Wednesday, July 29, 2009

Three days of Experience

Talking about my experience, last week I was shifted to a team of developers who are assumed to be the best in our organization (coz they were highly paid and yeah they worked smartly as in code, logics, communicating and in many ways).

DAY 1

It took me one whole day to go through the requirements of the developed software, mean while team member around me started chatting with me asking about me, my experience, why testing (many more questions) and unintentionally they were even trying to nag out me (they were pretending to be happy as a tester joined their team but, their intention was to remove me out of this team) because no one like testers or can I say no one like spectators on them.

After few hours, truly speaking I felt, will I be able to find error, bugs, mistakes, defect in their work, coz their talks created a perception in my mind due to which my approach, my mentality changed towards finding bugs. I was not supposed to run the software on the same day but, I did, to feel the complexity of the developers and software.

As I said earlier due to my brain wash and change in perception I couldn’t find any error, bugs.
Now, I was totally bugged out. I left application and went back on requirement document.

I know that testers always cannot find bugs but, in my case I was feeling horrified, not exactly but, yeah anger was there in me (I couldn’t find bugs. Huh!). There were only two questions running in my mind.
1. Are they so good in developing?
2. What if I don’t find any error, mistake, bug…?
On this note I left for the day (back to home).

DAY 2

I’ll describe my day two in point format.
1. Revised a small part of requirement you can say phrase 1.

2. Took a U-turn on software and simultaneously went through requirement doc. and application.

3. Slowly slowly started understanding the purpose of the software and started using the software as per the requirement and from the N number of user’s point of view. (I know I can’t think like users coz every one is different but, tried my best to view, throw my perception in different angel, mode of situation, permutation combination)

4. Unbelievingly my half day went like hopping here and there. Finally, after lunch I was ready with all requirements standing firm in my mind, all my thoughts very clear. Started my testing.

5. Took up a small module, within five minute two typo errors. WOW. (small but, good for that point of time)

6. Within 20 minutes two functionality errors (which was missing as per specs.). Yahoo!! (that time I was feeling great)

7. Now comes the coding of the module, as per my knowledge I was a management student without any technical knowledge. Then two was curious to know more about this team’s coding.

8. Started with date format changed the date format viewed the application, this Exception error was not handled. (This date was exported from another application by running the windows services.)

9. I was feeling extremely happy not just because I was finding error but, by thinking that yes now I can also add value to product. This feeling was amazing.

10. Talking about coding errors, this application screen was in a grid format in which you can add different fields as per your needs and mails had to be send from this application if some one passes a comment on you, this was not happening just because, the added field was suppose to be added in the end but, I added it at the top of all the field due to which the mail id of the user on which the mail had to be sent was disturbed and the code was written using an array now, ERROR. Excellent. BRAVO.

11. Day end but, before leaving office I was supposed to report my PM. (I had reported this error on a bug tracking tool called project management)

12. As soon as I entered his cabin he was smiling, the first sentence he spoke was, “So, I got some one to bug me and this team”. I was appreciated by him.

DAY 3

The whole team came to know about the error reported, all my well wishers were happy for me, including the expert team members. :-))

**NOTE** The errors reported by me were nothing great but, well it does matter to a fresh unidentified tester.

Sunday, July 12, 2009

Work experience...

Hi everyone,

Currently, I am testing four projects at a time, being a fresher I never believed myself that I can perform well in this kind of situation or handle so much of pressure at a time but, some time I think is it correct to do this kind of experiment.
I can say it’s an experiment to test my ability, to test my performance, to test my testability and there are many a things to be tested in a tester.

While doing this experiment I learnt a lesson which left me with a moral and a question for me, I really don’t know which one to accept as a question or moral, I cannot make up my mind.
This moral and a question was in form of a sentence which as follow,
Question --> Test plan and implementing on this test plan are two different things
Moral --> Planning and working are inversely proportional to each other

With the following example I have concluded my question and my moral from the above two sentences.
For ex. When we finish a round of testing and revert back to test plan to check the nos. reports to be produce for the client, at this point of time a question comes to your mind,
“Making a test plan and implementing on this test plan are these two different things?”

When we plan our testing criteria (a type of testing enforced on a module) and when we produce a conclusion through planned criteria. This conclusion turns up to be some thing different which we had never thought off. “Planning and working are inversely proportional to each other”

This is what I have concluded but, there are many time where I find my moral as a question and my question as my moral.

Getting into deeper sections, I found some thing very common in these two things (my moral and my conclusion) that is “ Mentality ” the state of mind, the way you look at software’s, the way you approach a software, the way you bug yourself to find a bug in a software. On different stages of software development different direction / dimension is needed and we testers are not responsible for the change in method of testing it’s the product which demands proper attention from all direction. Yes, we testers are responsible for the mentality we carry while testing particular software. We being the first user for the newly build software it’s our responsibility to modify or be flexible to fit in as per customer’s requirement, as per user requirement, as per developers requirement.
I don’t want to get into the fight of developer VS testers instead just think after the PM (project manager) we should have the art of getting our bugs fixed.