TestEd’2012 – Rise of Thinking Indian Tester

^WOW!!!

^{That was an amazing experience attending the TestEd’2012, one of the best conference of Software Testing I have attended ever. It was like a multi-starrer blockbuster movie and stars of the movie were James Bach, Rahul Verma, Pradeep Soundararajan, Justin Hunter, Manoj Kumar, Ramit Manohar and 350 testers which came from different part of country. It was an awesome feeling watching them all at one place, having discussion with them and knowing their testing experience.}

^{The conference started with talk of none other than James Bach. His topic was “The Rise of Indian Thinking Tester”. He talked about Indian Testers, Indian Culture, Indian Literature and Testing. It seemed he knows Indian Literature like Ramayana, Mahabharata, Bhagwat Gita, Nyaya Sutra etc. more than anyone else available under the roof. We, the Indians, know most of the stories and their morals in the above mentioned books but most of us never tried to associate them with Software Testing. He did. No wonder he is an Expert.}

^{What a start of the day!!!}

^{Next was Rahul Verma. He came with an interesting Topic – The Death of passed Test Case. I don’t have words for him. He was out of the world. He talked about Test vs. Check and explained why checking also need brain. He came with quite interesting examples to support his claim. The other part of his talk was about Interface Constraint where he made sure to nail down the coffin of passed test case. He showed how a passed testcase can be failed in real. This one was my favourite of the day.}

^{If James and Rahul had set the stage, Pradeep kept it in on fire. He is a man to watch – The BugFu Panda. He comes with another interesting topic of “Test Coverage Fist & Risk Information Fist”. This was his story of becoming Bruce Lee of mental martial art of testing with help of his Ip Man James Bach. Pradeep showcased sample reports and testing strategy mind map and explained the factors which make Moolya one of the best software testing companies around the world. In James words, “It is paradise for testers” and I second it.}

^{People were still trying to catch their breaths which they couldn’t do as Justin Hunter was on the stage - the man behind the Hexawise. OMG!!! Many testers from the audience were using Hexawise for Pairwise and Combinatorial Testing and its creator was in front of them. I must say that he was one of the most humbled men I ever saw. He explained the features of Hexawise and proved how data coverage from seven billion test cases can be completed within 35 test cases using Hexawise. He has given a weapon to testers to make their job easy. Thanks Justin.}

^{The next talk was from a different kind of person whom you can’t expect in a Testing conference. It was from a developer – Manoj Kumar. His topic was “Organized Chaos: Testing in a Continuous Deployment setup”. He talked about all the chaos during the release and pointed out that a successful release is not only developer’s job; it’s not only tester’s job; it’s a collective job of everybody involved in the team.}

^{In the end, Ramit Manohar came on the stage with a bad news and a very bad news. The bad news was he was replacement speaker. Very bad news was he doesn’t have anything to speak but people didn’t mind him at all on stage. He made the audience laugh with his humorous, witty and sensible testing ideas. The great thing about his talk was that he picked some statements from the earlier talks and shared his idea on them. He was amazing in his quick short talk.}

^{This was all about the talks of the day which have given me lot of matters to think but TestEd was not about only talks. It was about networking with the other testers during the networking breaks and lunch break. It was about the freedom of the testers. It was a festival of the Testers.}

^{Awaiting TestEd’2013 eagerly.}

^{Update on 10/12/2012 : Thanks to Rahul Verma for pointing out a typo mistake which was changing  the whole meaning of a sentence to  negative.}

Rapid Software Testing: Workshop by James Bach – Day 2

And the day started where it stopped yesterday – With a mind boggling exercise for testers. I am not supposed to discuss about various exercises conducted during the two days in workshop but believe me those are the best food for testers hungry for challenges. They keep the audience engaged.

James discussed about Heuristics, Oracles, Exploratory Testing, Scripted Testing and much more. Testers attending the session were too curious to learn that they kept James busy in discussion – even at the lunch time. The best thing I learnt in two days session that one can take testing lessons from anything engaged with. You don’t require books always. Books can teach you testing skills, real world can help you enrich your skills and make you a better tester.

I met many testers in the workshop from different cities; it was good experience to know them and their work nature. There are two stars of this workshop - first is James Bach of course and other one is Ramit Manohar, a tester from Delhi and whom I met first time. This guy really challenged James many times in two days and set the record of solving the problem given by him within 10 minutes which generally takes 45 minutes. Kudos to Ramit.

At the end of the day, I got an opportunity to discuss with James where I clarified my doubts of previous day about Sympathetic Testing. James agreed that it can be considered as a form of Sanity Testing, more precisely, superset of Sanity Testing and Sanity Testing can be followed by Sympathetic Testing in regular practice. Both of them complement each other.

Overall, it was a great learning experience for me and everybody who attended the workshop and as James Bach was there, I didn’t forget to take his autograph on my copy of “Lesson Learned in Software Testing.”

Rapid Software Testing: Workshop by James Bach – Day 1

This was not an ordinary day, at least for me. You don’t get an opportunity daily to attend a workshop on Rapid Software Testing by James Bach. It’s like learning significance of zero from Aryabhatt, the famous mathematician who invented zero. Thanks to Moolya for providing an opportunity to attend the workshop.

I couldn’t sleep properly previous night and keep checking the time after each 20-30 minutes and finally woke up at 5 AM in the morning which is very rare for me. By the time I reached at the venue, it was 7:40 AM and few Moolyavans were already there. At sharp 9 AM the workshop was started and no prize for guessing that it started with thought provoking exercises in James Bach style. Truly said, the exercises picked by James for testers are heart of the workshop. I loved every single exercise and learned what I need to work on to become a credible tester.

There were many things taught by James in workshop and one of them is Sympathetic Testing which took my attention– An approach to test the application to get familiar with it, appreciating the efforts of the developer and ignoring the bugs temporarily unless something is really serious before approaching to real testing. In evening, when I was recalling the things, I realized that I was doing Sympathetic testing for every project without knowing the name. Although, my approach differs to some extent what explained by James. When I get a new application to test I talk to developer and start a tour to learn the application. During the application tour, I note down all probable bugs on my notepad to replicate them later. If I don’t find any blocker I give my feedback to developer about the application without mentioning any bugs. Once I learn application, I start aggressive form of testing. While analysing Sympathetic testing I concluded that it is special form of Sanity Testing. To confirm I must need to talk to James.

Overall, the day was amazing and full of learning. Now, I am desperately waiting for second day of the workshop.

Thanks James Bach

Thanks Moolya.