Monthly Archives: June 2010

Contributing to DailyTestingTip

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It all started 2 months ago when I have first discovered the @dailytestingtip project and decided to contribute to it.

But before going thru my story let me tell you a little about this project and how it works.

The DailyTestingTip project has been started by Anne-Marie Charrett (http://mavericktester.com) and, quoting from the Daily Testing Tip website (http://www.dailytestingtip.com), “… is a group of dedicated testers who have come together to bring you little gems of testing goodness to your Twitter account.”

How does it works?

With the exception of Tuesday and the weekends, each weekday has a person assigned to it who is responsible of sharing a testing tip with the community. The tip is sent from the @dailytestingtip twitter account 3 times per day at different hours in order reach all the major time zones.

From the moment you enroll yourself in the project you have to contribute with a testing tip per week for the next 6 weeks.

Tuesday, is the day of week reserved for Tag Tuesday when people all over the glob can share their testing tips on twitter by simply adding the #dttip tag to their tweet.

How can I subscribe to these tips?

It’s easy, you just have to follow http://twitter.com/dailytestingtip

Want to contribute to the project?

If you would like to contribute to dailytestingtip and believe you can consistenly supply a daily testing tip just send a direct message to @dailytestingtip from your twitter account.

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Failing testing by being Precise vs. Accurate

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I have been to a course about estimations in the past and the first thing that pops out in my mind when I think about that course is that estimations are not precise, never were and never will be. There are so many things that could influence the timing of a project that every time we are under the impression that we have nailed it down we are taken by surprise by something we have never thought off (and this is valid for any kind of projects not only software).

But this post will not be about estimations; it will be about being precise vs. accurate in software testing.

We often tend to think that our goal is to learn to be precise when actually we really should start focusing more on learning how to be more accurate. I know that this could look like something that has nothing to do with software testing but just think for a moment about the way we are testing software.

High PrecisionWe start with an idea (actually, we start with someone telling that it is a new product to test in town but we will jump over this step)about how to start testing a product and without knowing it the next second we are up to our neck in that idea, trying to squeeze it as hard as we can to get more and more from it and when we get to the end we squeeze it one more time just to make sure that we haven’t forget something.

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Software testing does not equal random thoughts

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Question: If you would have only 3 questions to ask in order to find more information that will help you find the locker combination what would they be?

Demonstrating that software testing isn’t as random as it seems

This exercise is inspired from @jbtestpilot‘s(Jon Bach – Software Tester, Consultant – http://jonbox.wordpress.com) passion for playing with lockers to find their combinations and a locker I’ve found at my office, which by the way was use by someone to make a practical joke on one of our colleagues.

The exercise:

The story starts with my brother who had a not so pretty surprise at the end of a practice game with the town’s handball team in which he was playing when he was in high school. His teammates thought that it would be a lot of fun to tie his bicycle to a fence with a locker taken from another teammate who volunteered to give up his locker for the fun of story. Now image the expression of my brother’s face when he saw his bicycle tied to a fence with an unfamiliar/unknown locker!  :-)

The locker you have in your hands is the locker I am talking about and as you can see my brother didn’t managed to find the right combination and so he chose the easy way to unlock it.

Now your goal is to have fun while trying to figure out the combination lock.

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Testing Camp in Bucharest

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What is this all about?

TestingCamp is a project that I want to start here in Bucharest with the scope of bringing together passionate software testers and create an open environment in which to share experiences, ideas and thoughts with other people.

How will it be structured?

I see this project as a group of people getting together once a month (time period might vary), in different locations, to share their ideas and experiences about software testing or practice / learn new skills. The sharing will be done thru presentations, talks or exercises.

I the future I also see this as a good opportunity to bring special guests, people will a lot of experience and knowledge in software testing, or people that can easily serve as role models.

Who can participate?

There aren’t any requirements or special needs to participate in this meetings. Everyone with an open mind and desire to share, learn or practice new experiences can join.

How can you help? I have some ideas!

If you have any ideas or suggestions regarding this project don’t hesitate to contact me. If you want to take part in this project again you can contact me or leave a comment on this page.

Good, i like it! When and where do we meet?

Right now I’m working at organizing and defining the first steps of this project (gathering people, finding discussion topics, convince tester to share their experiences with others, etc). If you want to participate in this (either as a presenter or as a participant) please leave a comment or contact me.