bugTeaser!!!

Love teasing bugs!!

A healthy and upfront conversation can easily resolve any kind of misunderstanding. This blog has nothing to do with testing but then, it has something to do with testers nonetheless.


Pradeep Soundarajan a friend of mine remember me after a long time. The conversation started by greeting each other and I was pretty happy to hear from him after a long time. The expression on my face from being happy to being "confused" changed so speedily, that even I just chucked my nails. Pradeep shared one URL with me and with excitement I opened the URL to see what in there! To my surprise the URL has a blank blog post with my information and it was having the words from Pradeep's blog "Tester Tested". He was calm, polite throughout the conversation and mentioned that he just wanted me to have "originality". How true is that? I'm follower of his blog post and never intended to do something wrong or try to use them for my sake. The question others might ask them - how did this happen?


The story behind the blank blog post goes like this - the first time I started blogging I was just wondering why not to write about "Banglore Weekend Testers" (BWT) and now known as "Weekend Testers" (WT). To make things worse I had read one post from Pradeep's blog so thought its his idea. I created the blog post with the name "Tester Tested" as I thought this is how you've to do? First time blogging though! But did changed my mind and created another blog instead. However, all these days the other blog post with the name "Tester Tested" has nothing in it just there in "Hide" mode. After that I used to post my blogs in other blog which is under the head "bugTeaser". So this is how this all happened.


Moving onto the conversation, he explained me, I'm being "original" in my thoughts that will naturally come through my blogs post then. I quickly figured out the issue and deleted the blank post with the name "Tester Tester" which was lying there all these days. Being a very formal person, I did "apologize" to him for all this mess up. As a good friend and a good human being, he understood the mistake but asked me for a promise to have a cup of "coffee" with him when we meet. 


This blog post is just a conversation between two friends - the misunderstanding and the quick fix.


Best Regards,


Amit


testing is my passion!!!
http://bugteaser.blogspot.com

Started writing the blog at 05:25PM and completed the blog: 05:59 PM

Its all about how to keep things simple for any application, that way it can make more sense to the end user. I do test applications on my own, and at times if I've to register on any site I've follow the instructions given. How many times you've seen error messages which are not understood by the user? I'm the user too!

How many times this happens with us (testers)? The issues reported by you - get rejected or closed saying that the user will not try such weird thing. I believe this is a part of every testers' life. Correct me if I'm wrong!


This story happened quite a time back, not so long though. I reported one issue - reported and assigned the issue to the developer working on that project. As per the practice sent out email too to make sure that everyones is aware of it. Few days passed by like this as there were some other issues too. I'm being assigned back the issues fixed by the developer, so I had to perform regression testing. One morning I just came to the office - such a fine day (because it was Friday) so I was more happy. :-) I checked my mail and surprised to see that the developer has re-assigned the issue to me the one reported earlier. The developer asked me to close the issue - Reason: "User will not try such a scenario, so can you please close this issue. Thanks". I thought I should talk to the developer for the last time to make sure that - this is what it meant. I went to him and queried about it and found that he meant the same. After discussing the same with TM,PM and concerned developer - I decided to close the issue. 


Months passed by and the project was successfully deployed. Everyones' happy. ;-) 


Everyone busy in their work and just working on the other project. The one fine day we got an email which was forwarded to us by our PM - says that the issue # xxxx need to be fixed on PRIORITY. Meeting has been called for the same by PM. We went to the meeting rooms (not to mention carrying out pad/pen with us) and found out that the discussion was getting heat up. After a good analysis in our Bug Tracking tool we found that I closed the issue but not to mention that, notes section contains the reason the developer has given to me. They questioned me and I answered back that this is the same issue that I closed for the reason given by developer. I was safe as all the time everyone aware of this. Then PM started saying that one user has indeed tried the scenario mentioned by me in my report and there is an issue now. This is the users' response and now the customer has asked us to FIX it. Meeting ended with discussing the things like fixing of the issue on PRIORITY, time spent, time for testing, what needs to be done on PROD and analysis report which needs to be submitted by TM. 


After coming from the meeting room I went to developers' desk [not to mention big smile on my face :-)]....just asked him:


Can you please fix the issue now? :-))


Best Regards,


Amit


testing is my passion!!!
http://bugteaser.blogspot.com 


Started writing the blog: 9:20 PM and completed the blog: 09:59 PM

We always talk of making life simple for end-users and so we "testers" come up with good suggestions that will really make is simple. Good job guys! Really?


By the way - What is CAPTCHA? Completely Automated Public Turing test to tell Computers and Humans Apart. A CAPTCHA or Captcha is a type of challenge-response test used in computing to ensure that the response is not generated by a computer. A common type of CAPTCHA requires that the user type letters or digits from a distorted image that appears on the screen. E.g. post available for public, registration forms etc. 


I have filled up so many registration forms, blog post where they ask for CAPTCHA to be entered by the user. But I always wonder if the application has kept the CAPTCHA in UPPERCASE letters that means if all the combination of letters and numbers, if they are in UPPERCASE letters then why not automatically enable CAPS lock on when the user move their focus to this field. Any security issue?? Nah...I don't think so. 


So many sites I've seen with CAPTCHA in UPPERCASE letters but when the user move their focus to CAPTCHA field where the user has to enter the letters, they first have to put on CAPS lock ON. Isn't that pain for the user? IMO. 


Why it is not possible that when the user move their cursor to CAPTCHA field, automatically their CAPS is lock is ON or if not that, then while the user enter the characters as per the CAPTCHA image - it should display in CAPS.  What it does?

• The user don't have to perform one more task of putting on their CAPS lock ON again!
• The frown on the users face if they fail to put on CAPS lock on and enter the character and hit "Submit" button.

How many times we've heard that testers are not ready to accept their mistakes. It is common scenario but rather unusual though!

We say ourselves as "Quality" masters but then we fail to face the truth. There is nothing wrong in accepting the truth and move on, and also make sure that we learn from these mistakes though!

I was just watching a team where developers and testers were fighting on the issue that cropped up and now there is stakeholder for it. This is not a true team work then. There was one issue cropped up on PRODUCTION and frankly speaking the testing team should have taken the responsibility, but no they're just shouting out We're not responsible for that.


When you succeed you make sure that all credit goes to you but when something goes wrong, there is no one to accept the responsibility. I term this as "ownership". This is applicable for all the teams and the task in their hand. When you take ownership for any task then it is your responsibility if anything goes wrong then you'll be held responsible, and if everything goes smooth you'll get all kudos!!!

We're human being and prone to make mistakes. The best way is to learn from these mistakes and try to make sure that we'll not repeat them! Rather I'd say its always better to make mistakes so you know the importance of them and the lesson you learn from them.

The next time you make a mistake, accept it and learn from it.

Please do not say I'm not responsible for that.


Best Regards,

Amit

testing is my passion!!!
http://bugteaser.blogspot.com

Every company or organization have their best practices in place in order to run the operations smoothly. As the company or organization increase its become hard for Management to keep an eye on all the "Employees" whether they're following the best practices. You best practices include the work process, the escalations (if any), the efforts by teams and many more.

If you're novice to a company or organization then it takes time for you to get in the comfort zone. This is a scenario which mostly observed and there is nothing wrong with it. It is advised to a novice tester to seek or rather gain experience on their own, as that will help them to become an expert one day. There are some tricks and tweaks which they have to learn as the time pass by. I'm not saying please do not stick or adhere best practices of your company but try to find a better way for you. It is always advisable to cultivate own ideas which are within the limits of your company or organization, but at the same time are quite handful.

However, the problem starts cropping here. A novice user who got good experience now moves to state where they just makes sure that, they have to secure the job. Such resources are good in their given work but then there is no returns from them to the company or organization. Every company or organization would like to see their employees come up with new ideas which they can include in their best practices. This is the responsibility of an expert user to try and make sure that they try to find out ways of doing the same things. Best practices are for betterment of the employees as well as company or organization. This hurts when a novice employee come up with an idea and discusses with it an expert, but they do not see any or rather get any response from them. This demoralize the whole purpose of innovating new things of doing the same old tasks. This is bad both for the employee and for the company or organization.

"An airplane pilot doesn't refer to a manual". Likewise, the experts on a test team should not be required to go by the book which are the best practices referred by your company or organization. Best practices can be a birth of creative ideas, innovative ways of doing the same old things but in new way. Even if the expert employee is ready to take an initiative but because of the best practices levied by the company or organization can become frustrating at times. The Management has to make sure that they listen to the new ideas, innovative ways of doing things and encourage the employees.

The best way of doing things is not just following best practices levied onto the employees but make amendments too. 


Best Regards,

Amit

testing is my passion!!!
http://bugteaser.blogspot.com