Archive for the ‘water cooler’ Category

A Testers Winter Tale How the Grinch Stole Scripting!

Every Tester in Testville liked testing a lot.
But the Grinch, who sat north of Development – did not.
The Grinch was a Tester and he hated the whole damn lot!
Now, please don’t ask why; no one quite knows the reason.
It could be, perhaps, that his shoes were too tight.
Or it could be that his head wasn’t screwed on just right.
But I think that the most likely reason of all,
May have been that he sat alone near the wall,
Testing all night!
He looked such a fright!
Throwing quality away as the changes came again.
And there it sat on the shelf collecting dust.
Test Automation, “Oh what a fuss!”
How it failed to deliver him from his testing damnation.
So he finished his email with a large exclamation: “No not another software release!”
Staring down at his desk in QA with a sour grinchy frown,
He observed busy Testville and its Testers in town.
For he knew that every Software Tester was busy right now, testing the winter release.
Would there ever be peace!

With a focus on test automation software, we have published a seasonal Original Insight, aimed primarily at QA Management, that borrows the story of the Grinch* and highlights the challenges of software testing and the damage that can be done if the business gambles with software quality. It attempts to outline the main benefits of test automation in conjunction with pragmatic advice on software testing, whilst illustrating the negative impact that current dominating testing tools have had in the application quality lifecycle.

If you have a good sense of humour and believe that software testing does not need to be dull, this Original Insight is one for you to read!

The paper can be downloded as a PDF at: http://www.origsoft.com/grinch

I hope you enjoy reading this paper and let us know your thoughts!

*Originally from the children’s story by author Dr. Seuss, “How the Grinch Stole Christmas”.

Software Testing Briefing Next Week!

Would you like to join us for breakfast and enjoy an informative look at software testing?

Keeping up with the latest trends in software testing can be time consuming, especially when you’re trying to get a new release out the door! So why not join your fellow QA professionals for breakfast, where you’ll have the opportunity to discuss the following and more:

• Is there a smarter way to test manually?
• Is there a need to have disposable test assets?
• Should we throw away test automation?

If you happen to be in Chicago, why not join us for breakfast?
Please join Original Software at our breakfast briefing on November 30th, at 8am for an alternative look at manual testing and test automation.

Register today to secure your place: http://www.origsoft.com/about/events/breakfast-briefing.php

I do hope you can join us?

EuroSTAR 2011 Great Start #esconfs

The EuroSTAR 2011 software testing conference has just kicked off today and so far it looks to be a great event!

We have been followng all the great conference feedback via the conference twitter handle #esconfs.

If you aren’t familiar with EuroSTAR, here is a little bit about the event:

For over a decade now, the EuroSTAR Software Testing Conference has been the most successful and widely acknowledged gathering of European Software Testing Professionals. In December 2010, EuroSTAR took place in Copenhagen, Denmark. With over 850 attendees participating it proved to be a highly informative and innovative event for software testers in Europe and beyond.

EuroSTAR 2011 is taking place during 21st – 24th November in Manchester, UK. It’s not too late to register for the exhibition. Just visit: the EuroSTAR 2011 website here.

We are exhibiting and can be found on Stand 33. So if you are a follower of Original Software and are at the event, come and say hi!

Software Testing Breakfast Briefing in Chicago

During our daily interaction with the global testing community, we hear a similar theme on the challenges and issues faced by the testing and QA teams of companies, both large and small. Some of these include:

- How can we deliver quality applications within the budgetary constraints we face?
- How can we meet the growing demands of the business in a pragmatic and achievable way?
- What alternatives are there to reduce the business risk of poorly rolled out applications?
- Can I really ensure that my quality strategy helps my business gain a competitive advantage?

So with the above in mind, and if you are based in Chicago, would you like to join us for breakfast and enjoy an informative look at software testing? Join your fellow QA professionals at this briefing where you’ll have the opportunity to discuss all of these topics and more.

Find out more and register here!

An Original Run for Diabetes

The sun was shining for the Bupa Great South Run last weekend, as runners battled the 10 mile road to success having each raised money for the Diabetes UK charity.

Jonathan Pearson, Solutions Consultant, Original Software, set his own original pace and ran a fantastic time of 1 hour 40 minutes and came 9335th, which just shows how many people ran to support the charity that day.

So far the Bupa Great South Run has raised nearly £300,000 and smaller events in support of the cause are still doing their stuff to help increase this amazing amaount!

The World 10km and 15km record holder, Leonard Komon, won a time of 46:18 ahead of fellow Kenyan and World marathon record holder Abel Kirui by 22 seconds. Ireland’s Alistair Cragg came third with a time of 47:14.

Komon had planned to attack Haile Gebrselassie’s World 10 miles best performance at the Bupa Great South Run but saw his attempt fall well short of his target of 44 minutes 23 seconds after slowing rapidly in the second half of the race.

Congratulations to everyone who took part in the Bupa Great South Run and a special well done to our Jonathan Pearson, for completing the race and for his efforts to support Diabetes UK.

If you would like to show your support for Diabetes UK, you can still donate online on Jonathan Pearson’s Great Run page here: http://www.diabeteschallenge.org.uk/challenge/jonathanpearson-bupagreatsouthrun

If you would like to take on the challenge yourself, the Bupa Great South Run 2012 is now open for entry and will be taking place on Sunday 28 October 2012. For more information visit: http://www.diabetes.org.uk/

Jonathan Pearson at the end!

Game change for Internal and Outsourced IT Help Desks

Sliding Mind, a new technology provider, who delivers inspired, innovative solutions for IT help desks, announced TrackPath, a new solution that eliminates the guess work involved in recreating the application problem when a user contacts the IT Help Desk. TrackPath continuously monitors the activity on each PC so that in the event of any issue, a fully documented audit trail is instantly available for transmission to the IT help/service desk.

According to Gartner: “There continues to be an erroneous belief that the IT service desk tool represents the greatest cost for IT service support… 86% of the cost of an IT service desk is staffing related…” *

TrackPath continuously tracks all user activity on a PC irrelevant of whether the application is deployed through the cloud, browser or desktop. A user friendly audit trail is available in the event of operating system or application problems. TrackPath is the perfect solution for large user communities supported by a central help desk. Help desk staff are no longer reliant on the ability of a user to recall or reproduce the steps that led to their problem. Instead, the user can send a fully documented audit trail within two mouse clicks.

This core detailed reporting of user activity is reinforced with screen by screen tracking of memory and CPU usage, a detailed timeline, hardware configuration and operating system information plus information on the application stack being used. TrackPath also removes the need for remote PC access after an issue has occurred, an approach which impacts both the help desk professional and end user.

TrackPath is available now for download and free trial from the Sliding Mind website at: http://slidingmind.com/cms/trackpath/downloads/

* “IT Key Metrics Data 2009: Key Infrastructure Measures: Help Desk Analysis: Multi Year” – 15 December 2008, Linda Tracy, Jamie K. Guevara, Eric Stegman

Software Testing Club Goes Stateside

The Software Testing Club (STC), has now gone stateside with its very first software testing meetup hosted in Chicago! The “STC Meetups” have taken the software testing community by storm, and we are very pleased to be hosting the first US meetup in Illinois’ Windy City.

The Software Testing Club is a very successful and widely acknowledged community of software testing professionals, which has now grown to 10,000 active members.

The meetup will be held on the evening of November 10th from 5:30pm, and will be a relaxed social event for Chicago-based testers to gather, chat and have a drink, while discussing the finer points of software testing.

So if you are local to Chicago, enjoy a bit of testing talk and you are free that evening, why not come along?

To register for this event, simply visit the registration page here!

Getting ready for TestExpo?

It’s that time of the year again when Sogeti put on their event management hats and roll out the red carpet for TestExpo on Wednesday 23rd March 2011, where we will be joining them at the only software testing exhibition in the UK.

Most of you are probably familiar with TestExpo, but if you are not, it is the type of event where you can mingle with other Software Testers, Test Managers, Consultants and Quality Assurance Professionals. TestExpo is the only event in the software testing industry that you can attend for free and talk to software testing solution vendors, listen to presentation topics about the latest innovation in testing and network!

Sogeti have done a great job in hosting TestExpo since its takeover from previous owners QBit, but what are your thoughts? I am interested to find out if events such as TestExpo are still important to you in finding out what the new developments and trends are in the testing industry?

The Software Testing Club released a great publication before Christmas called “A Tester Is For Life Not Just For Christmas“, which is a collection of survey answers from lots of software testing professionals. As I read through the interesting answers I noticed a theme occuring, and that theme seemed to indicate that testers felt that software testing certification is behind the times and the only way to improve the software testing craft is to attend events, read blogs, network in forums and learn as much as you can on your own. Some felt that skilled software testers were in short supply because certification has not moved on and so testers must get by on their own.

Does this sound familar? If so, do events such as TestExpo help to fill your knowledge cup? What are your thoughts about this issue and will you be attending TestExpo this year?

Looking forward to your thoughts!

Top Trends in Software Quality for 2011

I discovered this article recently released by QA InfoTech, which outlines 4 main software quality trends for 2011. The article does not however state how QA InfoTech discovered what the trends would be or whether they are based on facts from a survey. So we can only assume that these trends have been uncovered from what the company has been seeing in the market place.

What really caught my eye about this article was the trend that:

“There will be less reliance on formal tools and instead a greater use of frameworks built using open source. Increasingly, quality testing frameworks are being developed using open source tools such as Selenium and JMeter. Formal tools from companies such as IBM and Hewlett Packard are still being used, but are being augmented, and sometimes replaced, by test automation frameworks created using open source. This brings down testing costs for companies, sometimes by hundreds of thousands of dollars, and often these savings are passed on to consumers.”

Surely this isn’t an accurate trend? If it were true, isn’t this just fuelling the maintenance burden of testing and increasing costs? Let me plant this seed of thought; hasn’t the traditional technology, or ‘formal tools’, used by software testers struggled to keep up with the times? Open source may be a way forward, but in my opinion, it continues to add yet another burden to the cost of testing. What companies are looking for are an easy to use and maintenance free testing tool that makes the testing function more efficient and much more productive.

Our Original Insight, (Throw Away Test Automation), explains this idea very well. Since we first saw software test automation tools appear 20 years ago, software testing technology had not moved forward in line with current new market technologies. With increasing software development complexity and more and more IT departments taking on an agile approach, traditional test automation has become too cumbersome for most to sustain. The creation of the automation has to be fast and painless and the investment minimal, so that you can afford, both financially and
emotionally, to throw it away. This just wouldn’t be true with an open source framework.

What are your thoughts about the article by QA InfoTech? I look forward to your comments!

A Drip Under Pressure

I came across an interesting blog a few days ago called “A Drip Under Pressure” by Tony Simms, Test Manager and author to Roque Software Testing blog.

Tony describes a situation, I am sure the majority of us have come across, where you have been sold a concept, a solution or a vision and like an excited child you are keen to move forward having placed your trust and faith into the vendor and self-proclaimed “expert” you are now engaged with.

The problem is the fact that these “experts” have let you down, the relationship has gone bad and your company could have ruined its reputation because the “experts” idea of software quality and quality management, was thrown together by the little guy with an enormous ego!

Tony comments in his blog: “Just because someone says they are an expert, that does not mean that they should be above inspection, be allowed to get away with shoddy work or feel that they don’t have to try too hard. It’s easy when you have specific knowledge that others don’t, to think that somehow that makes you immune from criticism, above reproach and that us mere mortals should be grateful for the work you are doing for us. However if this leads to arrogance and laziness then you can expect that the paymaster will require an account. Remember; Today’s expert may soon be just one more has been and under pressure.”

If you have experienced something similar whether it is with a vendor or even within your own organisation, please feel free to share!

Software quality should not be held ransom to so called “experts”. Heros like Tony Simms, who has challenged them means that the stability of his company’s website is kept in tact and the reputation of his company has been left unscathed.