Slides from vodQA Pune - Less Talk, Only Action! now available

vodQA-Pune - Less Talk, Only Action! was held on on Saturday, 27th Aug 2016, 8.30am - 5.30pm at ThoughtWorks, Pune.

Agenda

Abstracts with Slides

1. Automating Web Analytics - Why? How?

Do you know –

• What is Web Analytics?How does Web Analytics work?
• Why is it important? How to test Web Analytics?
• How can we ensure correct data is sent to the Web Analytics server, every time, for all the actions?

Attend this workshop to learn ‘What is Web Analytics?’ and why it is an extremely important aspect of Software Development & Testing for your product / service to succeed!

We will share some techniques for testing Web Analytics - in a non-automated way - and why that is very challenging and error-prone.

We will learn, via hands-on activity, about WAAT - Web Analytics Automation Testing Framework (https://essenceoftesting.blogspot.com/search/label/waat) - an open-source solution, to automate validation of correct information / tags being sent to the Web Analytic server for different user actions as part of your regular Selenium-WebDriver Test Automation Framework.

Lastly, we will see how the impact of Analytics has changed dramatically with more adoption and spread of IoT (Internet of Things) and Big Data, and what we need to do to be part of the change, if not influencers of change!

Slides: automating-web-analytics

2. Performance testing with Gatling for Beginners

Gatling is a server side performance testing tool. This workshop aims at giving introduction to Gatling and facilitating participants to write their first performance tests using Gatling.

• Brief intro to Gatling
• Using Postman to check stub server(created using mountebank for workshop)
• Write a sample test using gatling (pre set up machines are provided)

Slides: gatling-performance-workshop

3. Game of Test Automation

We are going to use a game to work out the WHY, WHAT and HOW of test automation within the context of consumers, application, skillset, mindset, etc.

4. Security Testing - Operation Vijay

It is now the days of the web. All businesses move their applications online for their customers to use.

Many of these applications contain critical data of the customers such as credit card details, their personal details and so on. These data are very valuable. If these data fall in the wrong hands, they can have disastrous consequences.

Attacks on these systems can destroy the trust that the customers have for the business, they can cause great losses to the customers as well as the business, and so on.

The motivation behind attacks could be different like earning money, earning popularity, destroying a competitor company, etc.

No matter what the intention of the attack is, we need to develop safe applications and we need to know the various vulnerabilities and the consequences of our decisions when we develop applications.

Similarly, we should be aware of the various vulnerabilities before we test the applications so that we can try and exploit it during the testing phase and ensure better quality and safer applications.

Slides: security-testing-operation-vijay

5. Automate your Mobile tests with Appium

• Introduction to Appium.
• Appium design for Android and iOS
• How to locate elements on android and iOS applications(Inspector).
• Hands-on code snippet for android and iOS(Wordpress as sample app)
• Generating reports (ExtentReports)
• Evolve code snippet written above into a Page Object Framework.
  

Slides: mobile-automation-using-appium

6. Increase Automation to REST

• What are web services and why we use them?
• How to test a web service in multiple ways?
• Increased familiarity with automation

Tools used : rest client, postman (mention alternatives), unirest JAVA and requests python

Slides: increase-automation-to-rest, api-webservice-setup-instructions

7. Let's cook Cucumber

In this workshop we will be covering:

• Advantages of BDD through cucumber example.
• Framework setup along with JAVA and Selenium.
• Writing one end to end test case in real world.
• If time permits - will be covering basic Refactoring
  

Slides: lets-cook-cucumber
 

8. Mobile Automation using Espresso

Imagine a situation where every commit spits out a build that can be deployed to production with confidence. In today's startup era, this can be a huge boost to business as it will reduce the time to market. UI Automation for mobile apps, be it native or hybrid, has been painful since long. But with mature frameworks coming up and Google/Apple realizing the importance of such tools, UI Automation is gaining traction in the mobile space. 

This talk is basically to understand what and why of espresso along with automating a simple scenario using espresso.

Slides: getting-high-on-espresso

vodQA Chennai starts off with a century!

I attended vodQA in Chennai on 21st Jan 2012. The event was great. Over 100 passionate testers from Chennai testing community turned up and made sure people presenting were on their toes with excellent questions and great interactions.


One of the participants already blogged about it here. She raises valid observations - and I wish I had the opportunity to speak with her directly to address some of the questions / concerns she raised. 


In this session, I presented a topic - "What is WAAT?" based on my open-source project - WAAT. The slides used in this session are available here.


I am already looking forward to the next vodQA in Chennai. For now, I am preparing for vodQA Bangalore - "Agile Testing for Teams and Enterprises". on Feb 11, and then vodQA Pune on Mar 17.

December 2012 conferences - WAAT & TaaS it is!

December seems to be a busy time related to conferences for me.

First, I attended test-ed 2012 conference hosted by moolya where I had the opportunity to meet James Bach and a few other great speakers. 

I was a little let-down by James talk. It seemed like more of a marketing pitch for moolya - and somehow I felt I expected more from a person of his caliber! None-the-less, I am sure he inspired a lot of folks in the auditorium to become a free and innovative tester! 

I also got to talk with him 1-1 about BDD and what situations it works well, and more importantly, when it does not work well. Also spoke with him on how BDT (Behavior Driven Testing) helps in building the "right automated regression suite" and the challenges facing the Testers in India in order to become the "free-spirited, creative and innovative testers" he spoke about.

Next, on 13th December, I am speaking in UNICOM's Next Generation Testing Conference in Bangalore about "The What, Why, and How of Web Analytics Testing". I will be talking about my open-source framework - "WAAT - the Web Analytics Automation Testing", and how that can ease the manual drudge of web analytics testing.

To close the year, I will be speaking on 18th December in another UNICOM's Next Generation Testing Conference in Mumbai. Here I will be talking about "Integration testing in Enterprises using TaaS (Test-as-a-Service)- Via Case Study". This is about another open-source framework I have created - TaaS - Test as a Service.

Hope to see you all in Bangalore / Mumbai.

WAAT-Ruby crosses 300 downloads

I was very happy to see that WAAT-Ruby (Web Analytics Automation Testing framework) has crossed 300 downloads on rubygems.org.

WAAT for Ruby on its way

I have started work on creating a Ruby gem for WAAT. This is going to sit on top of the version created for Java. Hopefully will be able to get it out soon.

Watch this space for more information.

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!

Update from Webinar on "Build the 'right' regression suite using BDT" for NY Selenium Meetup

I had a challenging, yet good time speaking in a Webinar for the New York Selenium Meetup community on how to "Build the 'right' regression suite using Behavior Driven Testing (BDT)". This webinar was conducted on 6th May 2014 at 6.30pm and I am very thankful to Mona Soni to help organize the same.

Before I speak about the challenges, here are the slides and the audio + screen recording from the webinar. The video is not cleaned-up ... I had started recording the session and then we did wait for a few minutes before we started off, but you can forward to around the 01:15 min mark and audio starts from that point.

This was challenging because of 2 main reasons:
> With a webinar, I find it difficult to connect with the audience. I am not able to gauge if the content is something they already know about, so I can proceed faster. Or, if they are not following, I need to go slower. Or, the topic is just not interesting enough to them. There may be other reasons as well, but I just do not get that real-time feedback which is so important when explaining a concept and a technique.
Though there were some good interactions and great questions in form of chat, I miss that eye-to-eye connect. This webinar was conducted using GoToMeeting. Maybe next time I do this, I need to try to get webcams enabled for atleast a good few people attending to understand that body language.

> The 2nd challenge I had was purely my own body not being able to adjust well enough. I had flown in from India to Florida to speak in STAREAST 2014 conference just a couple of days ago, and was still adjusting to the jet-lag. Evening times turned out to be my lowest-energy points on the day and I felt myself struggling to keep focus, talk and respond effectively. I would like to apologize to the attendees if they felt my content delivery was not up to the mark for this reason.

I appreciate any feedback on the session, and looking forward to connect with you and talk about Testing, Test Automation, my open-source tools (TaaS, WAAT, TTA) and of course BDT!

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

Analytics - The Brain of the Software

An Analogy 

I am not a doctor, nor did I enjoy biology too much in my curriculum as a student.  However, I do know that the body has many organs and each organ plays a vital role in the well being of the individual.

Each organ has to:

• function correctly (movement, senses, core functions, etc.)

• has to perform as per expectations in different conditions the individual may be going through (walking, running, swimming, etc.)

• has to be secure from external parameters (heat, cold, rain, what we eat / drink, etc.)

• has to have a proper user experience (ex: if the human hands had webs like ducks, would we be able to hold a pen correctly to write?

• I would like to think of the brain as the super computer which keeps track of what is going on in the body, if each piece playing its part correctly, or not. And if there is something unexpected going on, then there are mechanisms of giving that feedback internally and externally so that course correction would be possible.

How does this relate to software?

Software is similar in some ways. For any software product to work, the following needs to be done:

Functionality works as expected

• The architecture, testability of the system will allow for various types of testing activities to be performed on the software to ensure everything works as expected
• Test Automation practices will give you quick feedback

There is a plethora of open-source and commercial tools in this space to help in this regard - the most popular open-source tools being Selenium and Appium.

Software is performant

• We can do performance testing at various different levels to ensure at different loads and conditions, the users will be able to use the product in a seamless fashion
• There are many tools to assist in Performance Testing - some popular ones being JMeter and Gatling.

Software is secure

• Building and testing for security is critical as you do not want user information to be leaked or manipulated and neither do you want to allow external forces to control / manipulate your product behaviour and control
• The Test Automation Pyramid hence also includes NFRs

User experience is validated, and consistent

• In the age of CD (Continuous Delivery & Continuous Deployment), you need to ensure your user experience across all your software delivery means (browsers, mobile-browsers, native apps for mobiles and tablets, etc.) is consistent and users do not face the brunt of UI / look-and-feel issues in the software at the cost of new features
• This is a relatively new domain - but there are already many tools to help in this spaces as well - the most popular one (in terms of integration, usage and features) being the AI-powered Applitools

Visual Validation is the new tip of the Test Automation Pyramid!

What is the brain of the software?

The above is all good, and known in various ways. But what is the "brain" of the software? How does one know if everything is working fine or not? Who will receive the feedback and how do we take corrective action on this?

Analytics is that piece in the Software product that functions as the brain. It keeps collecting data about each important piece of software, and provides feedback on the same.

I have come across some extreme examples of Business / Organizations who have all their eggs in one basket - in terms of

• understand their Consumers (engagement / usage / patterns / etc.),
• understand usage of product features, and,
• do all revenue-related book-keeping

This is all done purely on Analytics! Hence, to say “Business runs on Analytics, and it may be OK for some product / user features to not work correctly, but Analytics should always work” - is not a myth!

What this means is Analytics is more important now, than before.

Unfortunately, Analytics is not known much to the Software Dev + Test community. We know it very superficially - and do what is required to implement it and quickly test it out. But what is analytics? Why is it important? What is the impact of this not working well? Not many think about this.

I have been testing Analytics since 2010 ... and the kind of insights I have been able to get about the product have been huge! I have been able to contribute back to the team and help build better quality software as a result.

But I have to be honest - it is painful to test Analytics. And that is why I created an open-source framework - WAAT - to help automate some of this testing activities.

I also do workshops to help people learn more about Analytics, its importance, and how they can automate this as well.

In the workshop, I do not assume anything and approach is to discuss and learn by example and practice, the following

• How does Analytics works (for Web and Mobile)?
• Test Analytics manually in different ways
• Test Analytics via the final reports
• Why some Automation strategies will work, and some WILL NOT WORK (based on my experience)!
• We will see a demo of the Automation running for the same.
• Time permitting, we will setup running some Automation scripts on your machine to validate the same

Takeaways from the workshop

We will learn by practicing the following:

• What is Analytics?
• Techniques to test analytics manually.
• How to automate the validation of analytics, via a demo, and if time permits, run the automation from your machine as well.

Hope this post helps you understand the importance of Analytics and why you need to know more about it. Do reach out to me if you want to learn more about it.

Next upcoming Analytics workshop is in TestBash Australia 2019. Let me know if you would be interested in attending the same

Speaking in Bangalore about WAAT and Agile Testing

As mentioned in my earlier post, I spoke last week in UNICOM's Next Generation Testing Conference in Bangalore on 13th December. My talk was about the "The What, Why and How of Web Analytics Testing". The slides from the talk are available here on slideshare.net. The audio recording of the talk is available here. (You can download and use a player like VLC to listen to the recording.)

I had a great time speaking in this conference. My talk was probably the only very technical talk in the conference. Another thing I observed from the audience is that not many of them knew about Web Analytics. I managed to finish up my talk in 40 min, and surprisingly, for an audience who didn't know much about Web Analytics, there were no questions. BUT, in the lunch break and networking session, a lot of people came up to me and said they really enjoyed my talk, and will look forward to "seeing" more on how Web Analytics is used in their organisation. 

Also, there was a lot of interest and questions about Agile, and Agile Testing. This is a topic I can talk about for hours at length - and I controlled myself to a great extent to let other esteemed speakers also talk and answer questions about the same from the audience.

I ended up encouraging a lot of fellow speakers and attendees to think with an "open-mind" and be innovative and see how service organisations can provide "a good and true value" to customers, and why it is important to provide "good" solutions and ask the right and tough questions to the same! Also shared the concepts of TaaS with a few folks who potentially would be in similar soup with the "common test framework" concept.

All in all, a very good time in Bangalore. Now looking forward for the same in Mumbai on 18th December, where I will be talking about "Integration Testing in Enterprises - using TaaS (Test as a Service)".

Essence of Testing - A new beginning

In my career so far, I have been very fortunate to have got great mentors, and a variety of opportunities to learn, add value, and share my experiences with others around me.

Here are some of these experiences:

• Worked in various sized organisations across the globe in the past couple of decades
• The teams have been big and small
• Played a variety of roles - Quality Analyst, SDET (Software Development Engineer in Test), Product Quality Engineer (PQE), Automation Engineer, Consultant, Coach, Project Manager, Director - Quality, Support Engineer, etc.
• Worked with teams having products in different domains - Health care, eCommerce, Banking / Finance, Retail, Entertainment (OTT), Research, etc. 
• With in organisations (B2B and B2C space): WebMD, Borland Software, Microsoft (Redmond, USA), AmberPoint (USA / India), ThoughtWorks, Vuclip 
• Shared experiences with other via Meetups and Conferences world-wide
• Created opensource tools like WAAT, TTA, TaaS

After working as an employee in these organisations for almost a couple of decades now, I have taken a plunge to do something different.

I am now looking forward to work with Organisations and Teams, to help co-create optimized solutions towards shipping a quality product. Leave me a message on my blog, or send me an email at abagmar@gmail.com to talk more on how we can work together!

As part of this journey, even before I was able to buy my own laptop, and warm it up, I got an interesting consulting assignment, thanks to a dear friend.

This assignment was exactly what I needed to get started - it was a Discovery Workshop, with the following objective:

• Learn and understand the current state of the team and the product they were building
• Understand current (perceived) challenges
• Suggest improvements for the team in areas of:
• Tweaks in the current processes
• Practices to be adopted / got better at / or stopped (as anti-patterns and not adding value)
• Identify opportunities to Test better, and early
• Suggest a Test Automation Pyramid that is fit-for-purpose for the team
• Suggest strategy, tools and approach for end-2-end (e2e) functional automation

As I usually do, I started off the workshop with my favorite tool for note taking - Mind Maps! As the conversations evolved and got specific, I started with a Balanced Mind-Map  to Fishbone Mind-Map.

Eventually I consolidated my thoughts and created the Discovery Workshop Report for the client in the form of a slide deck, using the following approach.

• Learning from Discovery
• Talk with the Team members
• See & understand the project management tool, quality of requirements, etc.
• See the code - understand complexity, types of tests written, quality of tests, etc.
• See the Testing related artifacts - test cases, test execution strategy, exploratory testing, etc.
• See the CI server - how deployments happen, what causes the builds to fail, etc.
• Recommendations
• For all the above areas, I created recommendations on what different aspects may help the team move ahead in a better way

Discovery and Recommendations were based on each specific activity:

• Process
• Architecture
• Requirements
• Development
• Testing
• Deployments

Once the learning from the Learning and Recommendation stages were well understood (by me), I then created a Suggested Plan of Execution (in phases / milestones)

• From the recommendations, I created milestone based plans on what can be started immediately, and what decisions the team needs to take to move forward in other areas

In this 2 week time, unknowingly, in retrospect, the whole engagement was quite agile. There were periodic demos of the POCs, regular progress sharing, and changing direction of discovery and recommendations based on learning.

The Client also appreciated the quality of conversations, and the results that were shared.

All in all, a very satisfying beginning to my new journey with Essence of Testing!