Test Execution Trend feature added in TTA (0.5.7)

A new version of Test Trend Analyzer (TTA) is now available on github.

These are the new features in it:

• Test Execution Trend - to see the benchmarking of specific test execution over a time period

• Failure Analysis View

• Modified view to show failures for specific Test category along with specific test run

• Modified view to show failures for All test categories with latest test run

• Minor Refactoring for Compare Runs view

• Query optimisations + minor defect fixes.

For those that missed the earlier announcement - summary of features of TTA is available here, and source code is available on github.

PS: There is a lot of work (features / UI) planned for TTA. If you wish to contribute, we would love your help!!

vodQA - Faster | Smarter | Reliable - on Saturday, 19th Oct in Pune

After what seems to be ages, I am very happy to announce the next edition of  
vodQA - Faster | Smarter | Reliable coming to you on Saturday, 19th Oct, 2013 at ThoughtWorks, Pune.

In this edition of vodQA, the focus will be on cutting edge testing technology, which will help us to understand how to be more faster,smarter and reliable in our testing approach. It will ameliorate our testing strategy in a faster and smarter world , following the best practices at the same time. The emphasis will be more on discussing ideas which enable us to test smartly instead of testing more.

We are hoping to target following questions in coming vodQA edition:

- What all things I should start doing to be more effective and impactful Quality Analyst ?

- What all process, tools and techniques I can use to get more faster and yet reliable results ?

- Can I use the tool I am already using in some different way which will make my testing effort more effective, more faster and more reliable ?

- What can I do so that software I am working on is always in production readiness state ?

- Are there any ways in which I can reduce my test life cycle ?

For registration details, click here (http://bit.ly/18LSnjc).

For all past vodQA information, see here.

TTA - closer to becoming unified dashboard for Test Trends and Status

Test Trend Analyzer (TTA), went live again today !!! We are now at version 0.5.4.

In the past week we have made a bunch of improvements and added new features - Integrating External Dashboard , which takes TTA closer towards being the central dashboard for testing status across the organization.

 

There are a couple of projects within ThoughtWorks using this, and also some other organizations.

Here is the list of new Features:

• Integration of external dashboards (add from /admin page, see integration on /home page) - this allows one to integrate different existing dashboards into TTA - to make it a one stop place for seeing all Testing related information. Example: You can integrate your defect reports from Mingle / Jira / etc., or, you can also integrate your specific Continuous Integration (CI) dashboard from Go / Jenkins / Hudson / Bamboo / etc.
  
• Compare test runs (/compare_runs) - to compare specific test runs --- 
• what are the common failures, 
• what are the unique failures, 
• what failed on date 1, but passed on date 2
• what failed on date 2, but passed on date 1
• TTA Statistics Page (/stats) - to know usage of TTA by different projects / teams in your organization
• Fixes + minor UI modification

Features available from some time:

• Test Pyramid view (/pyramid) - to see how your project's automation effort aligns with the Test Automation philosophy
• Comparative Analysis view (comparative_analysis) - to see the trend of your test automation results over a period of time, and if any patterns emerge
• Failure Analysis view (/defect_analysis) - to make better meaning of the test failures, and help you prioritize which failures should be fixed first.
• Upload Test Run Data manually (/upload) - to manually upload test data in case if you have not uploaded test data automatically to TTA, but still want to use TTA

 

More information about features, how to use TTA, etc. can be found on this blog, TTA-github, TTA-github-wiki, or by contacting me.

About Me pages create, which do you like?

I have created 2 versions of About Me pages. Requesting your comments on which do you find better and more useful:

http://about.me/anand.bagmar

or,

http://essenceoftesting.blogspot.in/p/blog-page.html

TaaS @Agile2013

[UPDATE] Final update: The slides AND the audio recording (mp3) of my talk in Agile2013 are now available.

[UPDATE] Slides for the presentation are now available here.
 
So close, yet so far .... dreading the 15.30 hour non-stop flight from Mumbai to Newark, yet super excited to speak in Agile 2013, Integration testing in Enterprises using TaaS - via Case Study, on 5th August, from 2pm-3.15pm. Complete schedule is available here.

TaaS and BDT - back to back at WCNGT, Bangalore

I had a great time talking about TaaS and BDT at WCNGT conference in Bangalore on 11th July 2013.

Here is more information about the talks:

Integrated Testing in Enterprises using TaaS:

http://essenceoftesting.blogspot.in/2013/07/taas-in-wcngt-bangalore-and-agile-2013.html
The audio recording of the talk is available here.
The slides for the talk are available here.
TaaS is available on github and as a gem on rubygems.org.

Building the "right" regression suite using Behavior Driven Testing (BDT)

http://essenceoftesting.blogspot.com/2013/07/building-right-regression-suite-using.html
The audio recording of the talk is available here.
The slides for the talk are available here.

Building the "right" regression suite using Behavior Driven Testing (BDT)

As a last minute surprise, I have been requested to talk about Building the "right" regression suite using Behavior Driven Testing (BDT) in the World Conference on Next Generation Testing on 11/12 July 2013 in Bangalore. This is another of those topics I feel very strongly about and am very excited at this opportunity.

What this does mean though is that I have back-2-back 2 1-hour sessions at WCNGT2013 - first - Integrated Testing in Enterprises using TaaS, and immediately post lunch - the BDT talk. 

Should be fun ... and hopefully I don't mix up the content in the talks :)

Here is the high-level agenda of the topic: Building the "right" regression suite using Behavior Driven Testing (BDT):

• Overview of Agile Testing
• The Test Pyramid
• Different flavors of TDD
• BDD – Behavior Driven Development?
• ATDD – Acceptance Driven Development?
• BDT – Behavior Driven Testing?
• Difference between BDD and BDT
• Tools that support BDT
• The value proposition for the team - live documentation, business rules, onboarding, etc.

TaaS in WCNGT, Bangalore and Agile 2013, Nashville, USA

A busy couple of weeks for me as I talk about TaaS in World Conference on Next Generation Testing in Bangalore, on 11/12th July 2013, and in Agile 2013 in Nashville, USA, on 4-9th August 2013.
 
My session details are as follows:

In WCNGT - Integrated Testing In Enterprises Using TaaS, on 11th July, from 12pm-1pm. Detail program is available here.

In Agile 2013, Integration testing in Enterprises using TaaS - via Case Study, on 5th August, from 2pm-3.15pm. Complete schedule is available here.

vodQA mobile in July

July will see a strong dose of vodQA - focusing on Mobile Testing.

We start off with vodQA Gurgaon - Agility in Mobility on Thursday, July 11 2013 – 5.00 p.m. to 7.30 p.m.

Then, we have vodQA Chennai - Served on Mobile on Saturday, July 20 2013 – 09:30 AM - 4:30 PM.

Help share the word, and see you there!

A very intense BDT workshop in vodQA Bangalore

I, with the help of my colleagues, ran a BDT workshop in vodQA - Get, Set,Test! at Bangalore on 18th May 2013.

It was a very intense workshop, and challenging for us to execute as well for various reasons:

1. When we had run this workshop as part of vodQA Geek Night in July 2012, we had the opportunity to have a couple of dry runs - which allowed us to fine tune the content + pace ourselves better
2. The vodQA Geek Night session was 2.5-3 hours in duration
3. This time around, for vodQA Bangalore, all volunteers driving the workshop were in different locations. After the workshop was selected for this vodQA, we all met face-2-face directly on  the day of the event. So there was no question of a dry run before the event
4. The duration of the workshop this time around was 1.5 hours.

Despite all the challenges, I think we managed to deliver a good, solid content workshop and all the participants seemed very engaged, and there were a lot of good discussions.

Here are all the photos from vodQA - Get, Set, Test!

The slides used in the workshop are available here. Videos will follow soon.

For more info on past and upcoming vodQAs, please join our vodQA group on facebook.

Dartboard - Are you on track?

In Agile Projects, we use the swim-lanes to track the status of the card life-cycle in an iteration. Unfortunately, the swim-lanes depict a sequential work-flow. Something has to come first, second, ... last. That puts the thought in a lot of minds that what is first is indeed first, and what is last, well, is last in the scheme of things.

That depicts testing being done towards the end - which is very anti-agile!

 

Testing starts off way before development is completed on any card. See the "Agile QA Process" for one way to do Testing on Agile projects.

On Agile projects, r

eality is that testing is going on in some fashion or the other right from the beginning. To help bring that visibility into the work-stream, I tried creating a grid (physically on a board, also in mingle) - with the rows representing the state of testing in each swim lane ... but that too was not as appealing as the image shown below. I chose to call it the Dartboard.

Dartboard - Are you on track?

Some explanation on how we used this:

Each triangle can represent your individual swim lanes. From testing perspective, we chose to club together "ready for Dev", "in Dev" and "in UI" in the same category.

There is a specific in Testing triangle - because there is some amount of work that definitely needs to be done from testing perspective AFTER development and BA signoff is complete.

The RED triangle means the card is blocked from ALL perspectives in the iteration.

The GREEN tringle means the card is completed from ALL perspectives (analysis, dev, testing - manual + automation)

In each of the triangle (except RED and GREEN), the different colors mean specific things:

- BLACK band = Testing not yet started

- RED band = Testing is blocked (maybe for additional info needed, etc)

- BLUE band = Testing is in progress. Could be identifying test cases, doing manual / exploratory testing, setting up test data, automation, etc.

As the card moves between triangles, the testing state of each of the card is very visible. 

Add to this a simple time line on top / bottom of the card to indicate where you are in the iteration, and you know if your "state-of-panic" is justified or not at a very quick glance at the dartboard.

Some swim lane states we have used:

> Backlog / Spillover?

> Ready for Dev / In Dev / In UI

> Ready for BA Signoff / In BA Signoff

> Ready for Test

> In Test / In Integrated Test

> Done

> Blocked

We also tracked each type of card separately:

Defects = RED cards / stickies

Story cards = Blue / Yellow cards / stickies

Tech cards = White cards / stickies

TaaS is available on rubygems.org

I have finally created and released the TaaS gem to rubygems.org. You can find it here.

To know more about TaaS - see all related blog posts here, or refer to the github project for the same.

Introducing Test Trend Analyzer (TTA)

The statement "I have a dream" is a very famous quote by American activist Martin Luther King Jr.

I resonate very closely with that. Here is why and how ...

Almost 2 years ago, I had a dream ... a vision about a product that can help those working in large organizations understand the health of their products / projects at a quick glance, instead of having a team of people manually scrambling frantically to collate and collect the information needed to get a sense of quality about the products they support. I chose to call this product Test Trend Analyzer - TTA

Given that Automation is a key factor in ensuring the success, quality and time-to-market for products, I took that as a baseline requirement and came up with a basic high-level diagram for TTA:

TTA - first diagram

Finally, a couple of months ago, I found a bunch of passionate people, who also had some time, to try and implement this tool.

We came up with this vision for TTA:

TTA Vision

Accordingly, we planned, prioritized, spiked, did some prototypes, did demos and showcases and got a base usable product completed.
This is a open-source project, available on github with more information about it on the github wiki.

The technology stack used is: RoR with mysql db. 

TTA falls in the Big Data + Visualization space - specific to Testing.




Watch this space for more information about TTA and the currently supported features. Email out to me if you need more specific information, or have questions on how can you use TTA, etc.

How can you contribute?

Given that we have implemented only a few basic features right now, and there are many more in the backlog, here is how you can help:

• Suggest new ideas / features that will help make TTA better
• Use TTA on your project and provide feedback
• More importantly, help in implementing these features

vodQA Geek Night - Test Automation Workshop

As a follow-up to our vodQA Geek Night - Behavior Driven Testing (BDT) workshop last year, we are conducting another workshop in ThoughtWorks, Pune focused on building a Test Automation Framework - the "right-way".

Here you will use your prior test automation experience to build a test automation framework from "scratch".

This will be a 2.5 / 3 hour workshop - starting at 5.30pm. Please plan to come in by 5.15pm latest to complete the registration formalities.

See more event and registration details on our vodQA Geek Night - Test Automation Workshop event page in vodQA group on facebook. 

Announcing vodQA Bangalore on May 18, 2013

ThoughtWorks is happy to announce yet another edition of the vodQA Bangalore happening on Saturday, 18th May 2013.
 
We take this opportunity to extend the invite to speakers and attendees for this event. Below is the mailer, with the event details. If you have a topic that you would like to present, please register with us. 

The vodQA event hosted by ThoughtWorks is being held the third time in Bangalore. We look forward to enlightening topics and proficient presenters, we look forward for your support and help on this. Please extend this invite to all your personal contacts whom you think will make a big impact at the event.

Note: Registration for Speakers close on 13th April' 2013.

Some important links:

Event page: get-set-test

Register as speaker

Register as attendee

TaaS (Test-as-a-Service) coming to Sri Lanka and Delhi

Riding on the good response received on TaaS in 2012 and early 2013, I will be speaking more on the same in Colombo, Sri Lanka on 7th March 2013, and in Delhi on 14th March 2013. Looking forward to more feedback on TaaS!

What should be the new name for TaaS?

I have got a lot of interesting and valuable feedback for TaaS - Test-as-a-Service. One thing that stands out which people want is a different name for TaaS - since it does cause a lot of confusion with the business vertical of "Testing as a Service".

So, I am taking all this feedback seriously and considering changing the name of TaaS - before I publish the gem.

Since TaaS is essentially an orchestrator of your end-2-end Integration tests, some thoughts on potential names, with their meanings are:

• khansama - kindly suggested by Erik Petersen. A great contextual Indian name for a great tool that co-ordinates and organizes the testing.
• vahak - Sanskrit word - meaning Transporter, Conveyor, Carrier, Conduit
• dwar - Sanskrit word - meaning Door, Inlet, Outlet, Gate, Through, 
• honcho - leader, manager
• comptroller - controller
• relegate - refer to another for decision
• transmit - communicate

What do you think? What name do you like? Any other suggestions for better name?

WAAT v1.5.0 released to rubygems.org

The newest version of WAAT (Web Analytics Automation Testing framework) for Java and Ruby is now available with a new plugin - JsSniffer.

Following the announcement of the new JsSniffer plugin for WAAT, I have now completed the testing for the same, and released the gem - WAAT-1.5.0.gem to rubygems.org.

Please take a look at the FAQs and the major changes on Ruby / major changes on Java section for some known issues, potential solutions for the same - as some of these changes could break your tests.