A Tester is for Life

A Tester Is For LifeNot Just For Christmas

The Software Testing Clubwww.softwaretestingclub.com

December 2010

In November 2010 we launched a new community charity project called A Tester is for life, not just for Christmas. The response was overwhelming and this eBook you are reading now is the results of this experiment. The aim of the eBook was to ask a simple set of ques-tions and garner responses from you, the Testing Community. The responses are enlighten-ing, inspiring and in some cases, hilarious.

This eBook is free for you to download and distribute as you see fit, but all we ask in return

is that you consider donating to Oxfam via our Just Giving site: www.justgiving.com/testingclub.

Were aiming to raise as much money as possible for Oxfam and your help is very much appreciated.

A big Thank You to all who have contributed to this eBook and we do hope it will give all who read it some little nuggets of interest, or at least inspire you to question elements of your learning and testing. As a minimum I do hope some of the testers mentioned in this eBook will give you someone new to follow or get in touch with. As with most community eBooks we actually got a lot more responses than we could realistically fit in this eBook.

As such we didnt include every response so apologies for those who didnt make it in, but early in the New Year we will be publishing the whole response set via The Software Test-ing Club blog. http://blog.softwaretestingclub.com

Sit back, relax and read about what others in the community are thinking about testing.

Happy holiday time to you all.

Rob Lambert&Rosie Sherry &All at The Software Testing Club.

Introduction

5 Books that you have found invaluable in your learning Lessons Learned in Software Testing: A Context Driven Approach by Cem Kaner,

James Bach, and Bret Pettichord Exploratory Software Testing: Tips, Tricks, Tours, and Techniques to Guide Test Design

by James A. Whittaker Agile Testing: A Practical Guide for Testers and Agile Teams by Lisa Crispin and Janet

Gregory How to Break Web Software: Functional and Security Testing of Web Applications and

Web Services by Mike Andrews and James A. Whittaker How We Test Software at Microsoft (PRO-best Practices) by Alan Page, Ken Johnston

and Bj Rollison

How to improve the software testing craft?Read, read and read, follow several blogs to met different perpectives of software testing and practice with all this perspective to find the result most comfortable oneself. Participate

in the forums and discussions and coach the new people to improve your testing skills.

What is the most valuable tool you use to aid your testing?There are many tools to complete my testing but the most important for me is my brain.

Whats the most impressive bug youve ever found?My most impressive bug found is a security bug inside the public web application on my company. The bug was permiting the access to the financial module through a SQL inyec-tion proccedure.

Whats the biggest mistake youve ever made when testing?Accept impossible test plans in the available time.

Whats the biggest challenge facing Testing currently?For me the biggest challenge in the Testing comunity today is the transition to new Agile enviroments like Scrum or XP where the role of the tester is different than the traditional environments.

Antonio Robres

www.softwaretestingclub.com

What do you think will be the biggest challenge over the next 2-3 years?One of the biggest challenges to testing in the next years is probably the crowd testing and the outsourcing.

What are your views on Testing Certification Schemes?For me are not necessary the actual certifications because of only evaluates the memory

capacities of the tester. Testing is more than check, you need develop and improve your soft skills also to be a good tester. In the other hand, its necessary in the testing comunity a common vocubalary or glossary to speak all the same language.

The most exciting, interesting and motivating testers in the community... Michael Bolton Lisa Crispin Andy Glover Markus Grtner Lynn McKee

Your country of residenceSpain

Want to say a few words about this eBook and the charity it supports?I think is a very good idea! The objective is adequated and I think that the people can do-nate a little contribution to adquire this ebook.

Why do you love software testing?

There are several reasons why I love testing. The first is because every day I learn one

new thing. The second is because since childhood I love smashing things! I love my work, I enjoy with it!

Contact DetailsMy name is Antonio Robres and you can found me in twiiter with the name @twiindan, in my blog (in spanish) www.softqatest.com and in my email [email protected]

Donate to www.justgiving.com/testingclub/

5 Books that you have found invaluable in your learning The Art of Software Security Testing: Identifying Software Security Flaws by Chris

Wysopal The Web Application Hackers Handbook: Discovering and Exploiting Security Flaws by

Dafydd Stuttard and Marcus Pinto TMap Next by Tim Koomen, Leo van de Aalst, Bart Broekman and Michiel Vroon

How to improve the software testing craft?A tester can sharpen his or her skills by setting goals. If you have a goal every day you will continuous learn something. Second, dont learn only in the testing domain. Take other domains other activities to see how that works out. Copy the things you learned to the test-ing field.

What is the most valuable tool you use to aid your testing?Web proxy tool like WebScarab to intercept the traffic between your browser and the server.

Whats the most impressive bug youve ever found?A button to a very important function that was only disabled. Via the direct URL I get access to the backend of the system while I was only a simple visitor.

Whats the biggest mistake youve ever made when testing?Not asking the right question to my test team. So they give me half of the information what I wrote down in my report and send to the project manager. Based on this information deci-sion where made that arent the right decisions.

Whats the biggest challenge facing Testing currently?How we can automate the repetetive tasks to have time to deepen other aspects of soft-ware testing.

What do you think will be the biggest challenge over the next 2 -3 years?How can we be involved from the early beginning of a project? This is the case for many years and will be a case for the next year.

Andreas Prins


What are your views on Testing Certification Schemes?This is very useful for a couple of domains. Think about the payments schemes. With a lot of different parties, the whole clearing and settlement principles a scheme is obligate. Test-ing Certification schemes must be done to be sure everything works fine at a lower level.

This happens in domains like: Electronic Health Record, Public Transport, Mobile commu-nications and others.. Every tester has to realize that testing these schemes is not the only thing that must be done. A lot of other testers are still needed.

Your country of residenceNetherlands

Want to say a few words about this eBook and the charity it supports?Life is a gift, share it with others!

Why do you love software testing?Because its an every day learning, and motivating others job. All things of life are appli-cable at testing.

Contact Detailstwitter.com/andreasprins [email protected] Skype: Andreas_Prins


5 Books that you have found invaluable in your learning Lessons Learned in Software Testing by Kaner, Bach and Pettichord Perfect Software and Other Illusions about Testing by Weinberg Agile Testing by Crispin and Gregory Dont Make Me Think by Kruger How We Test Software at Microsoft by Page, Johnson and Rollison

How to improve the software testing craft?Pit your wits against other testers and experts in the craft by attending Weekend Testing sessions, peer conferences like the Test Management Forum and spend as much time communicating with testers as you can.

What is the most valuable tool you use to aid your testing?Might be cliched but for me it is my brain. I can use tools to drive tests forward but I have to think up the tests in the first place! I have to know what to look for and how and where to

look for it. Besides that I have a suite of in-house developed tools to compare our products against. I also regularly use tools such as Mantis, VMWare Workstation, SoapUI and Hex Workshop to aid my testing.

Whats the most impressive bug youve ever found?Some mangled logic would have caused our product to muddle up properties on a street presenting them in the wrong order. This would have caused chaos for things like travel to work distance calculations.

Whats the biggest mistake youve ever made when testing?I still get hot under the collar when I think of it: our product can display data in either Welsh or English and I missed the fact that the Welsh alternates were not being displayed until really late in the testing cycle. Needless to say I was very unpopular because it was an expensive bug to put right at that stage.

Whats the biggest challenge facing Testing currently?Managing expectations. We are dealing with huge shifts to the way in which computing services are organised as companies move to providing services via the Cloud. It is virtu-ally (excuse the pun) impossible to replicate an environment from one minute to the next

Stephen Hill


because of contention for resources which, as testers, we know very little about. Previ-ously when we had full control over the physical hardware in our test environments we had a static point-of-reference that we could say yes, I am comparing like with like but this is much harder with Cloud services.

What do you think will be the biggest challenge over the next 2 -3 years?As use of the Cloud increases and organisations distribute services more and more the current challenges will be exacerbated. Additionally, I think there is going to be a skills problem unless there is a recognition that anyone cannot test - you have to have the right mindset.

What are your views on Testing Certification Schemes?A holder of an ISEB Practitioner Certificate can show that he has written 4 essays mention-ing all the things in the syllabus without deviating too much from the point; ISEB Foundation and Intermediate holders have been able to remember enough facts to correctly choose the right option from 40 multiple choice questions from a single worldview of testing (struc-tured testing using the V-model of all things). Big deal. Unfortunately the topics covered in the syllabus are of real relevance only to people who are contractually obliged to follow the V-model of software development.

The most exciting, interesting and motivating testers in the community...James Bach - Michael Bolton - James Christie - Rob Lambert - Darren McMillan

Want to say a few words about this eBook and the charity it supports?What a great idea! It is good, too, to support Oxfam with all the help they are in the com-munity.

Why do you love software testing?I love engaging my brain with getting to the root of problems and am driven by a love for ensuring the software we put out is of the highest quality. I do not like seeing software that makes the organisation putting it out look amateurish and strive to ensure that does not happen to us!

Contact DetailsSkype: Stephen.Hill.uk Twitter: @Stephen_J_Hill Blog: http://pedantictester.wordpress.com E-mail: [email protected]


5 Books that you have found invaluable in your learning Dont make me think : Steve Krug The Web Testing Handbook : Steven Splaine, Stefan P. Jaskiel Neuro Web Design : Susan Weinschenk Lessons Learned In Software Testing : James Bach, Bret Pettichord, Cem Kaner

How to improve the software testing craft?Obtain feedback after software implementations regarding issues found directly after the product went live. User feedback, call centre issues raised, live bug list etc. This will tell you what bugs were missed while in test and help plan for this next time. Test a variety of software, not specialise and test the same thing over and over. Sit with other testers and watch them test.

What is the most valuable tool you use to aid your testing?Firefox and all the add-ins it has. (invaluable for web testing) Selenium for regression testing after a new build has been deployed. Twitter for staying current with testing best practises

Whats the most impressive bug youve ever found?I used to work for NASA and once found a bug in the rocket launch management system that would have resulted in 20 rockets being sent to the moon unmanned and when they fell to earth would have destroyed the planet. (Only joking). However as an aside, would be good to have a humour section in the ebook. Maybe a collection of all the Dilbert cartoons that relate to testing, or a section on funniest moments while testing. I keep a log called you couldnt make it up of all the unbelievable things that go on in the companies I work for.

Whats the biggest mistake youve ever made when testing?I was working for a major supermarket testing EPoS terminals (checkouts) and thought I had sent remote command to my test checkout to re-boot it, but had in fact I had sent the command to every single checkout in every store. I didnt realise until the call centre phones all went crazy.

Whats the biggest challenge facing Testing currently?

Mark Walsh


Testing high volume websites as it is difficult to performance test accurately, the user base

is worldwide and can be hundreds of thousands at anyone time, your users all have differ-ent devices, browsers and operating systems, and all navigate the internet differently.

What do you think will be the biggest challenge over the next 2-3 years?The move towards information on demand, regardless of location. Mobile devices are sell-ing in their millions and nearly everyone seems to be moving towards being online 24/7 and

require websites that work well and quickly on all devices.

What are your views on Testing Certification Schemes?If I was synical I would say that recruitment agents must be taking a cut of all examination fees in return for insisting that job candidates are certified. If a company relies on certifica-tion above reading the content of CV then they are very short sighted. I agree there needs to be a way to sort out the wheat from the chaff when it comes to the interview process, but feel a written test relevant to the testing project that has the vacancy is far more effective I wonder how many testers say they are certified on their CV but are not ?

Your country of residenceEngland

Want to say a few words about this eBook and the charity it supports?I find there is a shortage of testing handbooks that are current and relevant so to compile a

free one, and subsequently encourage donations to a worthwhile cause is a terrific idea.

Why do you love software testing?Its like a treasure hunt finding bugs. There are clues to where the bugs are and it may take

a number of different attempts before finding them. However once you have found them

there is a sense of achievement and the knowledge that your efforts were justified and that

you have improved the quality of a product.

Contact DetailsEmail : [email protected]

Twitter : mark_walsh_


5 Books that you have found invaluable in your learning Testing Computer Software, 2nd Edition - Cem Kaner, Jack Falk, and Hung Q. Nguyen Quality Software Management Vol1-4 Jerry Weinberg Agile Testing Lisa Crispin and Janet Gregory Bridging the Communication Gap by Gojko Adzic Everyday Scripting with Ruby: for Teams, Testers, and You by Brian Marick

How to improve the software testing craft?Get involved with the testing community. Answer questions on the forums - that makes you think aboout your beliefs and experiences. Write a blog - again, it makes you think about your work and what you are doing. Participate in the weekend testing sessions

Whats the most impressive bug youve ever found?It was actually a very simple standard run of the mill bug where leaving an input field blank

would crash the app. It was impressive because a dev had proudly challenged me to break the app and I did it within 30 seconds. It gave me so much credibility with the devs that they wanted to know what my magic trick was and after that they started to test their code before handing it over

Whats the biggest mistake youve ever made when testing?Not thinking about how the data that would be needed for testing would be set up. Lots of red faces when testing goes nowhere on Day 1 as nothing has been set up and will take a week to do so

Whats the biggest challenge facing Testing currently?The belief that you can get anyone in, give them a script to run and they can test the prod-uct

What do you think will be the biggest challenge over the next 2-3 years?Testing highly complex systems and testing the multitude of ways that apps are all intercon-nected over the web.

Phil Kirkham


What are your views on Testing Certification Schemes?As I spend too much time removing posts about certification from the STC site I might have

a somewhat biased view. If only the people posting and worrying so much about them would spend their time and energy learning they would be better off. Though I cant be too harsh on them as without the magic letters in their CV they cant get past a lot of HR key-word searches

The most exciting, interesting and motivating testers in the community... Rob Lambert Marlena Compton Markus Gartner Matthew Heusser Chris McMahon


Want to say a few words about this eBook and the charity it supports?The testing community is a great one - hope the book helps out the larger community out there.

Why do you love software testing?The intellectual challenge, the awesome community and helping make a product that people can use.

Contact Detailshttp://[email protected] @pkirkham


5 Books that you have found invaluable in your learning Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking: Malcolm Gladwell The Secret: Rhonda Byrne All books by Robin Sharma

How to improve the software testing craft? Listen to others but invent for yourself. Build and preserve your reputation. Read books, blogs, discuss with people. Practice /testing/. There is no use if you know but you cannot execute. It is OK to fail, keep trying. Every opportunity will teach you something if you are willing

to learn. So grab every opportunity where you can learn. Listen to Dr.Cems lectures available on BBST.

What is the most valuable tool you use to aid your testing?www.Google.com

Whats the most impressive bug youve ever found?I dont know if this bug impresses you but I liked this the most. After 20 incorrect logins, login with correct credentials also failed. If the login screen was cancelled and the applica-tion launched again, one could use the correct credentials to login.

Whats the biggest mistake youve ever made when testing?Equating credibility with bug counts. Feeling on top of the world finding a lot of bugs which

did not meet the mission.

Whats the biggest challenge facing Testing currently?According to me, the biggest challenge facing the testing industry is : Test cases replac-ing human brains. Management feels that test cases will solve the problem. If a defect is missed, add it to the test suite. The vicious circle continues. And finally, testers are bored.

What do you think will be the biggest challenge over the next 2-3 years?The old problems will repeat. The managers would want to have full control on the test-

Ajay Balamurugadas


ing activity. Test cases will be seen as a measure of coverage. Skilled testers will fight the

battle against useless certifications.

What are your views on Testing Certification Schemes?As long as it helps you learn something, go for it. If it is just a 40 multiple choice question-naire which you could answer even without reading anything, be against it. Go for BBST courses instead. They will test you unlike a paper exam.

The most exciting, interesting and motivating testers in the community...Matthew HeusserAndy GloverMichael BoltonMonirul Islam

Your country of residenceIndia

Want to say a few words about this eBook and the charity it supports?Awesome job. May God bless everyone :)

Why do you love software testing?I feel I am born to test. Right from childhood, I loved asking questions: What if... Once I got into software testing, I realized that I would be paid if I asked that question again and again and gave the stakeholders the information.

Contact DetailsEmail: [email protected]

Skype: ajay184f

Twitter: www.twitter.com/ajay184f

Blog: www.enjoytesting.blogspot.com



James Bach, and Bret Pettichord Secrets of a Buccaneer Scholar by James Bach

How to improve the software testing craft?Testers need to practice problem solving and lateral thinking. Try out puzzles to free up the stress. Read, read, read and read a lot - there are many interesting blogs about software testing which provides you with lot of ideas. Then start blogging about your thoughts.

What is the most valuable tool you use to aid your testing?My brain :) Ive strarted practicing the testing with James Bachs heuristic model, though I feel there is long way to go for myself to master it!

Whats the most impressive bug youve ever found?I once found a compatibility issue with Mac - I used Ctrl + V in a Mac machine to paste some text to a field and it corrupted the database. This was an accidental discovery, as I

was testing on a Windows machine a few minutes earlier and just wanted to check the new feature in Mac. And due to the Windows hangover I used the Ctrl + V combination in Mac as well.

Whats the biggest mistake youve ever made when testing?I once missed a registration form issue for 18 builds! The registration field contained a field

User name. Me and my teammates tested it for 18 builds and still didnt try with a user name which contained spaces in between. We had invited a couple of normal PC users to check the usability of the product, and one of them tried a user name with spaces - and got an error message :(

Whats the biggest challenge facing Testing currently?Ive a feeling that testers have given up the passion to learn something new. There are exceptions, but the majority of testers I met here in my place are not interested in reading blogs and writing one themselves. They are just doing testing because their employer wants them to do it!

Nandagopal


What do you think will be the biggest challenge over the next 2-3 years?Lack of skilled testers. The way in which the web and technology growing is in such pace that we really lack the efficient testers for all these.

What are your views on Testing Certification Schemes?Im neutral about them. A certification from a local institute earned me my first job as a

Software Tester. But when I experience what real testing is, I wondered What was that the institute taught me? :) Certifications are a good thing to have when you want to get the

terminology of testing right, but they are not necessarily a mandatory thing to prove that you are good tester.

The most exciting, interesting and motivating testers in the community...James BachMichael BoltonPradeep SoundararajanParimala SanakaraiyaDarren Macmillan


Want to say a few words about this eBook and the charity it supports?This is a great initiative by the software testing club - this will get a lot of interesting ideas for a cool book and an even better way to support the needy.

Why do you love software testing?I love the feeling of making something better from good. Im living a childhood dream of becoming a super detective like Sherlock Holmes - Im now a Software Detective :) Solving mysteries and helping my fellow developers to fix them..

Contact DetailsEmail: [email protected] Skype: nandagopal.r Twitter: @nandagopalr Blog: http://testingmyway.wordpress.com


5 Books that you have found invaluable in your learning Perfect Software: And Other Illusions about Testing (Gerald M. Weinberg) The Pleasure of Finding Things Out: The Best Short Works of Richard P. Feynman

(Richard P. Feynman) Secrets of Consulting: A Guide to Giving and Getting Advice Successfully (Weinberg) Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking (Malcolm Galdwell) Lessons Learned in Software Testing (Cem Kaner, James Bach, Bret Pettichord)

How to improve the software testing craft?Keep your mind switched on. Dont be afraid to admit you dont know or understand some-thing, because this will lead to questioning, which in turn will improve your understanding. Be in constant learning mode - not only testing related things, other disciplines too. As Markus Gaertner pointed out: youre in charge of your own career. Reach out to the testing communicity: engage with other testers on twitter, start a blog to document your thinking. Oh, and have fun.

What is the most valuable tool you use to aid your testing?Perlclip. Mindmaps. Excel. Session Tester. Scan Tool. Rapid Reporter.

Whats the most impressive bug youve ever found?Any nasty intermittent bug I was finally able to nail down. Pinpointing these bugs often

involved the use of tools to invoke instable conditions (e.g. simulating long use of an appli-cation without shutting down, drawing some controls repeatedly), the kind of behaviour you normally only encounter in real life user usage.

Whats the biggest mistake youve ever made when testing?I found out the hard way that overly detailed requirement documents are not always helping the testers. The amount of detail tends to obscure the real problem-to-be-solved in there. Combined with a scripted testing environment, these kinds of requirements lead to an expo-nential amount of trivial cases. I thought I covered everything, but I missed the essence. Big learning for me there.


Zeger Van Hese


We need more skilled, sapient testing. Testing is a complex activity, and should be regard-ed as such. Not anyone can do it, you need skilled professionals. Outsourcing to cheaper areas doesnt do the craft justice.

What do you think will be the biggest challenge over the next 2-3 years?I think the biggest challenge - but also the most interesting one from a testers point of view - will be how to cope with the (exponentially) growing complexity that ever evolving technol-ogy will cast upon us. New technologies, new environments, new platforms, new knowl-edge... How do we select what to test in these circumstances, given the limited time (and budgets) we have. Its a question of focus.

What are your views on Testing Certification Schemes?The biggest problem I have with the current certification scheme, is that nobody actually

watches anyone testing. Nobody assesses noticing/listening/talking/bug advocacy/problem-solving skills. It is mainly about memorizing definitions. The exam is trivial and easy. Im not

against certifications per se. Ill gladly support a certification scheme that is more thought-

out and aimed at improving the craft.

The most exciting, interesting and motivating testers in the community...Ajay Balamuragadas - Markus Grtner - Rikard Edgren - Michael Bolton (not exactly up and coming, but innovative nontheless) - James Bach (idem)

Your country of residenceBelgium

Want to say a few words about this eBook and the charity it supports?A little Something *for* testers, *by* testers, for charity? Count me in!

Why do you love software testing?Because it is all about expecting the unexpected. It is challenging. And fun.

Contact DetailsE-mail: [email protected] Twitter: @TestSideStory Blog: http://testsidestory.wordpress.com


5 Books that you have found invaluable in your learning The Pragmatic Programmer: From Journeyman to Master by Andrew Hunt & David

Thomas Peopleware: Productive Projects and Teams by Tom DeMarco and Timothy Lister Numerical Recipes in C: The Art of Scientific Computing by William H. Press,Saul A.

Teukolsky, William T. Vetterling and Brian P. Flannery Agile Testing by Lisa Crispin and Janet Gregory Introduction to Physical Oceanography by John A. Knauss

How to improve the software testing craft?Probably *the* traditional way is of course reading books, but also user group meetings, conferences, internet forums, katas, dojos, the software testing club, twitter, blogs The list seems endless.Also try to find someone who can help you improve your skills and from whom you can

learn a lot, a master of the craft of testing (to you). Maybe (s)he sees him/herself as just a journeyman, but that doesnt matter. This person should offer some time to guide you to new topics and to new terrain.Also find someone (may be more than one person) whom you can guide and who can learn

from you.To me theres hardly a better way to learn than teaching. In any way, pick what appeals to you and your way of learning.

What is the most valuable tool you use to aid your testing?First and foremost: My team Other than that: The internet. On a rather technical level: About everything Ruby-related (Ruby itself, test-related libraries as Watir, Cucumber, rest-client, irb, ri, the lists nearly endless), Hudson (or any other CI system), a decent text edi-tor and a good operating system, a Wiki Oh, you said the most valuable tool, Im afraid there is not such thing (that would be a silver bullet, after all).

Whats the most impressive bug youve ever found?Impressive theres so many way to be impressive. One system would crash when a text field was filled with 255 all uppercase letters A and one B, but no other combinations

string sizes I tested.

Stephan Kmper


Whats the biggest mistake youve ever made when testing?Probably getting the design of a domain specific language wrong on the first attempt (inflex-ible, purely line oriented, bloated with technical details).

Whats the biggest challenge facing Testing currently?To me the biggest challenge is to cover two communication gaps. One is between testers and developers, and I think were on a good way to overcome this one, especially in agile teams (Its still a big problem in traditional development). The other one is between the business side and testers (actually and more general technical people). We, the software testing community, need to inform and educate others about our business in the terms and language they understand.

What do you think will be the biggest challenge over the next 2-3 years?To bridge the communication gap between cultures, time zones, industries and disciplines. Essentially this is a generalised version of the biggest challenge facing Testing currently.

What are your views on Testing Certification Schemes?Currently run certifications (e.g. ISTQB) certify, well, the ability to get a certain grade in a

certification examination. It has been nicely summarised at the 2010 Agile Testing Days in

Berlin by some participants: We are a community of professionals. We are dedicated to our own continuing education and take responsibility for our careers. We support advancing in learning and advancing our craft. We certify ourselves.

The most exciting, interesting and motivating testers in the community...Elisabeth Hendrickson - Lisa Crispin - Michael Bolton - Markus Grtner

Want to say a few words about this eBook and the charity it supports?The software testing community is more supportive in more ways than I previously realised.

Why do you love software testing?I studied physics and like running experiments to test models of reality. Software testing is a lot like that: Empiric work, exploring, art & science in a good mix.

Contact DetailsIm @S_2K on twitterhttp://zenandtheartofautomatedtesting.eu/


5 Books that you have found invaluable in your learning Agile Testing - A practical guide for testers and agile teams by Lisa Crispin and Janet

Gregory

How to improve the software testing craft?Im still quite new to testing and Ive been learning a lot reading the various blogs and tweets going on. I find it best to read a bit each day and pull something of relevance and

then try to implement the testing. See what works best and gradually add to my testing skills that way. Its always good to keep up to date and to take input from others, surprising what ideas pop into your head.

What is the most valuable tool you use to aid your testing?Pen and paper. I scribble down notes as I go as it makes me write down what Im doing and I tend to do mind maps from the notes Ive made to come up with edge cases. Its great to make you think.

Whats the most impressive bug youve ever found?I crashed an entire system on my first regression test as a full regression hadnt been done

in months! No communication was working between servers and device. The application stopped running and the server itself eventually over heated and we had to cool it down to clear the issues!

Whats the biggest mistake youve ever made when testing?I havent made mistakes as such, Ive just missed some small bits and pieces. I try not to think of myself making mistakes as it shakes my confidence and then I am not happy with

the testing Ive carried out and can get stuck in a testing loop. I just know there will be bits missed so I will try and cover as much as humanly possible and then relax.

What are your views on Testing Certification Schemes?Ive recently been hired as a tester with no tester certification. Ive an IT background and

relevant experience. I would not take a certification if it did not increase my knowledge, Im

not willing to pay someone to tell me something I know. Certification has never appeared

when applying for jobs.

Aine



Why do you love software testing?I get paid to break software and have someone else fix it! I used to be a programmer so

its nice from the other side. Also each day is different and Im always learning. You never know what you might break!


5 Books that you have found invaluable in your learning The Art of Software Testing - Glenford J. Myers A Practitioners Guide to Software Test Design - Lee Copeland Lessons Learned in Software Testing by Cem Kaner Agile Testing: A Practical Guide for Testers and Agile Teams - Lisa Crispin and Janet

Gregory Blink: The Power of Thinking without thinking - Malcolm Gladwell

How to improve the software testing craft?If you wish to count yourself as a professional tester then you really should think about get-ting involved in the testing community, making a contribution. you can learn so much and also people can learn from you. People may not agree with your views and opinions but they are YOUR views and at least you get to express them others may learn from them and you may learn from others. There are various options to get involved, blogs, twitter, magazine, user groups, conferences. To quote: Its what you learn after you know it all that counts :- Harry S Truman Always remember to keep learning.

What is the most valuable tool you use to aid your testing?The most valuable tool I use to aid my testing is my brain!!

Whats the most impressive bug youve ever found?Since I have an interest in photography the most interesting bug I have ever found was a huge red ant nest in the woods near where I live - it was one of the largest I had ever seen and full of ants - so I guess that would make it lots of bugs!!!! In a professional testing role the most impressive bug I found was one in which it would only occur after the system had been running for at least 1 year (24x7) - it would then start to remove the first entries

entered - very impressive since the first entries were the configuration options for the entire

system

Whats the biggest mistake youve ever made when testing?On a linux system issuing a rm -rf command when logged in as root at the root directory.

John Stevenson


Whats the biggest challenge facing Testing currently?The biggest challenge to keep everyone working together to push testing forward as a profession.

What do you think will be the biggest challenge over the next 2-3 years?Over the next cpl of years the amount of information being driven by the testing community could reach overload and cause people to become disconnected and lose interest. There is a challenge to ensure that testing as a profession remains in the spotlite at schools and universities - the message needs to be spread to those who have the ability to challenge the status quo.

What are your views on Testing Certification Schemes?Certification can be ok for those starting out in testing as a way to learn the basic skills.

The problem comes when it is used as a money making scheme and forced on to people who have many years of epxerience by means of filtering job applications.

The most exciting, interesting and motivating testers in the community... Michael Bolton Tony Bruce Ajay Balamurugadas Santhosh Tuppad Matt Heusser


Why do you love software testing?Software testing is great because it incorporates aspects of problem solving, thinking, psy-chology, riddles, challenges and most of all it has the software testing club a great place for those who love testing

Contact Detailstwitter: @steveo1967

blog: http://steveo1967.blogspot.com/



James Bach, and Bret Pettichord Agile Testing: A Practical Guide for Testers and Agile Teams by Lisa Crispin and Janet

Gregory Agile Software Development with Scrum (Series in Agile Software Development) by Ken

Schwaber and Mike Beedle Weinberg on Writing: The Fieldstone Method by Gerald M. Weinberg Perfect Software: And Other Illusions about Testing by Gerald M. Weinberg

How to improve the software testing craft?I keep my testing skills sharp by practicing in everyday life. Its easy for me, partly because I am one of those people who notices issues *everywhere*, and I also seem to attract them. I have alwyas noticed continuity issues in movies, and misspellings on billboards. As I ex-perience the web every day outside of my day job, I take the time to explore and experiment with web sites. I ask myself questions like What would happen if I pressed this button before I have finished filling out the form?, What does that error message mean, exactly?,

and As a user, was that explanation of the workslow what I expexted it to be? If not, what *did* I expect it to be? This helps me collect data points for where issues are common, and deepen my understanding for what I expect as a user.

What is the most valuable tool you use to aid your testing?FireBug. FireBug is a great all-around tool for both exploring and automating. I can use it to better understand what I am seeing, or not seeing, on a web page, and for identifying objects. I can execute javascript to investigate how a site will respond to specific events.

Whats the most impressive bug youve ever found?What does impressive mean? I can think of lots that were impressive in that it actually made it out of an intelligent human beings head and through the keyboard :) The bug I describe most often turned out to not be an issue with my teams application code at all, but was impressive in its impact. We had a Java client/server app, and with some frequency, when simply moving the window on the screen, our clients entire computer would imme-diately reboot. No stop gaps, no Do you want to shut down?, just turn right off and then start up fresh again. It turned out to be a nasty incompatibility with a specific version of

Dawn Cannan


Java and a specific version of the video card driver that of course, this large company had

in every single one of its computers. It tooks us weeks of repetitive troubleshooting to find

and work around it.

Whats the biggest mistake youve ever made when testing?In hindsight, it would be thinking that I was a gatekeeper. In my early jobs, I saw myself as the QA Queen, and my team, the gate through which all releases must pass. We did

much stereotypical waterfall-type testing, with a few weeks at the end of months of develop-ment to run through massive amounts of test cases on dozens of configurations. Because

of well-known business constraints, I often had to pick my top 10 bugs to be fixed, while

all of the others often remained in existence. Ive learned over the years just how much be-ing a gatekeeper is a fallicy and does not actually help us to release high quality software. I have learned the benefit of really including testing early and often and bulding in quality

from the start, as a whole team.

Whats the biggest challenge facing Testing currently?I dont know that I can speak for all of testing. I can only speak for what I see in my experi-ence and what I hear about in the community. I feel that there is a (potentially) growing chasm between traditional testers and technical testers. It seems that as many testers are becoming more technical, many others are refusing to go near anything that looks tech-nical. I worry that we have the potential of losing many great analytical minds in the testing world due to a desire to test but not code. There are efforts to bridge the gap between the technical and non-technical, but my hope is that all will continue to be welcome in the test-ing world, and the value of all types of testing skills will be obvious.

What do you think will be the biggest challenge over the next 2-3 years?Agile has hit mainstream -- or so I hear. My personal experience still shows a lot of compa-nies set in their ways, but the trends show Agile gaining strength. Many, many companies that are moving in this direction may be doing well on new work, but what is happening with the legacy applications? I feel like there will be, for a period of time, a divide between main-tenance applications and new applications. As testers learn more efficient ways of testing,

and how the fun in testing can return once the boring stuff is covered with automation, they will still be burdened with legacy applications that are difficult or impossible to automate

against. Many of these applications are years or decades of codebases, by multiple devel-opers -- they are cryptic, difficult to work with bowls of spaghetti code. They will hang on

for dear life for years as teams and people move on to cleaner applications. Who will still maintain these legacy systems? Who will spend long hours struggling with a beast whose creators arent even around any more, when no developer even wants to touch them?

What are your views on Testing Certification Schemes?It makes me chuckle that the questions refers to them as schemes? Like pyramid schemes :) I personally believe that while certification training may be a good way to

introduce new testers to the terminologies, strategies, and techniques of software testing, posession of the piece of paper says absolutely nothing about how good of a tester you are. A short story: A few years back, I acquired an electrical contractor license for a friends business. I took a 2-day class, and then aced the multiple choice test that followed. Thats all it took. I am now a licensed electrical contractor. However, I never once during those 2 days touched a wire or breaker or voltmeter. If you were to put me into a house having electrical problems, I am no more qualified to troubleshoot it than the next guy (er, girl). I

have no problem with certifications schemes. I just dont believe they are being used cor-rectly by hirers.

The most exciting, interesting and motivating testers in the community...Markus Gaertner - Catherine Powell - Chris McMahon - Paul Carvalho - Mark Vasko

Want to say a few words about this eBook and the charity it supports?As testers, it is often our responsibility to make sure that the right thing is visible, under-stood, and done. Many of us have seen the perils of doing the easy thing or the this benefits me greatly, screw everyone else thing. Testers often make difficult decisions in

order to support the greater good (not to the exclusion of other roles who also do this!). The message from Oxfam is one of protecting global values -- basic rights for every single human being on earth. Oxfam is also fighting for the greater good, rather than any specific

group or subset of individuals. I am happy to support this cause, both through donation and my time and contribution to this eBook.

Why do you love software testing?I accidentally fell into software testing. At the time (dont shoot me), I thought it was a good stepping stone to becoming a developer. Little did I know, when I finally jumped into the

development profession, I would hate it. Software testing speaks to me. It comes naturally to me. I am a bug magnet -- at work, home, on the road, everywhere. I enjoy feeling out the limits and experimenting. I also enjoy troubleshooting, using my experience and lots of gut feel to find the root cause of a problem. Testing gives me the ability to never be bored

with my job. I can write code, I can poke at software, I can write documentation, I can sit with developers, operations teams, customers, customer service, just about *any* role and explore their needs.

Contact Detailspassionatetester.com [email protected] @dckismet -- Twitter/Skype

5 Books that you have found invaluable in your learning Testing Computer Software, Cem Kaner et al. How to Break Software, James Whittaker Managing the Testing Process, Rex Black Software Engineering Economics, Barry Boehm Software Metrics, Robert Grady and Deborah Caswell

How to improve the software testing craft?Keep working at it. This line of work requires constant learning and refinement of knowl-edge. Dont get stuck in a rut and look for new ways of doing things. Do your research, and do it exhaustively to find your answers. Someone else may have already come up with the

solution or a similar one to what you need. Dont re-invent the wheel if you dont have to. Learn to adapt things to your needs and be willing to adapt yourself. Also, sharpen up your communication skills. If you cannot convey your message/information in written and verbal formats effectively then you are in deep trouble. Become a good listener and dig for the information. Dont be afraid or intimidated by other people or groups. You are doing your job to help them and the company produce a product. Be active in that. As part of the com-munication skills learn to sell your information and sell testing to get buy-in for your work. Use the skills of selling to get what you need to do your job effectively.

What is the most valuable tool you use to aid your testing?My brain. It is still the best computer available to me. Think about what you are doing and why, and just dont do things by wrote.

Whats the most impressive bug youve ever found?Ive had a few during my career, so no single one really stands out. Lets just say Ive found some doosies in my time.

Whats the biggest mistake youve ever made when testing?Working 36 hours straight without sleep trying to finish testing and make the release/pro-duction date. And this was after working 8 weeks straight putting in 60-70 hour weeks. Be-cause I was tired I missed a last minute change and bug in the application, and when it got out in the real world it caused the application to corrupt data. Thus we didnt have a lot of

Jim Hazen


happy customers on our hands, the press ate us alive for it, and management was breath-ing down my neck asking why this was missed. The lesson I learned is that you cannot kamikaze yourself and at the same time be effective in your job. Working insane hours will only lead to mistakes and defects escaping to the wild. I didnt push back on the deadline and say we needed a few more days to finish. I put a big S on my chest thinking I was

Superman when in reality it only stood for Stupid man. Its a mistake I have not repeated the rest of my career.

Whats the biggest challenge facing Testing currently?Commoditization. There has always been a mindset that Testing is not a skilled profession (or a profession at all), and that anyone can do it. This has become worse with outsourc-ing and off shoring of the work. There are too many people using it as a way to get in, and companies (both client and provider) that see it as a job that doesnt need the same skills and calibre of people as development. The fact is you need people that are highly skilled and experienced to do the job effectively, and economically.

What do you think will be the biggest challenge over the next 2-3 years?Same as the previous one. Plus the increased emphasis on test automation. Test Automa-tion can mean many things such as Unit Testing, process automation for test & defect man-agement, Functional testing of an application, Performance/Load testing, and other parts of the testing process that can be automated. The problem being is that there are people and companies getting into this and they dont understand the basic problems to be solved and the ways to properly implement solutions. There will be a surge of Automagic that will fail and cause credibility problems for the process & tools for automation and the people who really do know what they are doing. Expectations of what test automation is and what can done with it need to be properly set and managed.

What are your views on Testing Certification Schemes?When the first ones came out years and years ago (like QAI CQA & CSTE, and ASQ

CSQE) I thought they were good. They required multiple classes and the process was peti-tion based (peer review). They were tough to get. Nowadays I think they are a joke and are causing damage to the credibility of the profession. It is way too easy to get certified be-cause of the short classes and exam-based systems. Some of the certification groups have

become paper mills and are purely profit motivated. Today the saying Certified doesnt

mean Qualified is very Germaine to the discussion.


The most exciting, interesting and motivating testers in the community... Scott Barber Igor Gershovich Justin Hunter Matt Heusser Joe Strazzere

Your country of residenceUSA

Why do you love software testing?Ive always been good at breaking stuff. It plays to my natural curiosity of why and how things work. Also, Ive made a good career out of it and hope to continue to. I like working with the group to bring a product to market or a system online for the end-users.

Contact DetailsJim Hazen http://www.linkedin.com/pub/jim-hazen/0/b48/760

5 Books that you have found invaluable in your learning Managing the Testing Process Rex Black Critical Testing Processes Rex Black Managing the Test People Judith McKay Systematic Software Testing Craig & Jaskiel

How to improve the software testing craft?I am a Rex Black disciple, so I highly recommend his books. I also highly recommend ISTQB certification, especially courses offered by Rex Black Consulting Inc. The RBCI

website also has a plethora of articles, templates, podcasts and webinar recordings that are extremely useful. Practice a lot. If you dont have a testing job, find software makers who

need beta testers and work out a partnership with them. Also, look to the various freelance sites for testing jobs. They probably wont pay much but youll make up for it later with the experience you gain.

What is the most valuable tool you use to aid your testing?A good understanding of the entire test process. Knowing the process can make up for all of the tools people think you need to manage it. If you dont know the process the tools wont help you a bit. You can manage the process with basic office software.

Whats the most impressive bug youve ever found?An incorrect payout in slot machine software. The code delineating the boundaries for increasing payouts and subsequently lower probability were overlapping causing the slot machine to payout 1000 credits too often, cheating the casino. In addition to discovering the defect, I was able to pinpoint the error in the code to the programmer. Probably not my most impressive discovery, but it s one thats stuck in my mind for years.

Whats the biggest mistake youve ever made when testing?Calling a programmers code junk. Dont ever do that. It only serves to start an adversarial relationship and create barriers. Once done, its hard to repair the relationship and break down barriers.


William Gentry


I feel that the biggest challenge has been, is and will continue to be justifying the need for testing. Thats not to say that it cant be done, just that testers dont focus on it enough and dont know how to do it well.

What do you think will be the biggest challenge over the next 2-3 years?Aside from justifying the need for testing, I think the biggest challenge over the next few years is adjusting test processes to ever changing software development lifecycles, espe-cially when more than one is used within the same company.

What are your views on Testing Certification Schemes?Im pro certification and partial to the certifications and training offered by the ISTQB. Thats

not to say that other certification programs arent good or dont offer satisfactory training,

just that ISTQB fulfils my needs.

The most exciting, interesting and motivating testers in the community... Rex Black Randy Rice Rick Craig

Your country of residenceUSA

Want to say a few words about this eBook and the charity it supports?I support just about anything that helps out those less fortunate than me or looks find cures

for currently incurable diseases.

Why do you love software testing?Its the challenge of building great software for customers that drives my enjoyment for soft-ware testing. I also thoroughly enjoy building and improving the test process.

Contact DetailsEmail: [email protected] Skype: looksharpdesigns Twitter: @looksharpdesignWeb: http://looksharpdesigns.com


5 Books that you have found invaluable in your learningWho moved my cheese? Spencer Johnson Software Testing and Continuous Quality Improvement William E Lewis

Information Dashboard Design Stephen FewA Practitioners Guide to Software Test Design Lee CopelandHow to Break Software: A Practical Guide to Testing W/CD James A Whittaker

How to improve the software testing craft?They have to learn from making mistakes. They can mistakes only if they take risk. Risk in doing things they have never done, risk for innovation. Also they should not get into the trap of we always did it this way. This wont take you far in the testing world.

What is the most valuable tool you use to aid your testing?A big picture of all the moving elements. Each project I work on is a big puzzle. I put the pieces together to solve it. Requirements are a piece, the actual application or product is a piece, my tests are a piece, etc. I put these together and try to make the picture of what is it that I am trying to solve and attack is slowly.

Whats the most impressive bug youve ever found?The URL for our application was storing login and password. So once you login to the appli-cation and you move from screen to screen you could see login and password information. I just about fell off my chair seeing my secret password on my screen.

Whats the biggest mistake youve ever made when testing?Making assumptions and not testing them. I sometimes make an assumption and assume its right it can be a requirement or a test step. Sometimes I get so caught up with my ap-plication I forget to question it.

Whats the biggest challenge facing Testing currently?CLOUD - with cloud development there will be more and more user (customers) who are unique and have environments that will be hard to replicate. They will each have environ-ments that will be unique and testing those combinations and predicting everything and anything they can do in the cloud will be hard to test or be proactive about. We will have to

Shilpa


rely on automation a lot. Also virtualization will be another solution to create these environ-ments on the go.

What do you think will be the biggest challenge over the next 2-3 years?Cloud will continue to be a big problem for testing.

What are your views on Testing Certification Schemes?I am torn between yes we need some type of certification so we all at least speak same or

similar language. But with so many organizations having their own certification programs

who decides which one is better or greater? You can be an excellent tester and not need any certification at all.

Your country of residence

USA

Why do you love software testing?This is where my strength lies.

Contact DetailsEmail: [email protected] Twitter: @shillu13Web: http://todaysbigpicture.blogspot.com/


5 Books that you have found invaluable in your learning The Pragmatic Programmer by Andy Hunt and Dave Thomas Pragmatic Unit Testing in Java by Andy Hunt and Dave Thomas Learn to Program by Chris Pine Practices of an Agile Developer by Venkat Subramaniam and Andy Hunt Agile Testing by Lisa Crispin and Janet Gregory

How to improve the software testing craft?By learning a lightweight scripting language, like Ruby, that can drive a variety of tools. The Ruby language in particular has a very rich testing culture, so there are many, many tools that you can use to test Java or dotNet apps (or other languages). Its said you cant think in a language you cant speak. The same is true of test scripting. Learn a language like Ruby (I love http://rubykoans.com) as a starting place. It walks you through the language ~and~ great testing practices. Then pair with your developers anytime you or they write a test. You may not be fluent in the developers language, but youll help them at richness to

their unit tests by suggesting different data sets to test with. Knowing a scripting language (like Ruby) will provide you with the basic vocabulary to communicate with the team.

What is the most valuable tool you use to aid your testing?For me its a light-weight testing framework (like Junit, Nunit, Gtest, CPPUnit, etc) instead of a home grown test framework or a very expensive tool. Start with a very light framework, use it for more than unit testing (package level, integration, etc), then run those tests in a continuous integration tool. Cruise Control is my favourite, but Hudson is another popular one. Continuous integration provides ongoing test execution, and feedback to the devel-opers (as well as to testers), and it frees you up to do more interesting work while the CI machine does the Hello world testing.

Whats the most impressive bug youve ever found?A developer wrote code that knew the order of the fields in the database tables. When the

order changed, it broke an admin GUI in the client. We didnt see it for nearly 6 weeks, then it took several more weeks to understand that simply recreating the database tables (and not any code change) has caused the problem. Several programming principles, like keep-ing your code modular and not letting other systems see your codes internal implementa-

Jared Richardson


tion, were not just broken. They were beaten to within an inch of their life!

Whats the biggest mistake youve ever made when testing?When I was younger I would often say Yes, that was a bug, but its working now. Lets move on. After several high-profile, and very embarrassing situations, I learned that a bug

should never be allowed to hide. If it happened once, itll happen again. Never let some-thing slide just because its not easy to reproduce. Bulldog it until you know why it hap-pened, then fix it (or at the very least, document it). Otherwise that bug will come back at

the worst possible time.

Whats the biggest challenge facing Testing currently?A lack of automation and formality in testing. Too many developers (and testers) have their own hand-rolled tests. These tests are difficult to share and automate. Once these tests

are written, they must be run in a continuous integration system that looks similar to the production environment. As an industry we must embrace the discipline of test automation. At a minimum we need a Hello World test on everything we write. When a bug occurs, we need a Defect Driven Test to cover that bug. All work needs to be covered. this proves that the code works and moves us past the It worked on my machine mentality thats so prevalent today. This test creation is just as much a responsibility of developers as it is tes-ters, but weve all got to work together to make this happen. Weve got to stop blaming The Others and realize were on a team and can get so much more done if we work together. If you cant code, then use code coverage tools (like http://cobertura.sourceforge.net ) to just measure what the developers are (or arent) doing. Motivate your team using peer pressure. A hardware vendor would never provide a motherboard or cable that might work. They have rigorous tests that they wont skimp on before delivery. We need that same mindset in test-ing. Its not something that can be skimped or minimized. No one remembers when you ship early or even on time. They only remember that your product crashed or returned bad data. Take your time and do it right the first time, or dont be surprised when your depart-ment is downsized or outsourced.

The most exciting, interesting and motivating testers in the community... Dawn Cannan Janet Gregory Lisa Crispin Elisabeth Hendrickson Doug Bradbury


What do you think will be the biggest challenge over the next 2-3 years?Id come back to test automation. Its a discipline that must be embraced by testers, developers, and even managers. And customers! If you send a project to a third party (inside or outside of your company), make a test suite part of the deliverables. Write tests up front so they know when the product does what you want it to do. Test automation, with a great continuous integration tool, is the number one problem I see on teams everywhere I work and speak. Learning technol-ogy? Easy. New languages? Operating systems? Trivial. Testing frameworks? Done by lunch. But the hard, ongoing discipline of solid software engineering, especially test automation, is difficult to

maintain. As testers, we can ensure this subject stays in the forefront of any product discussion.

What are your views on Testing Certification Schemes?Schemes... do we have any biases in the way the question is phrased? :) Certifications are a

great way to get basic exposure to a topic. They bring in an expert (I hope!) that you can ask more questions and learn what areas your team needs to learn more about. The problem with certifications is when HR or management assume getting a certification means youre now an

expert. Thats just never the case. Even with an detailed and in-depth certification, youre get-ting book learning (usually). Much like your college degree, its very useful information, but its dwarfed by real world experience. I strongly encourage any organization spending budget on certifications to spend half their certification budget on a mentoring program. Bring in an expert

to work with a team for a few weeks or months. Let them work right alongside the team, solv-ing problems and providing insight on a day-to-day basis. Most great consultants I know would welcome this type of long term engagement and provide a nice price break to get a longer than normal team engagement.

Want to say a few words about this eBook and the charity it supports?This is a great model. It provides (hopefully) some great insights and sound bites that can help people learn and improve their day-to-day work, while providing help to people who need so much more than we do. If my submissions make it in, Ill be honoured to have played a small part.

Why do you love software testing?Great testing makes software fun for the entire team. No one wants to work late or on weekends when the entire team is stressed out. No one wants to have management pushing everyone hard to get things done. But we do want to create and ship great products. And a great automation suite, along with continuous integration, provides a solid foundation that we can build great prod-ucts on. Software testing tells me that things really work.

Contact DetailsI can be found via my web site, http://AgileArtisans.com or via [email protected]

5 Books that you have found invaluable in your learning Beautiful Testing - Tim Riley & Adam Goucher Lessons Learned in Software Testing - Kaner / Bach / Pettichord How to Break Series - James A. Whittaker Exploratory Software Testing - James A. Whittaker Software Test Automation - Fewster & Graham

How to improve the software testing craft?Read books, magazines and join a testing community like this one. This is worth much more than any Testing Certificate can give you.

What is the most valuable tool you use to aid your testing?We always had a combination of home-brew developed tools, open-source and profession-al tools each to fit its best purpose rather than going for ONE expensive tool, which despite

its price could never fulfil all our requirements.

Whats the most impressive bug youve ever found?One of the most impressive experience for me to learn is that executing the same test case a second time, or at a different time or in a different playback order can mean to get differ-ent results. Such issues are often ignored because they may not be reproducible at first

sight, but if you manage to demonstrate the steps to reproduce such hard to find bugs, then

you will earn some more respect for your work.

Whats the biggest mistake youve ever made when testing?Trying to please your boss and accept his demand for making a release-recommendation statement. If you as a tester and/or test manager are the only person who has to judge over Go or No-Go, then you will probably be the only person blamed for either delaying a release or getting held responsible for a bug that slipped through. The best approach I have expe-rienced was at a company where the complete team, BA, DEV and Testing was involved in the decision.

Whats the biggest challenge facing Testing currently?Being able to keep up with the incredible speed our company deploys / ships new soft-

Torsten J. Zelger


ware features. Along with the increasing number of features, also the number test cases are increasing. Each new test case asks for maintenance sooner or later, no matter whether it is automated or not and it is an extra challenge to keep it all running and making sure the scripts will still test the right thing after software has changed or after users run different use-cases.

What do you think will be the biggest challenge over the next 2-3 years?To convince upper management to either slow down the release cycles or to hire more tes-ters and test automation engineers.

What are your views on Testing Certification Schemes?Test Certificates do not teach testers how to test. A tester earns my full respect if she makes

notes of bugs she missed in the past and uses her notes as a guideline or plan for future tests.

The most exciting, interesting and motivating testers in the community...James A. Whittaker - Dorothy Graham - Linda Wilkinson - Michael Bolton -James McCaffrey

Your country of residenceSwitzerland

Want to say a few words about this eBook and the charity it supports?It is a great idea to hand out such an eBook. Newbies can get an impression of what it means to test software and professionals get evidence that they are not alone out there and maybe one or the other hint will lead to try out new things.

Why do you love software testing?I love to write code but not all day long. I love to break software, but not all day long. So I chose to become a test automation engineer, after I have written code, and after I have tested software manually. Now I can do a little bit of everything without getting bored. And besides, I love software that works, so why not use my skills to help make it better.

Contact DetailsEmail: [email protected] Web: www.zelger.org (my cartoons about software testing)


5 Books that you have found invaluable in your learning Quantum Psychology, Robert Anton Wilson The Art of War, Sun Tzu The book of five rings, Miyamoto Musashi Diagnosing the System for Organizations, Stafford Beer Provocative Therapy, Frank Farrelly

How to improve the software testing craft? Continually, and deliberately, practice testing software. Keep logs of your testing. Learn how to hack Get more technical

What is the most valuable tool you use to aid your testing?Systems Thinking

Whats the most impressive bug youve ever found?Gaining access to all the customer details of a publicly accessible social networking site via their ring fenced beta testing environment, and subsequently being able to login as some of them. The Fiddler web proxy was a tremendous help in doing this.

Whats the biggest mistake youve ever made when testing?Complacency and forgetting to maintain a level of paranoia about coverage

Whats the biggest challenge facing Testing currently?Testers remaining relevant in the software development process.

What do you think will be the biggest challenge over the next 2-3 years?Spotting the difference between a tester and a developer.

Alan Richardson


What are your views on Testing Certification Schemes?Youre better off becoming an ordained minister from the Church of Subgenius for only $30.00 than putting any money, or time, towards the Testing Certification Scam. (That didnt

come across too strong did it? I tried to tone it down for the children in the audience.)

The most exciting, interesting and motivating testers in the community...Im not really a people person so I assume everyone is splendid.


Want to say a few words about this eBook and the charity it supports?I hope this book doesnt suck cause the charity deserves better than that. Oh God, I hope my bits werent the sucky bits.

Why do you love software testing?I dont love it. Im addicted. I wish there was some sort of cure. Seriously, if there was a pill I could take to just ease up, and not test stuff, Id take it. Whats to love? Learning new skills all the time? Continually expanding my technical knowledge and staying up to date? Constantly on the look out for new tools to increase my visibility into, or control over, the system? Finding faults and problems? Continually improving my abilities? Who could love any of that? Not me.

Contact DetailsVisit www.eviltester.com and leave a comment, you know you want to.



James Bach, and Bret Pettichord Secrets of a Buccaneer Scholar by James Bach

How to improve the software testing craft?Seek out new knowledge. Read. Learn. Talk to other testers. Try new things. Start a blog.

What is the most valuable tool you use to aid your testing?Other testers and developers.

Whats the most impressive bug youve ever found?I once found a bug that triggered a cycle of about 300 continuous silent errors over a set amount of time. Each time an error occurred, the customer would be charged a small fee. This created the effect of money seemingly disappearing before the customers eyes for no apparent reason. Luckily it didnt make it into production.

Whats the biggest mistake youve ever made when testing?When managers asked for misleading metrics, I used to give them what they asked for. I dont do that anymore.

Whats the biggest challenge facing Testing currently?General lack of education about testing within the testing industry, and the IT industry as a whole.

What do you think will be the biggest challenge over the next 2-3 years?As software approaches evolve, it will be interesting to see how testers roles adapt to fit

these new approaches.

What are your views on Testing Certification Schemes?I dont think any of the current Testing Certification schemes are sophisticated enough to

provide valuable information to employers about testers skills. Smart employers will realize this.

Trish Khoo


The most exciting, interesting and motivating testers in the community... Michael Bolton Marlena Compton Rob Lambert James Martin Markus Grtner

Your country of residenceAustralia

Want to say a few words about this eBook and the charity it supports?I love this idea. Im always so impressed by the work done by the STC, especially by Rosie Sherry and Rob Lambert who devote so much of their time to building a community for us.

Why do you love software testing?Because theres always something new to learn.


5 Books that you have found invaluable in your learning Quality Software Management Vol 1-4 by Gerald M. Weinberg Becoming a Technical Leader by Gerald M. Weinberg Secrets of a Buccaneer-Scholar: How Self-Education and the Pursuit of Passion Can

Lead to a Lifetime of Success by James Bach Lessons Learned in Software Testing: A Context Driven Approach by Cem Kaner,

James Bach, and Bret Pettichord Pragmatic Thinking & Learning by Andy Hunt

How to improve the software testing craft?A balanced-mix: theoretical knowledge acquired through blogs, articles, and books, apply-ing the theoretical directly in praxis at work, in Testing Dojos, during Weekend Testing, or by learning through Testing Challenges, and finally helping other testers grow by exposing

them to similar challenges you have been through.

What is the most valuable tool you use to aid your testing?My brain

Whats the most impressive bug youve ever found?if (isLogDebugOn()) { correctProductionBehavior(); Log.message(); } That surely was interesting to see. Can you provide me with debug log files? Sure, oh,

the bug disappeared, never mind. Next day it popped up again.

Whats the biggest mistake youve ever made when testing?Premature judgement

Whats the biggest challenge facing Testing currently?Programmers and project responsible being completely careless about it, and ignoring the feedback proper and valuable testing can provide to them.

Markus Grtner


What do you think will be the biggest challenge over the next 2-3 years?Finding the transition from legacy certification models to a model of testing which actually

brings value to project stakeholders.

What are your views on Testing Certification Schemes?Certification is the devil in disguise. Just like the medieval triumvirate of army, church, and

government formed an evil axis, Certification-Institutes, certification course sellers, and

HR-departments create machinery which blends executives from proper action, meaningful leadership, and advancement in the craft.

The most exciting, interesting and motivating testers in the community... James Bach Cem Kaner Elisabeth Hendrickson Matt Heusser Gojko Adzic

Your country of residenceGermany

Want to say a few words about this eBook and the charity it supports?Any money which went into this eBook did not go into any certification program. This is

something to celebrate.

Why do you love software testing?I am a natural-born tester, incorporating one or more of the tester types when the situation calls for it. Software Testing is my destiny.

Contact [email protected] @mgaertne http://linkedin.com/in/mgaertne http://www.shino.de/blog


5 Books that you have found invaluable in your learning Testing Computer Software: Kaner, Falk & Nguyen How to Break Software: James Whittaker How to Break Web Software: Andrews & Whittaker Lessons Learned in Software Testing: A Context Driven Approach by Cem Kaner,

James Bach, and Bret Pettichord

How to improve the software testing craft?Continuous learning and practice is essential. Read as much as you can, especially on top-ics that do not appear to be closely related to your immediate tasks - you can often gain un-expected insights, and a breadth of learning prepares you for the future. Always be thinking about what you are doing and how it can be done better or more efficiently. Always question

your assumptions and those of other people. Participate in community activities such as online discussion groups, Weekend Testers and offline events such as Zappers.

What is the most valuable tool you use to aid your testing?Xenus Link Sleuth - its only a link checker but it tells us so much more about the website were testing than just the broken links. It gives us numerous inventories such as file types,

external links, subdomains, email addresses so we rapidly get an overview of the websites structure and technologies - its a vital tool in our test planning. Fiddler 2 is extremely use-ful and we make extensive use of spreadsheets for all manner of purposes.

Whats the most impressive bug youve ever found?We tested a range of Java and Flash-based casino applications where we were able to win unlimited amounts of money on several games. It involved identifying and linking together a variety of flaws such as bypassing the maximum stake limit and finding ways to either win

or break even but not lose. We took delight in submitting screenshots showing our multi-million pound account balance when the maximum stake was only 10. The techniques involved interception of HTTP traffic to determine how the application worked, identifying

windows of opportunity when it is possible to perform actions that should not be possible, and interacting with the application in ways that had not been anticipated, such as by key-board navigation or programmatically.

Steve Green


Whats the biggest mistake youve ever made when testing?Its got to be when I spent several days testing the wrong website. The client had told us the URL had changed part-way through a project but I somehow forgot. Apart from that, most of my mistakes arise from false assumptions such as two or more things being equivalent when they actually arent, or something being unimportant when its actually crucial.

Whats the biggest challenge facing Testing currently?The almost total absence of good training in testing and test management. The approach and techniques being taught are woefully inadequate - they never worked even when soft-ware was a whole lot simpler than it is now. The focus on process rather than skill is totally misguided and puts testers in completely the wrong mindset for doing effective, efficient

testing. It limits their thinking and actually inhibits their progression.

What do you think will be the biggest challenge over the next 2 -3 years?The increasing complexity of real-time interconnected systems, some of which we will have no control over and little or no knowledge of because they dont belong to us. It may be im-possible to put the system into a known state or return it to a previous state, and it may not even be possible to know the expected outcome of a test.

What are your views on Testing Certification Schemes?My views on certification are mostly unprintable, but I am willing to publicly say that I

consider all the current schemes to be a scam. Unsurprisingly, the schemes work on the cookie-cutter method of teaching material that is easy to teach rather than teaching what people need to know. The examinations prove nothing at all - I know many recruiters and marketers who are certified but I wouldnt let them anywhere near a testing project. Worse

still, the system feeds itself - some of the certified testers become consultants who start

selling more certification courses and some become test managers and insist that all their

testers must also be certified. We neither ask nor care whether job applicants are certified.

If I had a preference it would probably be to recruit experienced people who are not certi-fied - if they have the confidence to refuse to get certified and still make a living (as I have

done), they are probably better than your average tester.


The most exciting, interesting and motivating testers in the community... Alan Richardson James Lyndsay James Bach Michael Bolton James Whittaker


Why do you love software testing?All our lives weve been told off for breaking things. Now I get paid to do it.

Contact [email protected]://www.testpartners.co.uk

How to improve the software testing craft?Thinking outside-the-box often leaves a lot of dirt (n bugs) inside. And this dirt cannot be flushed-out unless one looks at the whole product - understand: (a) why a particular feature

is needed, (b) why is it implemented that way and (c) its links across features. When deal-ing with the above, it opens up a plethora of learning and ideas. Also there is a tendency to compare apples to oranges (typically from customer/ marketing), which sometimes translate into features/ designs that makes little sense to the product functionality. It maybe essential for a test engineer to draw comparison/ inspiration, but very important to know where to draw a line. If I have to test a module Ive tested very often, unless I look at different per-spectives and employ different techniques, the boring work will kill my skill. And more-often-than-not, exploratory testing without purpose kills its essence.

What is the most valuable tool you use to aid your testing?No single tool has been my guard, but Unix based scripting helped(helps) me often.

Whats the most impressive bug youve ever found?A service package module was designed, with no insight on how the packages were drawn-up for Triple-Play.

Whats the biggest mistake youve ever made when testing?Being complacent testing the same feature over and again; and overlooking certain simple issues.

What do you think will be the biggest challenge over the next 2-3 years?A number of experienced testers soon become managers and move-on, even 10% of their experience isnt passed-on.

What are your views on Testing Certification Schemes?Good to Understand, Great to Use; (unfortunately) Badly understood and Implemented.

Kandan Muthu


The most exciting, interesting and motivating testers in the community... Rekha Poosala Karthik Natarajan


Want to say a few words about this eBook and the charity it supports?Surprising and Impressive.

Why do you love software testing?It introduced, made and still makes me, what I am in the Industry.

Contact [email protected]

5 Books that you have found invaluable in your learningTesting Computer Software by Cem Kaner

How to improve the software testing craft?Dont be afraid to switch jobs frequently in your early career. You will gain a greater variety of skills faster, plus get a clearer picture of what you are looking for in your career. Once you figure out what you love to do and are good at, then you can start specializing.

When interviewing, try to figure out what you will learn from this job. Ideally, there will be at

least one thing you will need to do that youve never done before. You should be familiar with (very roughly) 80% of the skills, and eager to learn 20%. Scale this according to how busy your non-career life is, of course - but there should always be something new for you. Once you find a good position to stick with, you need to be more active about managing

your career in such a way that you are always growing, while still meeting your employers needs. At any time, you should be able to answer the question, What skills am I learning or advancing currently? If you dont know of anything to learn that would help you with your job, you are probably out-of-date - so you should then work on catching up with the latest-and-greatest in your area.

Whats the most impressive bug youve ever found?During my first interview straight out of college for a contract position at Microsoft, I was

pointed at a computer and asked to test the Windows calendar in XP. I was given two min-utes. I immediately started playing with the dates, trying to see what the behaviour was if I set the date to the far future (I had recently read Cem Kaners Testing Computer Software book, and boundary testing was fresh in my mind). I actually managed to crash Outlook. I didnt get to look into the bug, since it was an interview and wasnt related to the team I was working on, but I learned later that playing with the calendar dates really fast caused some bad behaviour with the meetings scheduled in Outlook. I think that was when I first realized

that I might actually have a knack for this testing thing.

Whats the biggest mistake youve ever made when testing?Doing what my boss told me without question, during my early career. Most of my family works in blue-collar jobs, where you do what you are told without worrying about if it is the

Ethel Evans


right thing or not. Software doesnt work that way. In software, employees are often more up-to-date than their bosses, at least in their specific project, and often have more time to

think about the right w

A Tester is for Life

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