Tuesday, September 10, 2013

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.

Saturday, September 7, 2013

TTA (0.5.4) feature information and screenshots

Here are some screenshots from the current functionality supported by TTA v0.5.4.

See the TTA Wiki page or Contact me for more information on TTA.


Manual upload of Test data

Test Pyramid

Comparative Analysis

Compare different test runs

Test Failure Analysis
Integrate External Dashboards with TTA

TTA Statistics page

Saturday, August 31, 2013

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.

Monday, July 29, 2013

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.


Monday, July 15, 2013

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.

Wednesday, July 10, 2013

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.

Monday, July 8, 2013

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.




Saturday, June 22, 2013

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!

Friday, May 31, 2013

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.

Wednesday, May 1, 2013

I will be speaking about TaaS in Agile 2013 in Nashville, TN, USA

Very happy and excited to say that my talk on "Integration testing in Enterprises using TaaS - via Case Study" has been selected in Agile 2013. This conference is scheduled from 5-9th August in Nashville, TN, USA, and I get to present it as the 2nd talk on the 1st day of the conference!

Tuesday, April 16, 2013

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

Monday, April 8, 2013

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.

Friday, March 29, 2013

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

Thursday, March 28, 2013

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. 

Wednesday, March 27, 2013

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

Friday, March 22, 2013

thucydides for ATDD / BDD / BDT?

Anyone heard or used the tool "thucydides"-  for ATDD / BDD / BDT before?

Whats your review / thoughts on it? Any pros / cons? 

http://www.thucydides.info/
https://github.com/thucydides-webtests/thucydides

From their website: "Thucydides is a tool that lets you use WebDriver-based unit or BDD tests to write more flexible and more reusable WebDriver-based tests, and also to generate documentation about your acceptance tests, including a narrative description of test, along with the corresponding screen shots, and also high-level summaries and aggregations of the test results."


Tuesday, March 19, 2013

Security testing tools

Here is some information / links to potential tools / resources to use for security testing:





Monday, March 4, 2013

Friday, February 8, 2013

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?

Thursday, January 31, 2013

rubygems.org & WAAT

With the recent problems the rubygems.org site is facing, you may not be able to get to the WAAT gem. In that case, you can also download the gem directly from the github repository. All information about WAAT can be found from my blog as before.

Monday, January 28, 2013

TaaS received pretty well in Pune conf

As mentioned in my earlier post, I spoke about TaaS - Test-as-a-Service in UNICOM's Next Generation Testing Conference in Pune on 23rd Jan. The talk went pretty well. Since this talk was for a slightly smaller duration, I had to use a scaled down version of the same slides that I used in the TaaS talk in Mumbai. The audio playback of the talk in Pune is available here.

There were a lot of interesting questions that came up this time:
1. Can I use TaaS to test in the cloud?
2. Can I use TaaS to do load / performance testing?
3. What are the security implications of using TaaS? 
4. Can I use TaaS to do mobile testing across different devices?

I will try to address these questions in subsequent posts.

Monday, January 21, 2013

Take a nap ... its good for you

... or so the research about "What Are the Facts About Naps?" says.

I particularly like #6.

So if someone finds me napping at work, I blame the article. :)

Monday, January 14, 2013

Taking video recordings of your test execution



I have always wanted to take video recordings of my test execution ... discard the video if the test passes, and save it if the test fails. 

Recently, I found that the headless gem does that for you. There is also some sample code to make the integration of this gem in your test framework very seamless.

While using the gem and its api's are very straightforward, this did not work very well for me.

Reasons:
  1. I run my tests from various different types of machines / os, namely, mac, RHEL and Windows
  2. The total number of machines I can run my tests from is huge (>20)  … mainly triggered via CI
  3. The RHEL environment is controlled and configured by puppet.
  4. There is a bunch of underlying library requirements for the video capture

So though it is easy to use the gem, it is not really easy to setup ALL test execution environments with these dependent libraries for this to work - at least for me.

Does anyone know of a better / easier solution?


Friday, January 11, 2013

Mac Air video problem? This may work for you

I have been using a Mac Air for some time now. One thing that has been a constant frustration for me on this machine is for some reason, the in-built camera stops working. For example, when I try to use Google Hangout or Skype, I get the error - "There is no camera connected". 

The System Profiler shows the camera is there.

Strangely, on restarting the machine, the camera starts working.

After lot of digging around, I found a post by "madams end" here which solved the problem for me.

The solution is: 


Go to Terminal.app and run the command:

sudo killall VDCAssistant


This fixed the problem for me.

The next thing I did was simply created a alias for this command in my shell - and then whenever I encounter the problem, just execute this alias.

Thursday, January 3, 2013

TaaS (Test-as-a-Service) coming to Pune

2012 was a great year for me. I got the opportunity to share my learnings and open-source contributions in various conferences. 

2013 also seems to be starting off well. I will be talking in UNICOM's Next Generation Testing Conference, this time in Pune, on Wednesday, 23rd Jan. I will be repeating my talk from Mumbai on TaaS - Test-as-a-Service.