I was very happy of having done a good enough job. I felt the following points could make my guru James Bach happy of having coached me for free ( I could not have afforded had he charged me :) ) 

I felt that 

• I asked good questions that reveal great information about the current state of the product, its quality. Got my mission. 
• Collected enough evidence to prove a bug. 
• Talked specific. 
• Recovered from my own mistakes rapidly. 
• Learnt the product at its breadth in a short while.
• Performed exploratory testing better than my previous attempts.
• And said to myself, "This is still the beginning...".

I got a message today morning (Nov 5th) from one of the developer "I am still wondering; how you were able to make the Tomcat disappear?" and the company has decided to re design the whole software and are going to invite me for another round of testing. ( Of course they would invite me, I did not charge them anything )

I am sure, I am not yet as good as most of you here are but I am happy that I am in the same road you traveled sometime back and I see you far far away. Miles to go before someone sees me as far as I am seeing you all today.

Many thanks to people like Dr Cem Kaner, Michael Bolton, Mike Kelly, James Bach, Johanna Rothman, Jerry Weinberg, Jon Bach, Simon Fields, and all of you, who have inspired me in one or many ways, to put in lot of hard work and develop myself as a better tester each day. I wish to work more hard and hence keep inspiring me.