Entries Tagged 'Testing Tips and resources' ↓

Novice testers have many questions about software testing and the actual work that they are going to perform.  As novice testers, you should be aware of certain facts in the software testing profession.  The tips below will certainly help to advance you in your software-testing career.  These ‘testing truths’ are applicable to and helpful for experienced testing professionals as well.  Apply each and every testing truth mentioned below in your career and you will never regret what you do.

Know Your Application
Don’t start testing without understanding the requirements.  If you test without knowledge of the requirements, you will not be able to determine if a program is functioning as designed and you will not be able to tell if required functionality is missing.  Clear knowledge of requirements, before starting testing, is a must for any tester.

Know Your Domain
As I have said many times, you should acquire a thorough knowledge of the domain on which you are working.  Knowing the domain will help you suggest good bug solutions.  Your test manager will appreciate your suggestions, if you have valid points to make.  Don’t stop by only logging the bug.  Provide solutions as well.  Good domain knowledge will also help you to design better test cases with maximum test coverage.  For more guidance on acquiring domain knowledge, read this post.

No Assumptions In Testing
Don’t start testing with the assumption that there will be no errors.  As a tester, you should always be looking for errors.

Learn New Technologies
No doubt, old testing techniques still play a vital role in day-to-day testing, but try to introduce new testing procedures that work for you.  Don’t rely on book knowledge.  Be practical. Your new testing ideas may work amazingly for you.

You Can’t Guarantee a Bug Free Application
No matter how much testing you perform, you can’t guarantee a 100% bug free application.  There are some constraints that may force your team to advance a product to the next level, knowing some common or low priority issues remain. Try to explore as many bugs as you can, but prioritize your efforts on basic and crucial functions.  Put your best efforts doing good work.

Think Like An End User
This is my top piece of advice.  Don’t think only like a technical guy.  Think like customers or end users.  Also, always think beyond your end users.  Test your application as an end user.  Think how an end user will be using your application.  Technical plus end user thinking will assure that your application is user friendly and will pass acceptance tests easily.  This was the first advice to me from my test manager when I was a novice tester.

100% Test Coverage Is Not Possible
Don’t obsess about 100% test coverage.  There are millions of inputs and test combinations that are simply impossible to cover.  Use techniques like boundary value analysis and equivalence partitioning testing to limit your test cases to manageable sizes.

Build Good Relations With Developers
As a tester, you communicate with many other team members, especially developers. There are many situations where tester and developer may not agree on certain points.  It will take your skill to handle such situations without harming a good relationship with the developer.  If you are wrong, admit it.  If you are right, be diplomatic.  Don’t take it personally.  After all, it is a profession, and you both want a good product.

Learn From Mistakes
As a novice, you will make mistakes.  If you don’t make mistakes, you are not testing hard enough!  You will learn things as you get experience.  Use these mistakes as your learning experience.  Try not to repeat the same mistakes.  It hurts when the client files any bug in an application tested by you.  It is definitely an embracing situation for you and cannot be avoided.  However, don’t beat yourself up.  Find the root cause of the failure. Try to find out why you didn’t find that bug, and avoid the same mistake in the future.  If required, change some testing procedures you are following.

Don’t Underestimate Yourself if Some of Your bugs Are Not Fixed
Some testers have assumptions that all bugs logged by them should get fixed.  It is a good point to a certain level but you must be flexible according to the situation.  All bugs may or may not be fixed.  Management can defer bugs to fix later as some bugs have low priority, low severity or no time to fix.  Over time you will also learn which bugs can be deferred until the next release.  Read article on ‘How to get all your bugs resolved‘.

Over To You:
If you are an experienced tester, what advice do you like to give to novice testers?

This is a white paper written by ‘Huw Price‘. With over 20 years experience, Huw Price has been the lead technical architect for several US and European software companies. His new venture Grid-tools is specialized in test data management techniques. Thank you Jessica for providing this white paper for our readers.

How to improve testing by maximizing code coverage – A practical approach.

Article Summary:

As a white box tester your first goal should be maximizing code coverage!

Increasing code coverage is the route to improved testing. Code coverage is always a critical testing path and creating good test data for maximum code coverage is another difficult task.

Testers need to balance the need for complete coverage with only limited time to test. The key challenge here is to be more efficient and more effective.

Should 100% code coverage be the testing goal?

Continue reading →

I wish all testers read these software testing good practices. Read all points carefully and try to implement them in your day-to-day testing activities. This is what I expect from this article. If you don’t understand any testing practice, ask for more clarification in comments below. After all you will learn all these testing practices by experience. But then why not to learn all these things before making any mistake?

Here are some of the best testing practices I learned by experience:

1) Learn to analyze your test results thoroughly. Do not ignore the test result. The final test result may be ‘pass’ or ‘fail’ but troubleshooting the root cause of ‘fail’ will lead you to the solution of the problem. Testers will be respected if they not only log the bugs but also provide solutions.

2) Learn to maximize the test coverage every time you test any application. Though 100 percent test coverage might not be possible still you can always try to reach near it.

3) To ensure maximum test coverage break your application under test (AUT) into smaller functional modules. Write test cases on such individual unit modules. Also if possible break these modules into smaller parts.
E.g: Lets assume you have divided your website application in modules and ‘accepting user information’ is one of the modules. You can break this ‘User information’ screen into smaller parts for writing test cases: Parts like UI testing, security testing, functional testing of the ‘User information’ form etc. Apply all form field type and size tests, negative and validation tests on input fields and write all such test cases for maximum coverage.

4) While writing test cases, write test cases for intended functionality first i.e. for valid conditions according to requirements. Then write test cases for invalid conditions. This will cover expected as well unexpected behavior of application under test.

5) Think positive. Start testing the application by intend of finding bugs/errors. Don’t think beforehand that there will not be any bugs in the application. If you test the application by intention of finding bugs you will definitely succeed to find those subtle bugs also.

6) Write your test cases in requirement analysis and design phase itself. This way you can ensure all the requirements are testable.

7) Make your test cases available to developers prior to coding. Don’t keep your test cases with you waiting to get final application release for testing, thinking that you can log more bugs. Let developers analyze your test cases thoroughly to develop quality application. This will also save the re-work time.

8 ) If possible identify and group your test cases for regression testing. This will ensure quick and effective manual regression testing.

9) Applications requiring critical response time should be thoroughly tested for performance. Performance testing is the critical part of many applications. In manual testing this is mostly ignored part by testers due to lack of required performance testing large data volume. Find out ways to test your application for performance. If not possible to create test data manually then write some basic scripts to create test data for performance test or ask developers to write one for you.

10) Programmers should not test their own code. As discussed in our previous post, basic unit testing of developed application should be enough for developers to release the application for testers. But you (testers) should not force developers to release the product for testing. Let them take their own time. Everyone from lead to manger know when the module/update is released for testing and they can estimate the testing time accordingly. This is a typical situation in agile project environment.

11) Go beyond requirement testing. Test application for what it is not supposed to do.

12) While doing regression testing use previous bug graph (Bug graph – number of bugs found against time for different modules). This module-wise bug graph can be useful to predict the most probable bug part of the application.

13) Note down the new terms, concepts you learn while testing. Keep a text file open while testing an application. Note down the testing progress, observations in it. Use these notepad observations while preparing final test release report. This good habit will help you to provide the complete unambiguous test report and release details.

14) Many times testers or developers make changes in code base for application under test. This is required step in development or testing environment to avoid execution of live transaction processing like in banking projects. Note down all such code changes done for testing purpose and at the time of final release make sure you have removed all these changes from final client side deployment file resources.

15) Keep developers away from test environment. This is required step to detect any configuration changes missing in release or deployment document. Some times developers do some system or application configuration changes but forget to mention those in deployment steps. If developers don’t have access to testing environment they will not do any such changes accidentally on test environment and these missing things can be captured at the right place.

16) It’s a good practice to involve testers right from software requirement and design phase. These way testers can get knowledge of application dependability resulting in detailed test coverage. If you are not being asked to be part of this development cycle then make request to your lead or manager to involve your testing team in all decision making processes or meetings.

17) Testing teams should share best testing practices, experience with other teams in their organization.

18) Increase your conversation with developers to know more about the product. Whenever possible make face-to-face communication for resolving disputes quickly and to avoid any misunderstandings. But also when you understand the requirement or resolve any dispute – make sure to communicate the same over written communication ways like emails. Do not keep any thing verbal.

19) Don’t run out of time to do high priority testing tasks. Prioritize your testing work from high to low priority and plan your work accordingly. Analyze all associated risks to prioritize your work.

20) Write clear, descriptive, unambiguous bug report. Do not only provide the bug symptoms but also provide the effect of the bug and all possible solutions.

Don’t forget testing is a creative and challenging task. Finally it depends on your skill and experience, how you handle this challenge.

Over to you:

Sharing your own testing experience, tips or testing secrets in comments below will definitely make this article more interesting and helpful!!

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This is a guest article by: Inder P Singh

These days a number of web sites are deployed in multiple languages. As companies perform more and more business in other countries, the number of such global multi-lingual web applications will continue to increase.

Testing web sites supporting multiple languages has its own fair share of challenges. In this article, I will share seven tips with you that will enable you to test the multi-lingual browser-based applications in a complete way:

Tip # 1 – Prepare and use the required test environment

If a web site is hosted in English and Japanese languages, it is not enough to simply change the default browser language and perform identical tests in both the languages. Depending on its implementation, a web site may figure out the correct language for its interface from the browser language setting, the regional and language settings of the machine, a configuration in the web application or other factors. Therefore, in order to perform a realistic test, it is imperative that the web site be tested from two machines – one with the English operating system and one with the Japanese operating system. You might want to keep the default settings on each machine since many users do not change the default settings on their machines.

Tip # 2 – Acquire correct translations

A native speaker of the language, belonging to the same region as the users, is usually the best resource to provide translations that are accurate in both meaning as well as context. If such a person is not available to provide you the translations of the text, you might have to depend on automated web translations available on web sites like wordreference.com and dictionary.com. It is a good idea to compare automated translations from multiple sources before using them in the test.

Tip # 3 – Get really comfortable with the application

Since you might not know the languages supported by the web site, it is always a good idea for you to be very conversant with the functionality of the web site. Execute the test cases in the English version of the site a number of times. This will help you find your way easily within the other language version. Otherwise, you might have to keep the English version of the site open in another browser in order to figure out how to proceed in the other language version (and this could slow you down).

Tip # 4 – Start with testing the labels

You could start testing the other language version of the web site by first looking at all the labels. Labels are the more static items in the web site. English labels are usually short and translated labels tend to expand. It is important to spot any issues related to label truncation, overlay on/ under other controls, incorrect word wrapping etc. It is even more important to compare the labels with their translations in the other language.

Tip # 5 – Move on to the other controls

Next, you could move on to checking the other controls for correct translations and any user interface issues. It is important that the web site provides correct error messages in the other language. The test should include generating all the error messages. Usually for any text that is not translated, three possibilities exist. The text will be missing or its English equivalent will be present or you will see junk characters in its place.

Tip # 6 – Do test the data

Usually, multi-lingual web sites store the data in the UTF-8 Unicode encoding format. To check the character encoding for your website in mozilla: go to View -> Character Encoding and in IE go to View -> Encoding. Data in different languages can be easily represented in this format. Make sure to check the input data. It should be possible to enter data in the other language in the web site. The data displayed by the web site should be correct. The output data should be compared with its translation.

Tip # 7 – Be aware of cultural issues

A challenge in testing multi-lingual web sites is that each language might be meant for users from a particular culture. Many things such as preferred (and not preferred) colors, text direction (this can be left to right, right to left or top to bottom), format of salutations and addresses, measures, currency etc. are different in different cultures. Not only should the other language version of the web site provide correct translations, other elements of the user interface e.g. text direction, currency symbol, date format etc. should also be correct.

As you might have gathered from the tips given above, using the correct test environment and acquiring correct translations is critical in performing a successful test of other language versions of a web site.

It would be interesting to know your experience on testing multi-language web sites.

Mozilla released its Firefox 3 release candidate internet browser to public for testing purpose only. Mozilla Firefox is the most popular internet browser after Microsoft’s Internet explorer. By releasing this Firefox 3.0 version to developers and testers community, company wants to make sure product is fully ready for final release.

Company is taking feedback from testers and web developers to improve and fix most of the bugs before advancing to next version.

This is a good opportunity for beginners and experts in web testing. You can test this Firefox browser version 3 on your machine. As many of our readers asked me how to and from where to test the web applications, this would be a great example of testing web product.

Test Firefox 3 preview version from all testing aspects like UI, functionality, installation/ uninstallation, different plugin management in Firefox, browser security, performance, memory and load testing.

Do it manually or use any automation tool. Report your feedback to Firefox team.

Here is how to start guide:
1) Download the Firefox release candidate 3 version. Download from here.  You can download Firefox 3.0rc1 from above download page. You can also download other language packs if you are familiar with other languages if any.

2) Read the Firefox 3.0rc1 release notes and known issues here. From this page you will get idea of different testing scenarios and how you can test this application.

3) If you find any bug then report that bug to Firefox team using online Bugzilla. Before reporting any bug please read all known issues and bug filing instructions. You can also use this feedback form to send your feedbacks.

Happy testing!

No matter whether you are working on stand-alone project or web project, operating systems and networking knowledge is must for testers. Many testing activities like installation testing, performance testing are dependent on operating system knowledge. Now days most of the web servers are Unix based. So Unix knowledge is mandatory for tester.

For the beginners in Unix, learning basic Unix commands is a good start. This article explains basic Unix commands and in next article we will move on to the Unix operating system basics and advanced Unix commands.

The best way to learn following commands is to read and simultaneously practice them on Unix operating system.

These are the Unix commands that are mostly used while interacting with Unix servers. Most of the time you might be interacting with Unix OS through remote windows machines using softwares like ‘Putty’. In such testing environment this article is very useful.

You can download the article written by Meenakshi on Unix basics for testers on below link:

Download: Unix basics for testers article (Doc file)

I will continue this series of “soft skills required for testers”. Here is list of skills on which I will concentrate in coming posts:

• Operating systems skill for testers.
• Networking skill.
• Database ( Mainly SQL) knowledge for testers.
• Basic programming skill.

All these skills are required to become a successful software tester.

If you think any other skill should be also included in this “soft skills for testers” article series then please let me know in below comment section. I will work on those subjects to include them in my future articles.

Update: For software Testing job seekers, I have updated our Job page with two new openings. See more details on these job openings on below links:

• Testing openings in Amdocs Pune Walk-in on 3rd Feb
• QA Openings in Symphony Services Pune

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