NCR Weekend Testing Chapter

Weekend Testing doesn't need any introduction but for those who are not still aware of Weekend Testing, Let me give a synopsis about it.

About Weekend Testing
Formerly known as Bangalore Weekend Testers is started by four passionate Testers Ajay Balamurugadas, Parimala Shankariah, Sharath Byregowda and Manoj Nair and later well contributed by Santhosh Tuppad. They have synergy towards testing software and learning from it. Their vision is to improve the craft of Software Testing. Their burning passion and desire to contribute to software testing community gave birth to Bangalore Weekend Testers peer group.

There was an outstanding response not just from Bangalore, but others parts of India and some parts of the world. This got them idea to start peer groups in their other towns/cities/states/countries. This led to the concept of Chapters.

Mission of WT
A platform for software testers to collaborate, test various kinds of software, foster hope, gain peer recognition, and be of value to the community.

What happens in a typical Weekend Testing session?
Testers register for the coming weekend testing session at least a day in advance, by sending an email. A facilitator for the session provides a link to the product to be tested ( typically open source ), creates a group chat and a mission to achieve by the end of one hour testing session. The mission could vary from finding functional issues to exploring testability to writing automated tests to investigating bug reports and so on.
At the end of one hour ( or the decided session end time ) testers start sharing their experiences, bugs, learning, challenges, questions, and so on for about an hour. The facilitator then takes a day or two to prepare an experience report and publishes on Weekend Testing portal for the public to view it and also sends it to the open source developers or project owners for their perusal.
2 hours in total – that’s it. Every minute – worth it.

About NCR Chapter
I have been trying for last few months to start a testing group in Delhi-NCR. The idea was to know the other passionate testers in this part of country, to share the knowledge and ideas. I always thought it would be a great experience for all of us. Now, I am pleased to announce that we are going to start NCR Weekend Testing sessions with the support of Weekend Testing.

All the formalities have been completed. Now we are looking for 2 facilitators who will be trained by WT originator so that weekend sessions can run smoothly. Once the training is completed, we can start our NCR Chapters.

What do you need to become Facilitator?
Burning Passion for the Testing craft
About 6 hours time on weekends
Strong desire to contribute to the testing community

How to apply for Facilitator?
Those who are interested to become the facilitator can contact at ncrtesters@gmail.com with subject “NCRWT - Facilitator”.

How to apply for participate?
Those who are interested to participate in NCR Weekend Testing session can also contact at ncrtesters@gmail.com with subject “NCRWT - Participate”

WT28 - Session Report

I am a big fan of weekend testing sessions. They give us sufficient feed for our brains to think. The WT community helps the testers to share/gain their knowledge. Testing an application in limited time followed by discussion with other testers really help to boost the confidence of a tester.

Although I am not a regular weekend tester but whenever I get a chance I don't skip the session.

This weekend I was able to attend the session and what a session it was. You can see here how different minds interprets the same thing differently.

Mission: There are three tasks to be completed today.
Time Duration: 1 hour.

Task 1:
Complete the game- http://www.gamesforthebrain.com/game/dragger/
Objective: Send the screenshot where the picture is built right.

Task 2:
Score 90 points in the game:
http://www.gamesforthebrain.com/game/memocoly/
Objective: Send the screenshot.
Checkpoints: URL of the game, IQ Score, "Your solution is right, congratulations! (+10 points)"

Task 3:
Score 50 points in the game:
http://www.gamesforthebrain.com/game/numberhunt/
Objective: Send the screenshot.
Checkpoints: URL of the game, IQ Score, "Your answer xx is right, congratulations! (+10 points) "

My Approach: I have gone through the requirement three times before starting the task. It is must to understand the task very well before starting. Once I understood the task, I started to work on them.

Task 1: It was a jigsaw puzzle. We had to complete an image from the pieces. Although I am not very good in solving the jigsaw puzzle but somehow the task is completed with in a short time.

Once the picture is completed, I took the screenshot as mentioned in the mission.

Task 2: It was a memory game. In this game, we had to memorize the colors and press them in order they appeared. It took me some time to understand the game. We have to score 90 points in the game. Till 40, I did not found any problem but after 40 pts. it was difficult to remember the sequence of color. I tried many times but no success. I thought to use pencil or paper to note down the sequence but I drop the idea as I think it would kill the purpose of game and mission assigned to us.

At this stage I was not sure how much time this task will take to complete, it might possible that I wouldn't be able to complete the task so I moved to task 3 to complete it first.

After completing the task 3, i concentrated on task 2 again and I was able to complete the task with sufficient time remaining in my hands.

Task 3: It was a cake walk for me. This task is about adding the moving numbers. From childhood I used to play with numbers. It was years of practice so I have completed the task in less than 40 seconds.

Although I have completed the mission within 40 minutes but major of my time was spent on memory game.It might means that I don't have good memory, I need to work on improving my memory.

Discussion: As soon as the time is finished, all the tester has stopped to work, although some of the testers were not able to complete the task. It really shows that how honest we testers are ;)

OK, so discussion was the real entertainment. While some testers completed the task by using tools like tamper add-on for mozilla (for jigsaw puzzle), pencil, paper etc (for memocoly game) and they are justifying their point of view with that it was not mentioned in mission that testers are not allowed to use the tools, My point of view was that these tasks were assigned to improve our learning skills. If we are using pencil-paper to note down the sequence of color then how it is helping us to improve the skills. A mission to complete the game has become the debating issue :) we share our views, learn from other testers across the world and then wind up the session.

Learnings:

• Have a doubt, ask questions. Ask as many as you can. This will help to clear the traps.
• Came to know about the tamper data add-on for mozilla firefox. The tamper data can be used to view and modify HTTP/HTTPS headers and post parameters.
• I need to do more practice to improvise my memory skills.