Agenda published for vodQA Pune - Less Talk, Only Action!

The agenda for the upcoming vodQA Pune - Less Talk, Only Action! is now published.


NOTE: For this event, we will require the participants to get their laptops (and chargers).

When? 

Saturday, 27th Aug 2016, 8.30am - 5.30pm

Where? 

ThoughtWorks, Pune 
6th Floor, Binarius Building, 
Beside Sales Tax Office, Shastrinagar, Yerawada 
Pune, Maharashtra 411006 

Map: 

http://goo.gl/maps/KfuJG

What?

vodQA Pune - Less Talk, Only Action! 
- Registration - 8.30am- 9.15am
- Welcome note - 9.15am

Topics covered: 

This vodQA will focus on hands-on activities. We are setting up a bunch of workshops for participants, please keep a watch for details and pre-requisites required for the workshops.

We will publish the agenda very soon in vodQA groups on 
Facebook (https://www.facebook.com/groups/vodqa/) and 
LinkedIn (https://www.linkedin.com/groups/4281359)

NOTE: For this event, we will require the participants to get their laptops (and chargers).

Sharing the pain in Automating with Protractor & WebDriver

As mentioned in my earlier post titled "Taking Protractor to the next level", on 25th June 2016, Nikitha Iyer and I spoke in Selenium Conference 2016, Bangalore, India on "Sharing the pain in Automating with Protractor & WebDriver".

The video is finally available and I am now able to share (see below) all the details of the talk from one post.

Abstract

There is a saying ..."Sukh baatne se badhta hai, dukh baatne se kam hota hai", translated as - "happiness increases & sadness reduces on sharing with others".

We want to take this opportunity to share with our experiences - the good and the bad, in the journey of building a Test Automation framework for an AngularJS based application. 

We will learn, by a case study, what thought process we applied on the given context (product, team, skills, capabilities, long term vision) to come up with an appropriate Test Automation Strategy. This Test Automation strategy covered all aspects of Test Automation - Unit, Integration, UI - i.e. End-2-End tests (E2E).

Next, we will share how we went about narrowing-down, and eventually selecting a specific Tech Stack + Tools (Javascript / Jasmine / Protractor / Selenium-WebDriver) to accomplish the Test Automation for the product.

Lastly, we will share the challenges that came up in the implementation of the Test Automation, and how we overcame them. This will also include how we managed to get the tests running in Jenkins - a Continuous Integration tool. 

This discussion is applicable to all team members who are working on Test Automation!

P.S. We will be attempting to make a sample protractor-based automation framework available on github for anyone to use as a starting point for setting up protractor-based Test Automation framework.

Slides

Sharing the pain using Protractor from Anand Bagmar

Video

vodQA Pune - Less Talk, Only Action!

Very happy to announce the next edition of vodQA - 'Less Talk, Only Action!' with focus on hands-on activities. 

You are required to register & submit for this vodQA edition by filling in the below google form - https://goo.gl/forms/We3002DOlkQXmPsN2

There are limited seats for the workshops, available on first-come-first-served basis. 

NOTE: For this event, we will require the participants to get their laptops (and chargers).

When? 

Saturday, 27th Aug 2016, 8.30am - 5.30pm

Where? 

ThoughtWorks, Pune 
6th Floor, Binarius Building, 
Beside Sales Tax Office, Shastrinagar, Yerawada 
Pune, Maharashtra 411006 

Map: 

http://goo.gl/maps/KfuJG

What?

vodQA Pune - Less Talk, Only Action! 
- Registration - 8.30am- 9.15am
- Welcome note - 9.15am

Topics covered: 

This vodQA will focus on hands-on activities. We are setting up a bunch of workshops for participants, please keep a watch for details and pre-requisites required for the workshops.

We will publish the agenda very soon in vodQA groups on 
Facebook (https://www.facebook.com/groups/vodqa/) and 
LinkedIn (https://www.linkedin.com/groups/4281359)

NOTE: For this event, we will require the participants to get their laptops (and chargers).

Agenda will be published soon.

What is Web Analytics and how to Test it?

vodQA returned - this time with the theme - Testing Heuristics in ThoughtWorks, Hyderabad on 2nd July 2016.

Here I spoke about - "The What, Why and How of Web Analytics Testing". 

Abstract

Learn what is Web Analytics, why is it important, and see some techniques how you can test it manually and and also automate that validation. But just knowing about Web Analytics is not sufficient for business now.

There are new kids in town - IoT and Big Data - two of the most used and heard-off buzz words in the Software Industry!

With IoT, with a creative mindset looking for opportunities and ways to add value, the possibilities are infinite. With each such opportunity, there is a huge volume of data being generated - which if analyzed and used correctly, can feed into creating more opportunities and increased value propositions.

There are 2 types of analysis that one needs to think about.
1. How is the end-user interacting with the product? This will give some level of understanding into how to re-position and focus on the true value add features for the product.
2. With the huge volume of data being generated by the end-user interactions, and the data being captured by all devices in the food-chain of the offering, it is important to identify patterns from what has happened, and find out new product / value opportunities based on usage patterns.

Slides

The What, Why and How of Web Analytics Testing (Web, IoT, Big Data) from Anand Bagmar

Video

PS: Apologies for the video quality - I am not seen very clearly - but the slides are bright & clear, and so is the audio - so the important aspects are covered!

Pictures

Feedback

My Takeaway & Learning

- The attendees did not have much exposure to Web Analytics, and how it works. I should spend more time in speaking about that

- I should spend more time in challenges and potential solutions related to Big Data & IoT

- A lot of people are interested in WAAT - that could be a separate, more detailed discussion

Learnings from Selenium Conference 2016, Bangalore

The value one gets by attending any conference / training / meetup / etc. is subjective to various aspects, some of which are mentioned below (in no particular order):

• Individual skills & capabilities
• Past experiences
• Existing knowledge / information / expertise on the subject 
• Open mindedness
• Willingness to learn
• Current work (tools & tech stack, challenges, risks, priorities, backlog, tech debt, team members, etc.)

The above aspects definitely played a part in what takeaways I had from the recently concluded Selenium Conference 2016 in Bangalore as well.

Here are my key takeaways, which I am going to work on learning more about, or implementing in the near future - special thanks to +Dave Haeffner , +Marcus Merrell , +Simon Stewart, +Bret Pettichord for helping me find these takeaways as part of various conversations during these few days.

• Related to Protractor
• Use Proxy Server in tests (Protractor framework) to capture HAR file on specific actions (AJAX calls) - and capture performance metrics from the same
• Read and experiment with the Marionette driver for Firefox - maybe it helps me overcome some of my challenges with Firefox & Maps in CI environment (headless using xvfb)
• Remove "phantomJS" as a supported browser from my framework by ensuring headless tests work with Chrome & Firefox using xvfb
• Highlight element when running tests before taking screenshots - will help in debugging
• Experiment with different loggers & reporters - Allure, Winston logger
• Better "promise" handling in framework to keep abstraction layers sane
• Revive WAAT - Web Analytics Automation Testing Framework - create new plugin using Proxy Server approach. Also remove Omniture Debugger and HttpSniffer plugin.
• Refocus energy on TTA - Test Trend Analyzer.
• Keep vodQA going strong - its a good community initiative

See you all in Selenium Conference UK in November 2016!

Taking Protractor to the next level

As I got onto a project early this year - my paths crossed again with Protractor / Angular / JavaScript. Despite my past experiences with this tech stack, I needed to remain positive when approaching this challenge.

In this case, the context was quite different. That said, the challenges, though reduced compared to my first attempt at using Protractor effectively, were still around. 

I had posted a set of questions on my blog, various LinkedIn and facebook groups - and got a lot of suggestions and advice how to proceed. Thanks to all of them, it did make my life easier.

Then, as part of Selenium Conference 2016 held in Bangalore on 24-25th June 2016, my friend and colleague - +Nikita Iyer and I spoke about "Sharing the Pain of Automating with Protractor & WebDriver". The intention was multi-fold:

• We wanted to share what challenges we had faced on the team when using Protractor, and also how we overcame certain challenges. This was to help others in similar situations to learn from our mistakes & solutions.
• We also wanted to learn from the attendees what other challenges & solutions they had come up with in their experiences with this Protractor tool-stack.

I am very happy to say that we were successful in achieving both these objectives quite successfully.

Below is the details from the talk.

Abstract

There is a saying ..."Sukh baatne se badhta hai, dukh baatne se kam hota hai", translated as - "happiness increases & sadness reduces on sharing with others".

We want to take this opportunity to share with our experiences - the good and the bad, in the journey of building a Test Automation framework for an AngularJS based application. 

We will learn, by a case study, what thought process we applied on the given context (product, team, skills, capabilities, long term vision) to come up with an appropriate Test Automation Strategy. This Test Automation strategy covered all aspects of Test Automation - Unit, Integration, UI - i.e. End-2-End tests (E2E).

Next, we will share how we went about narrowing-down, and eventually selecting a specific Tech Stack + Tools (Javascript / Jasmine / Protractor / Selenium-WebDriver) to accomplish the Test Automation for the product.

Lastly, we will share the challenges that came up in the implementation of the Test Automation, and how we overcame them. This will also include how we managed to get the tests running in Jenkins - a Continuous Integration tool. 

This discussion is applicable to all team members who are working on Test Automation!

P.S. We will be attempting to make a sample protractor-based automation framework available on github for anyone to use as a starting point for setting up protractor-based Test Automation framework.

Slides

Sharing the pain using Protractor from Anand Bagmar

Video

- will be updated once available

Pictures

The recurring pattern of Patterns

On popular demand, I spoke in TechJam, the 2nd time around on Tuesday, 21st June on "Patterns of a 'good' Test Automation Framework, Locators & Data".

This time, the TechJam team at IDeaS used a different setup - a new conference room, with live-streaming via Google Hangout. It was indeed a great setup - with around 40 people able to sit and participate in discussions for over an hour - about Patterns in Test Automation.

Slides

Patterns in Test Automation from Anand Bagmar

Video

Pictures

Patterns of Test Automation in ATAGTR2016

I spoke about "Patterns in Test Automation Framework" in ATA's Global Testing Retreat 2016, held in Pune. For a change, I did not need to travel out of Pune to speak in a conference :)

Here are some details about the same:

Abstract

Building a Test Automation Framework is easy - there are so many resources / guides / blogs / etc. available to help you get started and help solve the issues you get along the journey. However, building a "good" Test Automation Framework is not very easy. There are a lot of principles and practices you need to use, in the right context, with a good set of skills required to make the Test Automation Framework maintainable, scalable and reusable. Design Patterns play a big role in helping achieve this goal of building a good and robust framework.
In this talk, we will talk about, and see examples of various types of patterns you can use for:1. Build your Test Automation Framework2. Test Data Management3. Locators / IDs (for finding / interacting with elements in the browser / app)Using these patterns you will be able to build a good framework, that will help keep your tests running fast, and reliably in your CI / CD setup!

Slides

Patterns in Test Automation from Anand Bagmar

Video

Feedback from attendees

Here is some feedback I received from the attendees:

Few remarks that we received from the attendees:

1.          Learnt business driven page objects

2.       Thoughtful presentation. Sound knowledge

3.       Very clear and concise. Meaningful framework

Patterns in Test Automation presented at Agile India 2016

I spoke about Patterns of a “good” Test Automation Framework, Locators & Data! in Agile India 2016 in front of a packed room of Developers, Testers, BAs and POs.

Below is the abstract, slides & video of the talk.

Patterns of a “good” Test Automation Framework, Locators & Data!

Building a Test Automation Framework is easy - there are so many resources / guides / blogs / etc. available to help you get started and help solve the issues you get along the journey.

However, building a "good" Test Automation Framework is not very easy. There are a lot of principles and practices you need to use, in the right context, with a good set of skills required to make the Test Automation Framework maintainable, scalable and reusable.

Design Patterns play a big role in helping achieve this goal of building a good and robust framework. 

In this talk, we will talk about, and see examples of various types of patterns you can use for:

1. Build your Test Automation Framework
2. Test Data Management
3. Locators / IDs (for finding / interacting with elements in the browser / app)

Learning Outcome

• Patterns for building Test Automation Framework
• Patterns for Test Data Management, with pros and cons of each
• Patterns for managing locators / IDs for interaction with UI

Slides

Slides are available here:

Patterns in Test Automation from Anand Bagmar

Video

(My attempt of capturing the) video is available here:

Official video will be linked when it gets available.

Update & Learning from Webinar on Test Automation - Principles & Practices

On request from a very enthusiastic Tester - Buddhini from Sri Lanka, I did a webinar for the Sri Lanka Testing Community on - "Test Automation - Principles & Practices".

Below is the flyer they created.



This was a different type of webinar - with all attendees in Sri Lanka in one room, and me, the presenter, speaking over GoToMeeting from ThoughtWorks Pune, India.

The only thing that did not work out well - was the interactions - which was expected anyway - since the speaker and the attendees were not really face-2-face in the same room. Also, it was unfortunate - that the Internet connection was not the best - hence could not really hear any question / comments what the attendees were asking. That said, the attendees were very responsive - and thanks to video enabled, we could use visual gestures to keep track and have simple yes / no type of interactions.

The slides used during the talk can be seen below.

Test Automation - Principles and Practices from Anand Bagmar

Lastly, there were some questions that were asked by attendees during registration / talk. I will do a followup post with my answer to these. In the meantime, please post more questions, if at all, in the comments section.

• What is the best way we can use to do Load testing? If it is for Java projects then can we use Java Thread classes or is Jmeter a good tool to use? If so how can we use Jmeter tool in a better way? What are the good tools to do performance testing?

• Is it a good practice to automate GUI of the screens or should we always automate server side testing?

• Is Perl a good interpreter to test server side testing? If it is not then what are the good tools we can use?

• Is selenium a good tool to automate the functionality? Are there any other tools?

• How to build an automation framework?

• Are there any other open source tools for Desktop applications (other than Sikuli and AutoIT)?

The story of a 'small' vodQA ending up being 'x-large'

We are extremely happy to start the new year with YASV (Yet Another Successful vodQA) event, this time with the theme - Agile Testing Workshop, conducted on 9th January 2016 in ThoughtWorks, Pune office.

Why the theme - "Agile Testing Workshop"?

Over the past few years, after having worked on numerous projects, interacted with a lot of clients (and their partners / vendors), and gaining insights from speaking with individuals & teams in conferences & organizations, we (the vodQA Pune team), realized that a decent portion of the Software (testing) Industry lacks decent / good understanding of Agile and effective Testing on Agile projects / teams.

So, we decided to conduct the next vodQA in Pune - focussed on Agile Testing to answer questions like - "What is Agile and what does it mean to Test on Agile projects / teams?"

Highlights

• When we started planning for this edition of vodQA, the plan was to keep it very lean - in planning, execution and participation as well. For this, we planned to keep this vodQA 'small'. Little did we realize it would end up being a patiala peg.

• What started out as an event aimed at 30 attendees soon shot up to 180+ RSVPs on Facebook to 160+ confirmations and eventually we had 85+ attendees. Including ThoughtWorkers, we (again) crossed 100+ people for vodQA Pune! - There went a lot of our 'being-lean' out of the window!

• This event was completely driven by the Facebook group (from announcements to registrations to updates).

• We had a quite a few attendees travel from out of Pune for vodQA (ex: Mumbai, Nagpur)

• This was one of the most vocal, enthusiastic and interactive audience vodQA Pune has seen. They shared their experiences and asked a lot of questions as well.

• True to our objective for this vodQA, we ensured there was sufficient time between sessions / workshops to facilitate discussions and answer specific questions from the attendees.

• We had impromptu fishbowl discussion on certain Parking Lot questions.

• After the first session of the day (Agile Game), the attendees celebrated (it was over) by bursting the balloons - early Diwali some would say … :)

• You can see the tweets, comments in the vodQA group on Facebook and pictures here.

• A huge shoutout to the organisers who were constantly tweaking their execution methods, days before the event as our expected turnout gradually rose from 30 to 100+.

Agenda and Slides

Topic	By	Slides
Welcome note	Anand Bagmar
Agile Game	Abhay Dalvi, Vardhan Bhatt & Vikrant Chauhan
Tea break
What is Agile Testing?	Amit Gundiyal & Prasad Kalgutkar	http://www.slideshare.net/vodqanite/what-is-agile-testing-56891493
Effective Strategies for Distributed Testing	Preeti Mishra	http://www.slideshare.net/vodqanite/strategies-for-distributed-testing
Lunch
Testing the Mysterious Sphere	Anjali Wadhwa, Ashwini Ingle & Preeti Mishra	http://www.slideshare.net/vodqanite/testing-the-mysterious-sphere
Break
Test Automation - Principles, Practices	Vardhan Bhatt & Vikrant Chauhan	http://www.slideshare.net/vodqanite/lessons-learnt-from-test-automation-principles-practices
Tea + Snacks break
Patterns in Test Automation (Framework + Data)	Anand Bagmar	http://www.slideshare.net/abagmar/patterns-in-test-automation

 

Feedback

• Ur event is successful when attendees r so involved that they forgot to tweet abt it till d lunch brk :) #VodQA #VodQAPune #ThoughtWorks

• Overall workshop was wonderful. Presentation and content was good. Helpful to understand and implement in our current process.

• Agile testing game taught us to focus more on quality than quantity & take feedback as soon as possible from the PO

• Though I am not working in Agile env currently, I understood whole session and got to learn something.

The always rocking vodQA Pune team!!

vodQA Pune team

Starting 2016 with vodQA in Pune - Agile Testing Workshop

Over the past few years, after having spoken in a lot of individuals & teams in conferences & organizations, I realized the understanding of Agile and what does it mean to do effective Testing on Agile projects / teams is very poor.

So, we at ThoughtWorks, Pune, as part of vodQA Pune - Agile Testing Workshop, start 2016 with the objective of connecting with our peers in the Software industry to discuss and understand - "What is Agile and what does it mean to Test on Agile projects / teams?"

We have planned and organized this vodQA conference in a very Lean and simple way - announcement, registrations, agenda and updates - all directly from our vodQA group in facebook.

This edition of vodQA will be held on Saturday, 9th January, 2016 at the ThoughtWorks, Pune office on the 4th floor. For more details, see the vodQA event page in facebook.

Patterns in Test Automation & Enabling CD at ThinkTest 2015

Thanks to Smita Mishra for organizing ThinkTest 2015 and more so, for giving me the opportunity to speak on a couple of topics.

Here is some brief information from my talks. Links to videos will be posted soon.

Patterns of a “good” Test Automation Framework, Locators & Data!

Based on past experiences, I changed this talk to focus only on the Patterns for Test Automation Framework. I have now prepared a separate talk for Test-Data Patterns in Test Automation. Hopefully will get a chance to share my thoughts on that in the near future.

Abstract:

Building a Test Automation Framework is easy - there are so many resources / guides / blogs / etc. available to help you get started and help solve the issues you get along the journey.

However, building a "good" Test Automation Framework is not very easy. There are a lot of principles and practices you need to use, in the right context, with a good set of skills required to make the Test Automation Framework maintainable, scalable and reusable.

Design Patterns play a big role in helping achieve this goal of building a good and robust framework. 

In this talk, we will talk about, and see examples of various types of patterns you can use for:

1. Build your Test Automation Framework
2. Test Data Management
3. Locators / IDs (for finding / interacting with elements in the browser / app)

Using these patterns you will be able to build a good framework, that will help keep your tests running fast, and reliably in your CI / CD setup!

Slides:

Patterns in Test Automation from Anand Bagmar

Enabling Continuous Delivery (CD) in Enterprises with Testing

Abstract:

The key objectives of any organization is to provide / derive value from the products / services they offer. To achieve this, they need to be able to deliver their offerings in the quickest time possible, and of good quality!

In such a fast moving environment, CI (Continuous Integration) and CD (Continuous Delivery) are now a necessity and not a luxury!

There are various practices that organizations need to implement to enable CD. Changes in requirements (a reality in all projects) needs to be managed better. Along with this, processes and practices need to be tuned based on the team capability, skills and distribution.

Testing (automation) is one of the important practices that needs to be setup correctly for CD to be successful. But, this is tricky and requires a lot of discipline, rigor and hard work by all the team members involved the product delivery.

All the challenges faced in smaller organizations get amplified when it comes to Enterprises. There are various reasons to this - but most common reasons are - scale, complexity of the domain, complexity of the integrations (to internal / external system), involvement of various partners / vendors, long product life-cycles, etc.

In such situations, the Testing complexity and challenges also increase exponentially!

Learn, via a case study of an Enterprise, a large Bank, the Testing approach required to take them on the journey to achieving CD.

Slides: 

Enabling CD in Enterprises with Testing from Anand Bagmar