Bug Bugger Buggest !

Hi Reader,

Hmm! The topic looks interesting but will the content be as interesting as the topic ?
“Of course, yes, provided you read it”

Some days back I was chatting with one of the Test Lead who is in touch with me after this blog of mine. He was worried about the quality of young Tester’s of today since more than 80% of the people he has interviewed couldn’t clearly explain the concept of “Severity” and “Priority” and its significance in a Bug.

I was wondering what makes the current generation of testers to be so (inclusive of me).
A year back or so, I too wouldn’t have been able to talk about the topics of “Severity” and “Priority”. Luckily my mentor told me “Pradeep, the only person who stops someone from learning anything is themselves”. I have fought a lot with myself and learnt more than what I was before listening to the above quote.

__Bug Bugger Buggest __

For those who haven’t grasped from the books and articles, here it is, an attempt from me to take an example and discuss what exactly is “Severity” and “Priority”.

Lets say you have designed a MOUSE, a mouse that you have been using for while with your PC’s. (Gyan: MOUSE stands for Manually Operated Utility System Equipment, how many s/w engineers know this?)

Low Severity – Low Priority - The Mouse you designed has a LED indicator and it fails to work with the prototype you have developed and there is lot of time for the version of Mouse with LED indication to be released.

1) This forms a Low Severity because the LED you have put into the Mouse you designed is just an indicator to show when the Mouse is in use and does not affect the core or basic functionality of the Mouse.
2) This forms a Low Priority when you have lot of time for the release with LED indicator on the Mouse enabled.

Medium Severity – Medium Priority – The Mouse you developed has a scroll wheel, which gets stuck infrequently that can be released by exerting more pressure on the wheel and there is a month for the release to happen.

1) This forms a Medium Severity because the scroll does not get stuck frequently and this problem can be overcome by exerting more pressure on the wheel.
2) This forms a Medium Priority because there is a month for the release and this issue is analyzed to take less time to get it resolved.

High Severity – High Priority – The Mouse you developed makes the PC to reboot once you plug in its hose to the USB port of the PC. (Assuming it to be a Plug n Play USB Mouse)

1) This forms a High Severity since the Mouse reboots the PC, disallowing you to continue your work or allowing you to loose your unsaved data.
2) This forms a High Priority irrespective of whether a release exists or not since the very meaning of Mouse itself is lost due to this bug/defect.

There are another six combinations like Low Severity – Medium Priority, Low Severity – High Priority, Medium Severity – Low Priority, High Severity – Low Priority, High Severity – Medium Priority. You can mail me with examples of the above 6 combinations, I would be interested to know how creative are you with framing bugs for the above categories.( Excuse me if I am further boring you by asking you to work on it)

__ Bug Bugger Buggest ___

If still you haven’t understood what is “Severity” and “Priority” is ……

“If your girlfriend is talking to someone it is a High Severity and the need for you to look for a new one is High Priority"

Regards,
Pradeep Soundararajan
Pradeep.srajan@gmail.com

Dinosaur Egg - Testing

Hi Reader,

No, stop thinking of Jurassic Park!

“Then why have you put the topic as Dinosaur Egg Testing?” isn’t that you would like to ask me?

Again, No, I am not going to talk how to test a dinosaur egg but instead …

Exploratory Testing is something that is of very high interest among testers and lots of controversies come up when this topic of E.T. is put up in Yahoo/Google groups discussing on Testing/QA. I wanted to give it another dimension as per what I think it as and how to handle it. Here it goes …

__ Dinosaur Egg - Testing ___

“Pradeep, you still haven’t explained why you have put up the topic as Dinosaur Egg Testing and have further confused us that it has some relation to Exploratory Testing?” without shouting at me, are you trying to ask this? :D

Imagine you are exploring a forest which you have never been before and you are looking for some food to avoid starving (if this hasn’t interested you, further, imagine you are with your girl friend in that forest). The only thing you know in that forest is the place you started exploring is a safe place and you are exploring the forest for food (or anything, just understand the context).

Surprisingly, say you came across a Dinosaur’s egg and your girl friend screams out of fear (Now don’t imagine of hugging her to console, just like any other English movie and think something as a Tester).

Link with Exploratory Testing –

This scenario according to me is the best to explain in simple terms what Exploratory Testing means and how to go about it –

1) As per the above scenario, it is the egg (an unexpected result), which is causing someone to think how he/she reached that place. The egg caused an excitement in a Testers mind and hence the confusion starts as how to go back to the safe place?

2) It is not a good idea to look for places/trees you remember, when you were exploring after seeing the egg, instead it is a lesson to always look and mark such places while you are exploring, and sometimes you may land up directly at the Dinosaurs mouth.

3) Had you started exploring the forest by dropping some pebbles (data logging) that you can identify, you need not get excited when you see an egg.

4) Also if you are unable to re-trace the route you came, you should at least ensure that you don’t meet the Dino face-to-face (just like meeting your manager on a one on one), you should smell the route (investigate the further steps) you are taking.

5) Hope you reach the safe place. Now at least are you able to remember the way back to the Dino’s Nest, so that you know what route not to take? (Reproducibility)

6) The Dino need not be near its egg always and once you have seen the egg, you should expect the eggs to hatch and your problems to multiply soon (Analysis of a product as more features are going to be added) As a Tester in forest, you should always predict more nests (un explored bugs) and many Dino’s in the forest (Escape defects)

7) Guys, if you are a good Exploratory Tester in such a forest, your girl friend will be highly impressed (appraisal) and you need not stop exploring … Search, if you could find a better girl in the forest (Bonus).

__ End of __ Dinosaur Egg – Testing ___

"In search of food , sometimes , you yourself become food for someone"

Regards,

Pradeep Soundararajan

Hiring Virus for Testing !

Hi Reader,

For those who have already read my other posts , this is a better feast and for the first timers here , Good thing to start off !

One of my fellow tester read my posts and had sought some help in testing an online application. He was interested to know how to crash the online application to observe what happens to the data that was keyed in before the crash. I took sometime in thinking and jotted down a few points and sent a mail with those points.

When I read one of the point I had written , I myself was excited. Wow ! I had hit upon a very good point in testing and here it is for you.

__ Hiring Virus for Testing __

Once I was doing some maintenance work for one of my uncle's office PC , I usually enjoy doing it for my uncle and in one such instance my uncle was complaining that one of the PC's had some problems and he wants to reformat it. I asked "mams ( Tamil-Indian style of uncle ) do you know what formatting means ?" ...
"Each time I switch on the PC some bull shit comes up , that is why I would like to format"he added.
"Wait , I think someone has infected your computer , let me deal with those viruses" that's how I started on to investigate and found ...

Viruses that attack internet explorer - Their roles and responsibilities !

• Such programs are a mixture of spyware+malware+virus+trojans+your sweet loop hole
• Such programs do not allow to open any Anti Virus webpages and auto closes if opened.
• Such programs do not allow download of any Anti Virus and auto cancels the download
• Such programs are written by good programmers cum testers and are mostly bug free.

Exploiting Viruses for Testing Online Web Applications - ( am I the first to think this ? )

1. As most of the banking transactions are web based security/crash/exploratory testing is of high priority and hence these viruses can show you where you need to improvise the code.
2. Generic web based applications too can be tested with some spyware which try to steal and change data keyed in or stored in the application/database.
3. When such powerful viruses are used for testing the applications it gives a competitive edge to the company deploying such a testing and wins customer's confidence.
4. Companies like McAfee , Symantec , Trend Micro...etc .. can make more money by selling of their virus collections to companies who want to test their applications with viruses.
5. Virus writers would come out and say "hey , I wrote it and you are making money" , catch them or hire them.
6. This way of testing eliminates 're-inventing the wheel' time of writing scripts to test for those cases for which viruses are already there.
7. This can help to track the exploratory testing and can give a better edge in testing and a bad time for the developers if a virus toast their lives revealing a severity 1 priority 1 bug.
8. It would be interesting to see people across globe paying money to buy viruses to test their applications and believe me viruses too will be pirated soon.
9. Mobile viruses too will get more scope as testing mobile applications would take a much better edge as m-commerce is picking up.

___ Hiring Virus for Testing ____

"Future looks infected , A graduate may submit a virus as his degree project"

Regards,

Pradeep Soundararajan

Disclaimer : The usage of virus for testing such online/mobile applications is purely my own imagination and I am not responsible if you adopt it and you face a loss of data/code/anything you may loose due to this.Adoption at your own risk.

Learnings from crash test dummies !

Hi Reader,

As a Tester you must have seen something crash and reported to your senior casually "Hey , it crashed" , maybe you didn't force it to crash but still it did.

Here I introduce you to a very interesting Testing where Testers force crash the system to save your lives. Yes ! you guessed it right , it is the Testing that your dad's car has undergone.

I happened to see this testing in Discovery Channel and was amazed at the test cases people think.

What are we doing ... Testing applications , testing mobile phones , testing routers , testing banking applications ?

How many lives are lost if these things are not tested well ?

I haven't heard of any such case except huge money loss due to lack of testing but when it comes to testing those things that directly interact with death is really challenging ! ( come on , now don't act like a small kid in putting up a comment here as to "isn't your job challenging?" )

What we do is to test "How a product dies? and its analysis" but what you are seeing in the image is "How could people die?" , isn't that challenging ?

"Ha Pradeep , We are software engineers why do we need to read this ?"

If you ask such question , I appreciate you for your focus and insist you to go further ... there could be something you can learn as I did from these crash test dummies.

__Learnings from crash test dummies __

Crash Test dummies are designed by Testers , I don't have any proof but I am sure what I have said must be 100% correct.

• Testers should be aware of what data they need to collect from the system under test.
• Testers should be able to build prototype/simulate/emulate the real time scenarios , especially as the offshore Testing is booming in a country like India.
• Testers should be able to evaluate whether the collected data is enough to come to a conclusion about the performance or quality of the system.
• Testers should be able to identify the data they need to collect in order to evaluate a system performance.
• Testers should be able to communicate the developers clearly as what caused the crash and where could be the problem. ( Tester sees a crash and developer at the logs )
• Testers should be aware that a single person doing the testing is always not holistic as testing needs thinking and working from different dimensions and perspectives in order to achieve a better quality.
• Testers should be able admire every other testing that is happening and learn from it. ( only if he/she wants to progress in Testing , else ... Relax ... bindaas ! )

__Learnings from crash test dummies __

Now it looks like you want to learn more about this Crash Testing through dummies so you can get the basic from here and if you want to learn more ..

"Behind every life saved in an accident there is a tester and for every life killed in an accident

there is a test case missing"

Regards,

Pradeep Soundararajan

Note : This post is dedicated to all thos Testers who have saved many lives till date and thanks to them for giving us good learning's in testing.

Why Testing failed in a freshers mind ?

Hi Reader,

You go meet a fresher and tell him "Hi , I am ____ , from an MNC and I have two kind of jobs and I shall take you whatever you are interested in" and also tell him "What would you prefer Development or Testing"

Should I write the most obvious answer ?

I was very keen on researching this and my mentor told me "Pradeep , Testing is more of a forced profession/job for a fresher , Rarely a person would come up and say that he/she wants to do testing and I am not sure if that person really has a passion to test in his/her heart"

I felt it true , when I was a fresher and went for an interview , the manager there told me "I can offer you testing and is it OK?" , without knowing what it is I did accept and I also crossed a stage where I started looking at development jobs but today is a day where I would never do that , not that I dont like development but just that I have started to like testing a lot more each day !

__ Why Testing failed in a freshers mind ? ___

Shall I blame it on BIG companies like Microsoft , Google ....

I think I need to ( a certain extent ?) and am not sorry for that , everyone entering in this industry dreams of entering companies like Microsoft , Google , Yahoo , Adobe , Cisco and so on ....

What do they do _ 1?

They want the best coders and they dont want their competitors to grab the best ones and hence organize a coding contest like .. Google India Code Jam which gets great visibility to the students and professionals.

What can they do _ 1?

Well , good that you have tough questions that people who are real good designers and coders can crack it and why don't they have a parallel Testing contest where people are asked to Test the code those Great Coders wrote ? Is it that they have so good coders whose code need not be tested. Even to grant them a prize as champion or winner , someone from the team has to test it , isnt it true.

What do they do _ 2 ?

Take up any written test by any company (atleast in India ) for a fresher. Not a single question about testing , Why ? Testing comes under a part of the CS/IT curriculum and why not ? Finally some of the people who clear the test having a passion for development are forced into testing ultimately resulting in either attrition after an year of experience or product quality at stake due to lack of interest.

What can they do _ 2 ?

They being aware that they need some freshers for Testing too can make an effort to give a different written test for people who want to enter testing.They can identify the talent people have in testing a product or application. Simply speaking the truth a company can get better testers than their competitors by doing so and moreover a better output , product quality improving , less time spent on managing attrition.

What do they do _ 3 ?

Money ! is a vital factor for most or I should be more frank here , for everyone. When I joined as a fresher and I was into testing , I got only 1/4th of what a fresher cum developer got in the same company. Wait ! This doesnt happen everywhere but still it does happen , right ? Even today I am paid less than a developer of my similar skill set or experience but without any guilt all companies put up saying "they are an equal opportunity employer and they dont differentiate" , aren't they ?

What can they do _ 3 ?

There can be a marginal difference for Developers and Testers but 1/4th is not at all good and if you call that an equal opportunity , I doubt your Math skills and so your development skills too.

When you hire a fresher , do not differentiate , me and my friend studied in the same class and got the same score and in the same company and he getting more than me just because I am a tester is stupid ! If you dont accept , check guiltometer , it will show its max.

What do you ( freshers ) do ?

Have you ever seen a fresher doing their final year project on testing ? Never ! why ?
Freshers too are responsible for being a bit narrow minded and this factor cannot be given so much weight-age as usually freshers are naive , I was naive , you were naive. I dont want matured replies as "No , I wasn't" !

What can you ( freshers ) do ?

Do I need to tell it after you have read so much ?

__ End of __ Why Testing failed in a freshers mind ? ___

"Fresh minds are ignited minds , do not differentiate whether petrol ignited them or diesel"

Thanks and Regards,

Pradeep Soundararajan

pradeep.srajan@gmail.com

Tester Tested!

Disclaimer : Why should I disclaim truth ?

Update : Read this - Fake it Break it

Tools that slow you at work !

Hi Reader,

Its been slightly more than a month since I started blogging and the response from you all is .... ( you must be knowing it better than me , because it is you who gave the feedback )

I have been sitting idle at my workplace for quite sometime now and as people say "idle mind is a devil's workshop" I wanted to change it as "idle mind is a tester's workshop".

Before I leave my current organization, I was wondering what are the things that slowed down my speed at work so that I could give somethig better for the company I may land up ! [ still looking :-( , any takers ? ]

While I was listing , I found something that really brings down the pace of a software engineer's speed of work ! ( inclusive of my fellow developers )

Most of you who faced the same problem could guess it right - TOOLS !

__ Tools that slow you at work ! ___

"Now pradeep , tools are used to augment the work speed and not slow down , shut your mouth and dont let your devil rule you" - if you intend to say something similar after reading this much .. pls dont go ahead reading ... still if you want to read , I am (un)lucky :D !

• Harbour problem - Well, I was once working on a tool that accesses a product via USB port. It was working fine as long as another tool which also accesses USB port was installed into my PC for a different purpose. I had a tough time figuring out how to make them co-operate with each other.Finally it ate sometime of mine , say 2 hours , had I not let this info to my team mates , a total of 2*4 = 8 man hour or even more or less would have gone in figuring out the same.
• Inconsistency problem - Not Well , Once my colleague came complaining that a tool was not working on his PC but it worked fine one mine ( I mean, my PC ). He sat on my PC for working on it and of course he too is facing a deadline , had he started digging out the solution for that particular tool not working on his PC he would have spent more time but still 1 hour of man hour lost. Now taking that every PC has a problem to work for a tool , 4*1 = 4 man hours are lost in a day. ( Of course approx values ,after all I am not reporting to anyone to give exact figures)
• Reboot Now ! - A usual stuff that needs to be done when some tool is not working and this eats around 10 minutes and happens atleast twice a day every 2 days in a week and hence 10*2*4(days in a week)*4(people) = 4 man hours in a week is lost.
• Send report ! - Whenever something crashes , Microsoft wants to see who is competing with them and you see this message of send report and we usually dont do send. This ignorance of all of us makes Microsoft unable to get the required data for solving any issues if any, due to their product.( Let's say this adds to a very negligable part and ignore)
• Tools with limited licence - This is something everyone may agree. Every company I have been has a shortage of tool license and this usually contributes to 1 hour of time loss per week per person of the company. So it is 1 * ( number of your workers) = loss time due to this factor.
• Tools that work on the server - Some tools are designed to work on servers while you are just another client to it. It simply makes you to wait invariably and you sometimes see "Time out" message. Indeed , it is "Our Time out" and not "Server Timed out".Occurs atleast once a week for a person and last for 10 - 15 mins before a person can start the work and hence , 10 mins * ( no of workers ) * 5 ( working days )= loss of time due to this factor for a week.
• Build machines - Build machines contribute to a major factor , I have not used them extensively but I have seen many people firing a build overnight and morning they see build failed half way and if it is an entire product release build , it for sure takes nearly 4-6 hours for the build to complete. Assuming that this happens once a week for every developer or a small group of testers or release engineers - 5 hours * ( no of people firing a build ) * 5 ( working days ) = total time lost in waiting for the build during day.This point is very important as developers give the build at somewhere in the afternoon and yet testers are forced to finish their work before COB ! I pray to all build machines to work well in the night.
• Drivers - I wonder most of the tools I use that interface to hardware have problems with drivers. Each time I find a situation where the hardware is not detected , I need to uninstall and re-install the driver to use that tool. Why not people come out with another tool to uninstall and re-install drivers. Simply this eats 10 minutes per session and occurs to me atleast twice a week. 10 mins * 2 ( occurence ) * ( half the number of workers ) * 5( working days ) = Total time lost in a week due to this factor.

__ End of __ Tools that slow you at work ! ___

Gosh ! taking the total , roughly 30% of our time is lost in managing the issue with tools and for the rest .... there is always ... a meeting.Amidst all these we contribute to profit of the company , isnt that great !

Learnings -

1. Tools that are to be used extensively should be tested well , else lot of time is lost and the productivity comes down by nearly 30%.
2. A tool needs more testing than a product which it is aiding to be tested/developed.
3. People observing an issue with a tool must let the tool company know it and help them to fix the issue.

"Tools that are not tested well are time bombs !"

Thanks and Regards,

Pradeep Soundararajan

Disclaimer : If you have read this despite me asking you to stop somewhere in this post you are not eligible for negative criticism ( you can , OK ). This is my own opinion with the experiences I have faced and of course I too have seen some robust tools as you may would have.All above are approx values and still is a matter of concern to every organization.The list above is incomplete :-D.

Yahoo Messenger ! Missed Feature ?

sh_am2
Originally uploaded by praldoe.

Hi Reader,

U "Pradeep what's on this post ?"
Me "Something interesting"
U "Ah you are not the one to decide what is interesting to us"
Me "Well , I am pretty sure this would"
U "Come on prove it !"
Me "Simply read the following"

I usually visit an internet cafe/browsing centre near my house and due to frequent visits the owner of the cafe is more or less a fren to me. We keep sharing gyaan about computers and advancement in technology ...

A week before when I was walking out ... he stopped me and I could see some excitement in his face.
"I came across something interesting when I was chatting with my cousin in Holland" he said and continued ...."I wanted to show my new born daughter to my cousin over the webcam while chatting in Yahoo Messenger and he could see the TV channels which was relayed from my TV tuner card instead of our faces in his webcam window."

Holy cow ! I could not believe it and I told him I think it is indeed interesting and I shall have a deeper look at it this weekend. So the weekend is here so is this post !

__Yahoo Messenger ! Missed feature ? ____

Yahoo ! I reproduced the scenario in his own internet cafe with two different machines and I bet you all that you too can reproduce and here is the help you need.

Observation : If a PC has a TV tuner card attached to it and Yahoo Messenger ( Beta ) , your friends elsehwere can see the same channel you are tuned into.

Pre-condition :
1) Your PC has a TV tuner card and a cable connection where you are able to watch the TV channels.
2) Your PC has a broadband internet connection with Yahoo Messenger with Voice ( Beta ) installed and running.
3) Your PC has a webcam.

Steps to Reproduce :
1) Log on to Yahoo Messenger ! ( of course with your username and password )
2) Go to Preferences in Yahoo Messenger and select to view the options available in Webcam tab.
3) On finding 'Camera Source' radio button , click to see the options it displays.
4) Step 3 could lead you to a list - which has a) Your webcam details b) TV Tuner card details.
5) Select the option (b) or TV tuner card as 'Camera Source'.
6) Invite a friend who is online ( or invisible ) to view your webcam.

Result : Your friend is able to view the TV channel you are tuned into.

Primary Analysis : ( with my setup )
1) The frame rate is very less to see a good picture quality.
2) Image size is 320 X 240.
3) Audio data can similarly be routed over to a friends PC.

Advanced Analysis :

1) Today's boom is on iP TV / Set top boxes and Yahoo ! itself could venture into something like this through their existing Messenger by providing a robust codec.
2) Products available in the market, selling for $250 could go bersek.
3) As the bandwidth and system speed ( CPU clock / RAM ) is increased a better quality output can be an obvious expectation.

End user benefit :

1) You can relay your friends who are at another part of the world , a local channel , they could be missing.
2) Without any investment people across the globe can get connected to their local channels.

__ end of __ Yahoo Messenger ! Missed feature ? ___

Now there are two possibilities -

1) You say " Wow ! thats interesting man !".
2) You say " Nope , it didnt interest me anyway".

Whatever , I am happy that you reached the end of this post. See U again chick !

"Eating chicken to test whether it has bird flu is a bad test(taste) case"

Thanks and Regards

Pradeep Soundararajan
pradeep.srajan@gmail.com

Disclaimer : This post reflects my personal opinion and observation and the points mentioned above are my own analysis and has no organization or anyone else bias or involvement with it. This post is my own learning as a tester that a better feature could be embedded into a product and testing could bring out without terming it as a bug.This post is also with no intention of affecting any organization's business or market.I could be completely wrong due to lack of knowledge on the products i know/work/have seen any such phenomenon and I am or completely not responsible if at all it creates any impact.

Testers who burnt their ears !

Hi Reader,

You must have stopped by a shop just to stare at your dream music system ... be it Bose , Sony , Onkyo or even a local made !

Ah ! these have too high output RMS/PMPO values ... let me go for a good headphone ... be it Senhiezer , Philips ...

That movie was too good because it has DTS , Dolby digital , SRS , THX .....

Whatever your choice, you did listen to a lot of music/sound right ? Well then you must know who made you listen to quality music and gave a lot of food for your ears and brain ... trust me you should know this atleast now ...

__ Testers who burnt their ears ___

Every music system released in market have certain statistics and you people are smart that you wont buy the ones without best statistics.

Signal to Noise Ratio : 90 dB
Frequency Response: 18Hz to 22 KHz
THD : 0.01%

Does the above figures attract you ?

Well if you own the best music system or a quality headphone by now , thank the Tester who was behind the scene in giving you that because he may would have burnt his ear !

I was doing product testing of Bluetooth Headphones , the company I worked for was focused to give CD quality music over Bluetooth and yes I too was a part to make it happen but ...

My job involved measuring the quality parameters of the headphone and as per Audio Engineering Society standards for digital audio testing quite a few sinusoids had to be used.

Sinusoid's or sinusoidal waves are considered to be the best bet test data for bringing out the scientific quality of any audio product because it exercises your codec completely.

In the process of giving out the best system , any audio product company would have made several releases and upgrades , no wonder every such release is tested.

In a similar way I must have faced at least 500 or even more.

It is advised by Hearing/Audio community that listening to sinusoid's are harmful ( of course to the listening ear ) and especially when listening from headphone where the speaker is too close to your ears it even more painful !

I also observe in all the companies I have been , it is becoming a common habit to listen to music over headphones while coding/testing or whatever you do with your PC at workplace and home which is not good for your ears on a long time run.( Not everyone though )

Who cares ? ( Is this your thought , in an act of ignorance )
You better ask those people who have burnt their ears , Stop ! even thinking of searching ... I am here who belong to one of the testing community with burnt ears.

Well let me take those techies looking at this post for some technical gyaan ...

Once there was a bug/defect in the headphone I was working with.

Bug : The buffer used to flush out all data when it had lost connection with the source.
[ :P , there was another bug that connection with the source was lost randomly ]
( mind it , I am talking about Bluetooth wireless headphones )

How did that bug burn my ears ?

Well , as you all may know , the speaker on the headphone was the poor guy who was forced to play such a flushed data from the bad guy ( buffer ). And there was a much poor guy listening to the speaker [ twas me :( ]

Anything not pleasing ears by default is noise and I got to hear a lot of noise in the process of reproducing it and making a note of observations and as an effort to be a good tester , I had to research on it and give optimum data supporting the bug.

Developers tried to fix it but again resulting in me retesting and crisping my burnt ears !

Gosh ! took a lot of time to fix both the bugs and in between one day my manager wanted to see the behaviour and put over the headphone ... listening to his favourite song ...

Kshhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh ! - told the system ( ... noise )
"Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaw" - replied my manager ( out of pain )

"Pradeep isn't this painful ?" told this looking at me with pity !
"If I too am a human like you , yes " was my simple reply.

"Oh , take care , we need you for further testing , don't burn your ears , use a 2.1 speaker and don't listen to that crash( from our headphone ) hereafter ".

I thought " only when it pains others they get to know what is my state" , how sad !

__ End of __ Testers who burnt their ears ! __

So all of you listening to good quality music thank those testers who must have burnt their ears to give you the best !

For Testers , be very careful , I was pretty naive when this happened , although today I have as good ears as you people I may would have lost my hearing capability had I continued with my mistake.

I bow to all those audio engineers across the globe who would have burnt their ears in order to give all of us best audio systems !

"Behind every quality music you listen , there is a pair of burnt ears !"

Thanks and Regards

Pradeep Soundararajan
pradeep.srajan@gmail.com

Are you a Tester or Toolsmith ?

Hi Reader,

Thanks for all those mails and hope you have received my individual replies !

I finally found a good reason to make a post today and I consider this post to be a very important one because ....

"Well are you a Tester ?" has anyone asked you this question and if "yes" , by default can you guess what is the next question ....

"What tools do you know ?" Am I right ? As a tester I have come across the above question soooooooo many times and each time ..... can you guess my answer ....zero.... Surprizing isnt it ?


__ Are you a Tester or Toolsmith ?___

Many people after reading my post have mailed me asking for tools I know or reccomend them to learn , some guidelines about the tools and lots more on tools .... only a handful asked something about testing. Why did the majority of people ask about tools ?

There is a general misconception about testing in India !
( I have not been anywhere else , if it applies take it , else ignore at your own risk )

Where have we been misguided -

1) There are umteen number of training centres who have a board and ad claiming that they teach testing , really. I am still wondering whether testing can be taught by those people. Ah ! Pradeep then what do they do ? They simply teach you tools and make you a ............toolsmith.

2) Now Pradeep , what/who is a toolsmith ?
To know this answer talk to those people who have attended the tools training and ask them to speak about testing for 10 mins without mentioning a single tool [ of course should make sense ]( If you are one among them , talk to yourself )

3) How many people who have undergone the tools training in those centres know really what testing means ?
Again a handful only (i am optimistic here ) ! Most of the people spend time in learning the tools and simply ignore to learn about testing. Wait , if you are not convinced here this is your second chance to stop reading this.

4) Are you a member of any Test/QA focussed yahoo group or any forum or any other such group ? Can you open and see how many questions are there on tools and how many are there on learning the concepts about testing ?
I too notice as you have may would have noticed that discussion is more on how to use a particular tool and lots of gyaan about career options , openings and tools to know to get into that job.

a) Try putting up a simple question in such a group as to "What is regression testing?".You will see different people answering different things for the same question instead put up a question on tool , you will get the best answer from many. Are we going in the right path ?
b) Go through a few resume/CV of Test/QA engineers and more people back their tools experience than their knowledge about testing/technology.

5) Industry people are misguiding - Its a cycle , unfortunately , yes , industry people also contribute to misguiding the young fresh minds to learn tools or get a certificate of tool knowledge. The paper ad says "We want testers with knowledge of xxxrunner , xxxrunner , silk , cotton..." but when you go and sit in interview you would have to answer more questions on tools than testing , do you know that they actually are not looking for testers but looking for toolsmith's ?

6) Now how come I am offered as a Test Engineer when I just know to operate tools ?
Yes , in this industry you are a Test Engineer becuase the company recruiting you knows if its printed in offer letter as "We are happy to appoint you as our toolsmith" , either you would not join or would look for an change at their expense.They are T(f)ooling you !

7) Oh ! Then what is a tool and what relation does it have to a tester ?
A tester should be a person who is able to architect the tool and should be able to harness the tool for his creation of test cases. A tool should serve as a helper to a tester and the tool ideally should not be your bread butter or jam.

8) So do you mean a tester should not know any tools at all ?
Absolutely not ! I mean first a person should be a tester and then learn tools or do it parallely.

9) So you mean to say you will not learn any tool ?
Absolutely not ! I will learn when it is required and not because some XYZ company wants people with a particular tool knowledge.

10) Is it because you dont know any tool you are talking like this ? ( nonsense , if it can make you happy )
Absolutely not ! I too know a couple of tools but those are custom written tools based on project requirement and I have wrote one tool in my life in Perl ( although i sought help to write it ).

11) Stop the crap and tell what do you want to say finally ?
I simply want to make sense to all those Toolsmith's (Test Engineers) who are being misguided that "a tester is a person who knows tools" and also want to tell them "wake up and progress , the fun is more at higher altitudes"

__ End of __ Are you a Tester or Toolsmith ?___

If someone has helped you to reach here , help your friends if they too were misguided by someone :-D !

"Tools dont make testers , Testers make tools (to break the system) "

Thanks and Regards
Pradeep Soundararajan
pradeep.srajan@gmail.com

Disclaimer : (If you have read above please read this too) The intent of the post is to make a small effort to augment a toolsmith to become a great tester in the future.All above are my own opinions based on experience I have had as a tester and do not get biased by any of the above statements.I am not responsible if you complain or get into any issues against your training centre or the company you are working as a toolsmith or anywhere , the above learning( if at all ) you may would have had is at your own risk , False.I could be wrong anywhere or everywhere and that is my limitation.Just in case you are angry on me after reading this please check guilt-o-meter before you fire me.

T(F)ool Joke : My friend spent 4 lacs for his engineering degree , he didnt get a job , after an year the same friend's spent 2000 to get a tool knowledge certificate , he then got a job , he then realized 4 lacs was a waste.