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.