Testing Thoughts

There’s a very active Brazilian software testing discussion mailing list in Portuguese, called DFTestes.
When I say “very active”, I mean an average of 215 messages/month in 2009, and January 2010 has got more than 404 messages. Compared with other mailing list I participate, this is the most active one, and a tip of hat goes to the testers and list-admins that make the discussions interesting and vibrant.

Recently a big argument was held (link in Portuguese, requires registration) on whether “testers need to know programming” or not. I made some contributions to the discussion, and I’ll try to translate my point of view to English here.
Please note that there were a lot of people participating, and the post below does not present the entire debate or even an entire opinion, just the messages I wrote as answers. I hope you enjoy them.

The proposed question was:

Do testers need programming skills? Until a few years ago, most people would definitely answer NO… But I’ve known both people that seek testing jobs as an alternative to coding, and testers that write code routinely. So, do testers need or not to know programming?

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Back on December, Pradeep Soundararajan set a challenge up in his blog.
He built an application with the description below:

This was an interesting exercise.
What took my interest in this one?
- First of all, I liked Pradeep’s post about learning to code.
Learning to code is an important skill for a tester. I can relate to it because I am trying to learn PowerShell. I program in some languages (C#, C++, PHP, VbScript…) and have a programming background (after my Computer Systems Engineer degree, the ‘natural’ path was to code, and I worked as a programmer for many years before finding Software Testing), but PowerShell has different approach and paradigms and learning it will definitely be fun.
- Second, I had an impromptu vacation day, and I thought it would be educational to use it for a peer testing puzzle. I thought I could win this one quickly (I was mistaken, it took me long).

So I downloaded Pradeep’s application, and got to work!
Rather than just trying to solve the puzzle, I looked at it as if the mission was:
“This is commercial 'roulette' style game. Stakeholders want to know it the game logic can be broken/learnt, which could mean a substantial loss of money when people start winning every time.”

Testing Hint: Cem Kaner says “Testing is an empirical, technical investigation of a product, done on behalf of stakeholders, with the intention of revealing quality-related information of the kind that they seek“. So it is important to set straight what is the information to seek. Which kind of bugs to look for?

In this blog I describe my attemp to answer this question in an exploratory way. (more…)

(Disclosure: I am not a lawyer!) (Request: Are you a lawyer? Please send me corrections )

Matters related to law, and all the discussions around it, interest me much — especially when related to Software.
This made me read about the subject and keep contact with the legal representatives within the company I work for. This also motivated me to learn and lecture about the legal guidelines in software development adopted by our company, and to lecture about legal matters on software in general at the last Israeli SIGiST conference.
Most important than all, this made people share with me a lot of comments, questions and stories pertaining to the law.

For example, one colleague brought to my attention a case in which he and some friends had bought a PlayStation 3 in the local Office Depot website for 220NIS – when the normal price is almost tenfold! They believed it was some special sale promotion, but at the end Office Depot announced it as a typing mistake and cancelled the sale after it had been acknowledged (sale confirmation by email).
(There is an article about the episode in Hebrew here if you want to see it).

What is my opinion on the legal aspects of the story? I was asked.
I don’t have one, as I am not a legal professional, I answered. I am, though, a Testing professional, and here is the tester rambling I sent by mail commenting the occurrence:

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Some colleagues and I do voluntary work at TechCareer, helping immigrants learn matters related to technology and score a career in the Israeli Hi-Tech industry either as programmers or testers. It is a very good project, with nice leaders.

My colleague Issi Hazan was asked to teach the ITCQB syllabus to testing-oriented-students at TechCareer, but he bravely thought of pushing them to real tests instead, even before they find a job – this would allow them to build experience and get a job more easily (one way to solve the “hard to get a job without experience, hard to get experience without a job” problem).
So we built a lecture on how to “create a tester portfolio“. We explain how testing can be done even outside an enterprise environment: Lots of Open Source projects are seeking for good information from software testers, and a good record there is certainly sure to help. Crowdsourcing is also a  possible way to work on testing before getting a real job (see two posts on crowdsourced tests here and here).

The presentation is available below in flash format, and can be downloaded here: “Create your testing portfolio“.

But “PowerPoint is Evil™“, so I feel compelled to write it in real words too.
It goes like this: (more…)

(Note: This post,originally from July, was re-written in August. Only format/wording changes, with additions to make it clearer)

This is an interesting topic:
I’ve been involved lately in many conversations about uTest, or more specifically about its model.
uTest is a website where companies can post their software, along with some guidelines on focus areas, and users around the world can download the app, find bugs and get paid for bugs reported (as long as the bugs are accepted by the posting company).
There is a lot of confusion/discussion around the good parts and the bad parts of the model, so I will share here some of the points I had taken from these conversations (thanks to all the friends who shared insights with me)… Some attentive readers will notice the article is an almost copy paste from a reply in the software-testing group.

Please note that I am not saying “uTest considered harmful” or “don’t use uTest” or anything like that.
Please note that I am not saying “uTest is great” or “use uTest” or anything like that.
All I want to point here are some of the strengths and some of the weaknesses of the model, so every one (both testers and companies) can decide for his own context. I welcome debate over any of these points, and will update my post accordingly. (more…)