Quality Assurance Knowledge Base!

Find the defect as early as possible

noreply@blogger.com (Ramit) — Wed, 25 Jul 2018 12:26:00 -0700

Everybody knows the importance of finding defects and finding those defects early. However, the key lies not in testing early and quickly. This will only degrade the testing quality and the software.

The key to finding defects early is by ensuring testing team is involved right from the start of the project and they understand the roles and responsibilities in every phase of development.

Testing team has its own delivery cycle that starts from requirements gathering and continues to the delivery of the project.

In requirements gathering phase, the testing team is expected to understand the requirements. Review the documents for completeness; identify any uncovered scenarios or scenarios that will never happen in real life. These issues are categorized as requirement defects. In parallel, they will also start working on the testing strategy document.

During design phase, the testing team will ensure the test strategy and approach documents are ready and they have the test scenarios defined. The tester should be part of design reviews and try to determine any design defects that may not satisfy any of the user flows.

During development phase, testing team will start creating test cases and review those with stakeholders to ensure test coverage. Ensure any data needs are fulfilled, exit and entry criteria are defined. They should also review the unit test results and ensure the test case mapping is done with unit test cases for everything back to requirements. This will help ensure unit test coverage.

As soon as the development is done, they should be in a position to start testing. It is during this phase when they should find any major defects in end to end related scenarios that could not be identified in any of the earlier phases.

To summarize, if you are able to categorize the defects in any of the above categories mentioned in bold, and the defect is identified when that development phase is passed, then there is a scope for shift left, and finding those defects earlier.

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Selenium automation tool

noreply@blogger.com (Ramit) — Thu, 7 Apr 2016 21:36:00 -0700

Selenium is an automation tool that automates web browsers & can be used to automate regular mundane tasks or for testing. In the context of this blog, we will stick to it's use for automated testing.
So, here is another definition of Selenium.

Selenium is a software testing framework for web applications that allows you to write UI tests cases against any website. It runs in many browsers & operating systems & can be controlled by many programming languages & testing frameworks.

Selenium has 2 modules that you can select based on your requirement.

Selenium web driver
Selenium IDE

Use Selenium web driver if you want to create robust, browser based regression automation suites & test & you want to scale & distribute scripts across many environments
Use Selenium IDE if you want to create quick bug reproduction scripts. This is a simple add-on that will do simple record-playback of interactions with browser.

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What is a wireframe?

noreply@blogger.com (Ramit) — Mon, 22 Feb 2016 22:17:00 -0700

A wireframe is a blueprint of a website. They don't have a real look & feel of the actual website. The purpose of wireframe is to depict the page layout or arrangement of the website’s content, including interface elements and navigational systems, and how they work together. It focuses on what a screen does & not how it looks like.

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Recommended Book for beginners

noreply@blogger.com (Ramit) — Tue, 4 Nov 2014 07:45:00 -0700

Software Testing: Essential Skills for First Time Testers

A book for beginners that explains the basic concepts of

software testing life cycle
Definitions of of some of the basic terms to get you started in testing domain
A brief info on test documents & deliverables
Interview questions

All in all, if you are truly a beginner in testing world & want to learn the absolute basics of testing then this book can be helpful.

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Impacts of not testing

noreply@blogger.com (Ramit) — Tue, 28 Oct 2014 13:33:00 -0700

When it comes to thinking about real life scenarios of testing debacle occurred due to not testing, the story cannot be complete without recounting disney lion king.

Disney released it's first multimedia game for children in fall of 1994. On december 26, Disney's customer support began to ring & didn't stopped for quite a long time.

Turned out, Disney failed to test software on many different PC models available in market then. The software worked on few systems only.

A bug found & fixed during the early stages of software development costs much less as compared to fixing the same bug at any later stage.

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Mobile Testing

noreply@blogger.com (Ramit) — Sat, 21 Jun 2014 10:57:00 -0700

A Mobile Phone, more frequently known as cell phone, is a device that can make or receive telephone calls over radio link.

Let's take a look at different types of testing that should be considered for smartphones.

Installation Testing: Test that the application can be installed & uninstalled successfully.

Functionality Testing: Test that the application is functioning according to the design. The application should be performing actions that it is intended to perform.

Widget Testing: Test by adding, deleting & using widgets & ensure it is working as per its functionality. For e.g: a music widget should play music. Note: this testing is not applicable for Apple devices.

Phone Interrupt testing: Test the application behavior on phone call, message or any other notification.

Stress Testing (monkey test for android): There is a command in android where it generates series of events at different frequencies. Make sure the app passes this test. The command used for gererating event is:

$ adb shell monkey [options] <event-count>

Click here to learn more about this type of testing

UI Testing: Test to ensure the UI of the application is good for mobile devices of different resolutions.

Compatibility Testing: A compatibility test should be done on as many devices as possible. Typically, a developer performs unit tests on emulators. Tester should perform tests on target devices.

Performance testing: check memory leaks,

Although, it may not always be possible to test all applications on all different devices. However, as much as possible, testing should be done on actual devices because of the following reasons.

Resource Availability:

Simulators may have access to more or less resources, depending upon the system it is running.

Program Performance:

Simulator may run at a different speed than the actual device.

Communications Availability:

If app communicates over bluetooth/WAN, simulators tend to simulate in such a way that these communication channels are always available & work. On the other hand, in the real world there can be outages & slowness of these channels. So, the application under test may not be tested for such scenarios using simulators.

Hardware Exceptions:
It is not possible to test how does the code handles low battery, power-offs, insufficient memory etc.

Some of the UI elements also look different in simulators & emulators.

Issues with Different Simulators

1. Blackberry Simulator

Blackberry simulator is extremely slow
Mouse does not work
Crashes a lot
Sometimes it gets impossible to close the application

2. Android Simulator

Although faster, it's small screen on the phone makes it tedious to test the entire application.
Zoom-in is not possible in modal window
In original Zoomed out size, it gets difficult to see a specific feature.

3. Ipad & Iphone Simulator

Slow

Tools

We have developed an online simulator that can be used to test websites in most of the devices.

Click here to access the tool.

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SEO Tips: Keywords

noreply@blogger.com (Ramit) — Sun, 17 Nov 2013 17:36:00 -0700

If you have online presence, you probably have heard about words like Search engine optimization, page ranking etc. You also must have wondered what & how around these topics. Well when I think about SEO, first thing that comes to my mind is the words, also referred to as keywords. A website should be equipped with keywords. Now, you must be thinking what are keywords? What is special about them? Keywords are nothing but words that are searched more often when compared to others. There are a certain words that are searched more than others. So, in order to optimize your website you need to add more of the keywords that are searched more rather than the keywords that are not searched at all. Therefore, the first step is to find such words. There are several SEO tools available online to help you find the best keywords. Beware: some of them may not have the right knowledge; they will just shell money out of your pocket. So, you have to have the knowledge of what can & cannot be done, before paying anyone. In general, such tools will ask you to provide a keyword that you have in mind. Once you submit, you will get the data like volume of searches in the last 24hrs, competing websites and Keyword effectiveness index.

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JMeter

noreply@blogger.com (Ramit) — Thu, 31 Oct 2013 09:35:00 -0700

Apache JMeter is an open source application built in Java. It is majorly used for load & performance testing of web applications. It can simulate heavy load on server, group of servers, network to test its strength, or to analyze overall performance under concurrent load.

JMeter has a support different protocols.

HTTP, HTTPS, SOAP, FTP, JDBC, LDAP, JMS, SMTP, POP3, TCP etc.

Although JMeter looks like a browser but it is not a browser. It does not render the HTML pages like a browser. Also, It does not execute javascript in a web page.

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Testing in Software Lifecycle

noreply@blogger.com (Ramit) — Wed, 23 Oct 2013 10:50:00 -0700

Testing is a vital part of software development life cycle & can be performed more efficaciously when the testing team is involved as early as possible. A tester should be involved right from requirement analysis until the launch of product. While the involvement of tester in later phases of project lifecycle is apparent, some might argue why is testing team required to be involved in requirements phase?

This statement can be answered correctly if you understand the true role of a tester in requirements phase. Testers are no requirements definer. However, a tester is required to listen to the discussion & gain insights into logic & reasoning of the problems encountered. A tester is required to think like a tester & not just think about the scenarios covered in the discussion, but also to think about the scenarios not covered & raise questions. For example, requirement a is covering b & c type of scenarios, what if, we have a customer x for which there exist a scenario y. How will such a situation be handled. By raising such questions to the experts, a tester can ignite discussions on totally untouched areas that might have severely impacted the project timelines if discovered at a later phase.

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GetRowCount Method in QTP

noreply@blogger.com (Ramit) — Wed, 16 Oct 2013 14:06:00 -0700

This method returns the total number of rows containing data in the data table.

Msgbox Datatable.GetSheet("SheetName").GetRowCount

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Exist method in QTP

noreply@blogger.com (Ramit) — Tue, 15 Oct 2013 13:43:00 -0700

This method will wait for a specified duration to check weather the object exists in Application under test. Accordingly return a boolean value.

Syntax:

TestObject.Exist(intTimeOut)

Return Type: Boolean

This will wait & check for the existence of TestObject for specified seconds. It returns true if it finds the object during that time or false otherwise.

This method does not check the child objects existence.

To explain it better, please see below a sample code

If Browser("Browser").Page("Page").WebEdit("Test").Exist(10) Then
<<your code here>>
Else
<<Your code here>>
End If

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History of software testing

noreply@blogger.com (Ramit) — Wed, 9 Oct 2013 12:22:00 -0700

Found this image on internet while searching for automation cartoons :). I hope you will enjoy it.

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What is the importance of software testing?

noreply@blogger.com (Ramit) — Mon, 7 Oct 2013 11:20:00 -0700

Testing is an important part in any industry today, not just software industry.

Take an example of auto industry. A car need to be tested to ensure it is built up to (at least) the minimum industry standards. Will the airbag inflate in case of a collision? Is the car as fuel efficient as advertised? Are the safety features up to the standards? Etc.

These are just a few questions from just one industry that need an answer before the product can be expected to be a hit with customers.

Further to this, I’m going to stick to software industry to discuss about the importance of testing in line with this blog.

There is an old saying: “To err is human & to blame it on somebody else is more human.”

First part of it says it all, “To err is human”. Developers are human beings. They can make mistakes too.

These mistakes, defects in IT world, can range from severe to minor. The most common example that I find on Internet is for the aviation industry. Imagine a situation, where 20 aircrafts are circling in air over Heathrow & waiting for their turn to land. Due to a minor software glitch all 20 of them got a signal to land on a single runway. My reaction would be: “I don’t want to die; I want them to test what they are using before they actually use it.”

What they are using is software, untested software.

This is one brutal example.

Here’s a less brutal one. Imagine a glitch in payment system of a retail giant. The payment gateway is active & comes up nice & clean when customer clicks on check out button. However, in the backend it is not actually charging the customer & simply releasing the product for delivery. The loss could be in millions.

To avoid, making such issues a reality, software testing is important.

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White Box Testing vs Black Box Testing

noreply@blogger.com (Ramit) — Sat, 29 Jun 2013 23:32:00 -0700

Depending upon who is testing or what is the purpose of testing, testing can be classified into White Box or Black Box.

White Box Testing	Black Box Testing
Definition: White box testing is a software testing method in which the tester is concerned with internal structure & design of the application.	Definition: Black Box testing is a software testing method in which the tester is not concerned with the internal structure & design of the application.
Path testing & Branch testing are some of the testing techniuqes of White Box testing	Equivalence partitioning, Boundary value analysis & Pairwise testing are some of the black box testing techniques
Typically done during unit testing phase by developers	Integration & user acceptance testing by testers

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Load Runner Overview

noreply@blogger.com (Ramit) — Wed, 26 Sep 2012 23:48:00 -0700

Load Runner is an HP product originally owned by Mercury. Currently, it has a 70% market share in the world of performance testing.

Load runner is a 3 stage architecture.

Vugen - records & enhances scripts
Controller - generates user load as defined in ru-time settings
Analyzer - used to analyze the results of the performance test.

These 3 components are available independently or as a package.

Load runner supports almost all protocols

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Load Runner Tutorial

noreply@blogger.com (Ramit) — Sun, 23 Sep 2012 18:40:00 -0700

Recently, I've decided to share my knowledge on Load Runner.

Below are the topics, I'm planning to cover in my next few posts.

Load Runner Overview
Vuser

Scripting in Vuser

Views (Tree & Script view)
Transactions
Playback
Correlation

Manual Correlation
Automatic Correlation

Parameterization
Check points
Controller
Analyzer

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Record/Playback Approach

noreply@blogger.com (Ramit) — Sun, 26 Aug 2012 18:11:00 -0700

Record & playback is a great feature in almost all automation tools. It works flawlessly on any static webpage (although record/playback can be used on many other interfaces, but for simplicity we will limit our discussion to a webpage).
But, what if its not a static page? What if, you want to test application with different data types?...the list is endless..

Some of the points that I would like to note are:

Look for dynamic locators in HTML. Sometimes, these appear n cookies & you can comment them.
Flow-control cannot be implemented manually
Parameterization to execute using different data points has to be taken care separately

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Basic Database Concepts

noreply@blogger.com (Ramit) — Sun, 19 Aug 2012 21:22:00 -0700

Normalization

It is a process of organizing tables in a relational database to remove redundancy. It is mostly done by breaking down larger tables into logical smaller inter-related tables.

There are 7 different normal forms

First Normal Form (1NF)

Second Normal Form (2NF)

Third Normal Form (3NF)

Boyce-Codd Normal Form (BCNF )

Fourth Normal Form (4NF)

Fifth Normal Form (5NF)

Sixth Normal Form (6NF)

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Exception Handling in QTP

noreply@blogger.com (Ramit) — Tue, 24 Jul 2012 18:51:00 -0700

Most of the times we do encounter a situation when an exception occurs, which is not actually a part of requirements. But, it is an unexpected behavior of the application. This is the reason it is called as exception & not error.
Some common examples are system went down, divide by 0 error etc.

These exceptions should be handled in the code, because if something unexpected happens then the script will not know what to do & it will fail.

Exception handling refers to anticipation & resolution of exceptions.

Some of the ways to handle exceptions is by using if..then..else statements, Switch Case statements.

Error Handling in QTP:

Synchronization:

In QTP a synchronization point can inserted to instruct the script to pause the test until the condition specified in synchronization statement becomes true.
An example where synchronization is required when you need to verify a value is present on a page & then based on that value take the next course of action. In this case if you don't wait for the page to load the script may not find the value & take a different course route altogether fetching incorrect results.
Synchronization can be achieved by using exist or waitproperty or both.
returnvalue = Object.Exist([Timeout])
returnvalue = Object.WaitProperty(PropertyName, PropertyValue, [Timeout])

Recovery Scenario:

A recovery scenario has 3 components:

Trigger: An exception that may occur & trigger the recovery scenario
Recovery: Instructions on how to handle recovery
Post Recovery: What next, after recovery is performed.

On Error statements:

On error statement can be used when you know that an error can occur at a point, but you don't want to notify.

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Testing Certifications - ISTQB

noreply@blogger.com (Ramit) — Sun, 15 Jul 2012 23:59:00 -0700

Please note that I'm not a proponent of any certifications. Nor have I seen the benefit or requirement of any of these certifications in my career. But, I believe that it is good to gain knowledge & there is no harm in learning something new or gaining an internationally recognized certificate.

ISTQB stands for International Software Testing Qualification Board.

Click here to read more about ISTQB.

Certification Path

ISTQB offers certifications at 3 different levels

Foundation Level: This is the certification for beginners. It is suggested to have at least 6 months of practical experience in professional testing role.

Click below to see the contents & syllabus of this certification

Foundation Level Certification Content
Foundation Level Certification Syllabus

Advanced Level: As the picture above suggests, this certification is applicable to the next levels of software testing.
To get the Advanced level certification, candidates must hold the foundation certificate & have sufficient practical experience.

Click below to see the contents & syllabus of this certification

Advanced Level Certification Content
Advanced Level Certification Syllabus

Expert Level: This level of certification is helpful in gaining in-depth knowledge of different subjects.

Click Here to go through the overview of each module in Expert level certification

Click below to see the content & syllabus of this certification for different module

Expert Level Certification for improving testing process Content
Expert Level Certification for Improving Testing Process Syllabus

Expert Level Certification for Test Management Content
Expert Level Certification for Test Management Syllabus

Test Automation & Security Testing modules are still in the process of being defined.

To find more about the ISTQB certifications. Go to its website ISTQB.Org

Go to the download area to get some sample papers

Finally, refer to the FAQ section to get some more answers.

If you still have any questions, reply to this post & I will try my best to help you. In my future posts, I will also publish some sample questions & answers to ISTQB exams.

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What is the difference between a defect Priority & Severity?

noreply@blogger.com (Ramit) — Thu, 12 Jul 2012 19:24:00 -0700

Priority: Priority of a defect defines the urgency with which a defect need to be addressed. A high priority defect means that defect is a complete blocker for testing & no testing (or minimal testing) can be performed if this defect is not fixed. Priority is decided by testing team.

Severity: Severity of a defect defines how severe the defect is to the user. It takes into account the real life situation from the end user's perspective (end users can be customers or application support group). Anything that is visible to the end user & could stop him from proceeding his task is a high severity defect. Severity of a defect is decided by business team.

Priority & severity are independent of each other. It is not necessary that a high priority defect has to be a high severity or vice-versa.

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When to Stop Testing?

noreply@blogger.com (Ramit) — Wed, 11 Jul 2012 19:14:00 -0700

The question looks simple. But, there is no specific answer as to when one should actually stop testing.

Some of the points that should be considered to decide that enough testing has been done.

When all planned test cases are successfully executed
Only low severity & low priority defects are remaining

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HP Quality Center

noreply@blogger.com (Ramit) — Sat, 7 Jul 2012 20:46:00 -0700

HP Quality Center 10.0 is a web based complete end-to-end test management tool. It helps us in managing the project cycles, requirements, resources, test cases, defects & reporting.

There is a separate module to manage each of the activities.

Management: This module can be used to define releases & cycles within a project

Requirements: This module is used to manage the requirements for a project. Each requirement can be linked to test cases in test plan module which in turn will give us real time status of testing progress.

Test Plan: This module is used during the test planning phase. A tester can write or upload test cases in this module, allocate test cases to a particular release or cycle defined in Management module, ensure proper test coverage by linking test cases to requirements.

Test Resources: This module enables you to manage test resources in a hierarchical tree structure. The test resources can be associated with tests.

Test Lab: This module comes into play during test execution phase. In test execution phase, the test lead can assign test cases to each of the tester to execute. The testers, after executing the test cases can update the result of test case to passed, failed etc. If a test case is failed a defect need to be raised in defect module. The defect in the defect module can be linked to failed test case in this module.

Defects: As the name says, all failed test cases should have a defect assigned to it. A defect is raised by tester & assigned to developer for fixing. Defect then goes through its usual defect life cycle & finally closed by tester after successfully testing.

Dashboard: This module contains all the reporting capabilities of QC. You can generate virtually any graph that you can think of related to testing projects. This module integrates analysis menu in requirements, test plan, test lab & defects modules. You can generate graphs, standard reports, excel reports & dashboard pages.

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Difference between project & product metrics.

noreply@blogger.com (Ramit) — Sat, 30 Jun 2012 16:03:00 -0700

Both project & product metrics are the classification of metrics

The metrics recorded at project level are called project metrics.
Metrics recorded at product level are called product metrics.

A project metrics describes the health of the project. It captures the current status, current phase, percentage complete, issues & risks etc.

A product metrics describes the characteristics of the product. It captures the usage trend, performance etc.

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HP Certifications explained

noreply@blogger.com (Ramit) — Tue, 26 Jun 2012 23:33:00 -0700

HP categorizes its certifications into 3 different groups. Click on any of the groups to see the list of available certifications.

In this article, I will discuss more about professional career certifications.

Career certifications are sub-divided into 4 categories:

Associate HP Level - HP ATA (Accredited Technical Associate)

Targeted at individuals interested in pursuing career in the IT job market
Certifications developed in an academic format that introduce business and technical skills covering a wide array of IT challenges

Professional Level - HP ATP (Accredited Technical Professional)

Validates foundational skills needed for HP SMB and mid-market solutions
Can design and architect HP solutions
Install and configure HP equipment and software
Administer and support the solutions once they are in place

Expert Level - HP ASE (Accredited Software Expert)

Validates deep technical skills focused on complex enterprise technologies
Can design and architect global solutions
Implement and configure efficient and effective IT deployments
Administrate and support those solutions in a heterogeneous environment

Master Level - HP Master ASE (Accredited Solution Expert)

Validates deep technical skills in advanced solutions combined with business IT acumen
Can align IT solutions to an organization's financial and business goals
Design and implement complex solutions from the proposal stage to live implementation using the full breadth of technology capabilities of the HP portfolio.

Click Here to view all available career certifications

Once you have identified the certification. The next step is to register to get access to learning center

Click here to start the registration process

After filling in the form for registration wait for an email from HP. They will revert back to you in 3 business days with your student ID.

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