Tag Archives: bugs

Software Testing Training of a different kind

Posted by on November 23, 2009 5 comments

Ever dreamed of being personally trained by Cem Kaner? How about Doug Hoffman? No? Ok, maybe Scott Barber is more your style?

Any tester would, but it would be expensive? I mean these guys would typically charge thousands for this kind of training. Besides, they’re all in the states, so airfare, accommodation.  Your company would never pay for it, right? Especially not now the training budget is cut.

Well, I’m being personally trained by these great testers, right now and even better, I’m doing it for FREE. No that’s not an acronym for  Footnote Really Exorbitantly Expensive,(I know its not very good, come up with a better one and let me know !)  it really is FREE.

I’m on the bug advocacy course run by the association of software testing. (note, the website is currently going an upgrade, but you can still become a member etc).

It’s an online course that’s free to all members. Yes you do have to be a member. Yes it does cost money. $85 US dollars for a year. So, if you want to split hairs, you could argue the course costs $85. So what?

Anyhow, I wanted to talk about this course, because its content is really excellent. First of all, lets deal with the title.

Why BUG ADVOCACY?

Because our focus as tester’s is not about raising bugs, but ensuring they get fixed. Its true!  Think about it. That way, not only does the software improve, but we as testers gain credibility too.

So, in order for us to get our bugs fixed, we need to make sure we sell them well and we anticipate and preempt any objections people may have about our bug report.

Its about communication effectively and communicating to the right person. Its about creating the ultimate bug report.

There is a lot more than that in the course. I suggest you take the course and find out for yourself.

The recommended hours per week is 6.  I would suggest you allocate more time.   The course content is practical and you are given assessments that involve commenting on actual bug reports. Some of the assessments can take longer if you allow them too. You work with testers around the world, some I knew of because of their blogs.  Personally, I’ve learned as much from other testers feedback as I have from the trainers.

Make no bones about it though, its a demanding and challenging course and if you are just looking for a piece of paper for your resume, this perhaps is not the course for you. On the other hand, if you’re looking to improve your software testing skills and having a highly respected certificate matters to you, then I suggest you join the AST and take some of their courses.

It doesn’t matter what environment you work in, agile or waterfall, process or exploratory, the skills you learn on this course are relative to all testers out there.

So, if your company doesn’t have a large training budget (or even if it does) this is the perfect solution. Your testers get some really great training, and you get kudos to boot.

Note:  This is my own personal opinion, I get nothing out of posting this on my blog.

Bug Tracking Tools Explained

Posted by on November 2, 2009 15 comments

Like it or not, all software has bugs.You may not know about them but they are there..lurking in the darkness, ready trip up one of your innocent user who has just gone and purchased your software.

That’s why you employ a software tester. A software tester’s job is to find as many of the bugs and report them to you and the rest of the team before they can do untold damage to you and  your software’s reputation.

You can report bugs in as many ways as there are to communicate. You can write the bugs up in an email, on a piece of paper, in a spreadsheet (see my previous post on spreadsheets). You can even directly speak to the relevant person and directly show them the bug.

Or you can use a bug tracking tool.

So why do you need to track a software bug and whats so great about a bug tracking tool?

Software Bug Workflow

Well, just as a normal bug goes through several stages in its life such as egg, nymph, larvae and finally adult, so to does a software bug go through its own lifecycle or workflow. Redmine the opensource software I use as my online bug tracking tool,  uses the word workflow so I’ll use that term in this post.

Typically a simple bug workflow goes as follows:

Bug WorkFlow

Bug WorkFlow

Where:

new is when a tester creates a bug report

open is when a developer  accepts the bug report as valid

fixed is when a developer indicates that the bug is fixed

tested is when a tester indicates the bug has been tested

closed is when a tester accepts the bug has been fixed and the report is now closed

This is a very simple workflow. Alternatives to the workflow can happen when for example,  bugs are rejected by the developer  or a bug fails test and the tester places the bug back to open state. In fact, it can get quite complicated if you let it.

Most bug tracking tools will let you modify or create your own stages and workflows, but if your new to the concept of a bug tracking tool, its better to select a simple existing workflow and use that for a while to get used to what works for you. Redmine, lets you chose a preexisting work-flow.

A bug tracking tool then allows a tester to create a bug report and monitor its progress as it goes through its workflow

So whats the big fuss? Why not just use a spreadsheet or email?

I’ve personally benefited a lot from bug tracking tools. Here are some ways they’ve helped me.

Benefits of a bug tracking tool

1) Its easy to keep track of one bug, but keeping track of many bugs is hard work. A tool helps you easily find out what bugs are still open, fixed, closed. Bug tracking tools normally allow you to sort and filter your bugs and create reports on the bugs.

2) You can track other stuff about bugs, such as how important they are and who is fixing them. This can help you prioritise which bugs are important and require urgent fixing.

3) You can start seeing clusters of bugs which indicates there may be underlying issues in parts of the code

4) Lots of people can see the status of the bugs, not just the tester and the developer. The overall bug status can be quickly reviewed by many avoiding nasty surprise syndrome (NSS) at the end of development/testing.

5) Sometimes not all bugs are fixed in the current release but will be fixed and tested in a future release. This means long after software release the bugs still need to kept open and tracked. A bug tracking tool ensures that these bugs are not overlooked in the future.

6) A bug tracking tool can centralise information. Often a bug tracking tool can be used to track new features as well as issues and can act as a document repository. Redmine offers many additional features such as document repository and wiki.

7) A bug tracking tool can improve productivity by increasing bug awareness and responsiveness. It is also handy when a project is scattered geographically and works across different time zones.

As I’ve mentioned in previous posts, there are many open source options bug tracking tools out there, so if budget is an issue there is no need to spend a lot of money on an top end commercial tool.

And of course, a tool is only as good as the developer and tester using it and will fail miserably if no one is willing to use it, so perhaps if your thinking of adding such a tool to your testing toolbox, speak to the rest of your team first to find out what they are looking for in a tool.

Damn it all, its just not cricket..or is it?

Posted by on October 5, 2009 1 comment

After fifteen years of living in Australia, some things have rubbed off on me. One of the them is cricket.  I have to confess I have spent many a sun drenched day watching the cricket whilst imbibing the odd beverage here and there.

Cricket Image

One thing that I have noticed in the game, is the impact of the new ‘unknown’ player. It suprises me the impact the unknown can have on the game. Michael Clark (or Clarkey to his mates) on his debut in Bangalore went out and scored 151 runs (thats a lot btw).

Here comes the testing bit…

Fergal O’Riordan,  pointed out a similar result in his software testing teams.

When testing is all but hung up and dry, he enlists a new tester.  This tester must be new to the team, and never worked on the application before.  He finds that doing this dramatically increases the number of bugs found in that day.

He breaks the bugs down as follows:

  • The majority are known issues, but previously where not considered to be bugs. The new tester didn’t know that and raised them. Changed circumstances and attitudes now regard these bugs as valid.
  • Most of the other bugs were also known issues, but were either seen as not relevant to the stakeholders or were being dealt with in future releases
  • a small number were new and relevant bugs that required fixing.

So why is it that a new tester is able to have such an impact? He puts it down to the following reasons:

1) These bugs have been seen before but previous experience led testers to believe they were of no relevance to the stakeholders

2) A new set of eyes brings a fresh perspective and outlook to the testing

Doing something different, unpredictable can bring benefits to your team, no matter what the ‘sport’ is.

So there you go, who would have thought that the world of testing and cricket had something in common?

Tea break!