Software Testing Blog

“I’m sorry that testing is complicated, folks. No wait. I’m not sorry at all. Go away if you don’t like it.” – James Bach, Testing the Limits, 2010

James has a point here: If you’re not willing to learn testing the proper way, then you should probably find another line of work (something that could be said of almost any profession). So what is the proper way to learn software testing? Well, that’s very much up for debate.

As many of you know, uTest has gone to great lengths to ensure that testers of all experience levels can learn by doing (uTest Sandbox program and paid projects), learn by studying (Crash Courses) and learn by peer-to-peer discussion (uTest Forums). Apart from uTest, there’s also tester certifications, college courses, training seminars and a host of other methods.

So which method is most likely to help you successfully learn testing? Before you answer that, let’s consider a few points from a recent Wired.com article Everything You Thought You Knew About Learning Is Wrong:

Taking notes during class? Topic-focused study? A consistent learning environment? All are exactly opposite the best strategies for learning…

…first, think about how you attack a pile of study material. “People tend to try to learn in blocks,” says Bjork (director of the UCLA Learning and Forgetting Lab), “mastering one thing before moving on to the next.” But instead he recommends interleaving, a strategy in which, for example, instead of spending an hour working on your tennis serve, you mix in a range of skills like backhands, volleys, overhead smashes, and footwork. “This creates a sense of difficulty,” says Bjork, “and people tend not to notice the immediate effects of learning.”

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Today, we’re thrilled to announce the results of our third annual uTester of the Year Awards. Every year, we recognize uTesters who have consistently gone above and beyond their call of duty in their participation with uTest projects. This year’s winners were selected by our community and project management teams, who have had the privilege of working closely with such an extremely talented community of professional testers. From test automation to test team lead, these winners are truly experts in a variety of testing domains. The level of talent continues to impress, with each year’s accolades becoming more and more difficult to attain (and judge). So without further ado, let’s meet our 2011 winners!

Top honor for the 2011 award goes to David Honeyball from the United Kingdom!

David joined uTest in June of 2009. Since joining us, David has become a Gold rated tester in Functional, Load and Localization testing, as well as having achieved the silver rating in both Usability and Security testing. David also became our Top Test Team Lead in 2011, successfully leading nearly 200 projects alongside of uTest project managers. David had this to say about his experience with uTest during the past year:

I joined uTest back in the summer of 2009 and have to say I have never looked back. What started out as something extra in my spare time has taken up more and more of my time in a good way and has increased my confidence as a tester to levels I never thought possible. I have been a tester for nearly 15 years but can safely say that every day with uTest is a new experience and a new challenge.

I have met so many wonderful people including other testers, CMs, PMs and customers who are all committed to achieving their goals and creating a wonderful service. They have guided me and helped me in the last year and increased my communication skills as well.

TTL (Test Team Lead) Experience:

2011 has been a big success for me personally, as it has for uTest in regards to growth and development, in many ways due to my journey from tester to TTL. I started out as a TTL early in the year and felt at the time that it was a great way forward and would be of huge assistance and help to customers. Since then I have been involved in something nearing 100 cycles as TTL, but that could be more now!  I enjoy the TTL role immensely as I get to speak to the PMs and testers and help out others who are stuck. I hope if you have worked with me that you know that I take that side of things very seriously. One of the great rewards is helping someone who is stuck to complete a test case or test for example. Above all, I believe that with my experience I am a very fair TTL and have the best interests of customer and testers close at heart.

As time goes on I hope to grow more and more into this role and improve further as there is still so much to learn.

Special Projects 

Apart from testing and TTL work which does take up some time as you can imagine, I also help with test case writing for certain PMs which I enjoy and get value from. I was also heavily involved in the startup of the test case conversion to uTest which is the new system we see today. This side of things linked in with my testing and other roles forms a vital component of what I do as well and hope it adds value to the company as a whole.

So, just want to say a huge thanks to everyone involved with uTest for the opportunity and long may we continue to grow together and become invaluable to customers across the globe…

The complete list of winners is shown below:

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While our usual maniacal focus is on quality over quantity, it’s not unreasonable to recognize a major milestone that occurred today, January 18, 2012: surpassing 50,000 testers in the uTest community! Just to be clear, that’s over 50,000 testers from 185 countries around the world – from experts in automation to gurus in usability testing. Here are several other facts about our community:

• Every month, there are approximately 1,000 new tester registrations
• Over 99.9% of these registrations are organic – word of mouth, tradeshows and conferences, tester referrals
• The majority of testers span rather evenly across North America, Europe, and Asia. The rest fill out in South America, Africa, and Australia
• Over 80% of uTesters have a Bachelor’s degree or higher
• uTesters bring a wealth of knowledge and diverse set of skills to the table: creating test cases, usability surveys, load and performance scripts, automation scripts, security coverage reports, usability audits and expert reviews; executing test plans, usability surveys, live load test cases, security scans, exploratory tests, and translation tasks and proofs

And…back to our maniacal attention to quality. Although there is certainly strength in numbers and meaning to this milestone, the real excitement stems from the various “homegrown” programs that shape our crowdsourcing model. Less than a year ago, we announced several new initiatives that have transformed the uTest community from an unruly crowd to one that is self-sufficient, self-teaching and self-policing. From paid leadership roles for our top testers to unpaid auditions for newbie testers, there is a role for nearly everyone and a path for the most ambitious. And now that most of us have embraced the New Year, it’s only fitting that there are new programs just around the corner – ones that leverage the foundation built in the past year and continue to benefit our community at large. More details to come shortly!

For now, please join me in raising your glass to celebrate this major milestone with us!

What is community management without measuring the pulse of your community? Every now and again it is important to take a step back from the frantic happenings of the day-to-day activities of uTesters and look at the bigger picture. All too often, we forget about the profound and incredibly human impact we have on the lives of uTest’s biggest asset, our testers.

At the end of 2011 we did just that and asked our testers to tell us about their uTest experience. Those of us on the community management team were certainly touched by the impact these experiences have had on their lives and we believe that they may be enlightening to other readers as well.

Here is a small sample of the great stories that were shared:

I found uTest on a fluke; I’d heard there was a group online looking for help and I searched for ‘online testing’ and uTest was found. Though I’ve only been with them for a couple of months, it’s been fun. Now let’s get it straight, work is not always fun, but with uTest the diversity of products and engaging clients and testers make it fun. I’ve worked in small startups and large companies; uTest seems to embrace the individual aspect of a small company though the clients may be very, very large. Always approachable and quick to reply, the folks running the group have earned my deep appreciation and respect. Of the dozen or so of projects I’ve worked on, each is unique, and sometimes has follow-up work.

I’m looking forward to 2012 with uTest.

Good going!

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With over 45,000 testers around the world, we’re always looking for fresh and interesting ways for uTesters to network, learn, and have fun.

The uTest nation photo contest was launched as a fun way for testers to show off their creativity and to literally visualize diversity that comprises uTest community. uTesters were challenged to take photos of themselves in interesting places displaying the uTest logo. Creativity was encouraged. The conditions for each entry were that uTesters needed to pose with a provided uTest logo, and must be safe for work. For instance, testers could display the uTest logo while exploring the Parthenon, on holiday at the Eiffel Tower, or even while visiting world’s largest ball of yarn. While some uTesters were able to shoot photos in person on location, others were able to display their Photoshop skills to create some fun photos.

Through the course of the contest we received 21 submissions from all around the world, and the winners were completely chosen by the community through a weighted average voting system. Once votes were tallied, our team evaluated each photo to make sure entry rules were adhered to and then calculated the winners.

Existing forum members can visit the photo contest topic to see all the entries. If you’re a uTester and haven’t registered for a forum account yet, be sure to register today so you can check out all of the photos and stay informed of future contests! Click below to see the winning photos and honorable mentions.
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If you asked 100 software testers what traits translate into success, somewhere near the top of that list you would find “creativity.” But what makes a tester creative? Is it a skill to be learned? Is one born with it? Well, according to a recent study, the answer might have something to do with video games.

A test of 491 12-year-olds found that the more they played video games, they more creative they were. The research by Linda A Jackson, a Professor of Psychology at Michigan State University, has been published in current issue of journal Computers in Human Behavior.

Playing with cell phones, the Internet and computers (other than for video games) was unrelated to creativity, the study found.

Jackson’s team assessed how long the kids spent on different types of technological activities and then tested them with the Torrance Test of Creative Thinking to measure creative output, tallying up the two pieces of data. Torrance tests involve tasks such as drawing an “interesting and exciting” picture from a curved shape, giving the picture a title and then writing a story about it. Testees score better if their responses are unusual, infrequent, or elaborate.

Of course, video games aren’t the only way testers can become more creative. In fact, uTester Amit Kulkarni offered testers some great advice on being a more creative tester in his last guest post. Here’s a nice extract:

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We’re excited to announce winners for our inaugural Bug of the Month contest! The top prize goes to Gagan Talwar from India, who submitted a bug related to invalid payment deductions from a credit card company. In a nutshell, this credit card company invalidly deducted the minimum amount due on a credit card bill without validating whether or not a previous payment was made – minimum, full or somewhere in between. To end on a positive note, he was able to work things about with the credit card company and received a full refund for the invalid deduction.

What is the Bug of the Month contest? If you did not have a chance to enter last month’s contest, here is more information to prepare you for the next one. The contest will run every two months, and is open to the entire uTest tester community. Testers have the opportunity to submit the most intriguing bug(s) they have come across, and fellow testers then rate the submitted bugs from three categories: Exceptionally Valuable, Very Valuable, and Somewhat Valuable (borrowed directly from uTest’s system of tiered bug approvals). After the voting phase is complete, uTest evaluates the votes across all submissions and awards the top three reports based on highest weighted averages.

How do I win? Based on participation from the first competition and standard uTest projects, there are three major tenets to an exceptionally valuable report:

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We’re excited to share the details of our fourth uMeetup event – held in Shenzhen, China. In case you missed the details of our other 3 uMeetup events, you check them out here. uMeetups are local networking events organized by top testers and sponsored by uTest. Invitations are extended to all software testers in the local vicinity to meet in person, listen to presentations on special software testing topics, and learn more about participating in paid projects with uTest.

Colin Zhang, a silver uTester organized this latest uMeetup where testers gathered from Hong Kong, Shenzhen, and Guangzhou. They enjoyed making introductions, exchanging testing experiences, and generally enjoying each other’s company. Meeting at a Starbucks at Zhongxin Square,  lively and caffeinated discussions were surely had.

We’ve received some great feedback from testers who have taken part in uMeetups in the past. Being passionate about testing and about uTest seems to be a common thread that brings these testers together.

Want to have a uMeetup in your area? Check the forums to find the one nearest to you. If you don’t see your country on the list  apply for a sponsorship here.

Take a look at a  few pictures from the event after the jump:
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If you’re in the testing business, chances are you’ve used a bug-tracking system. And if you’ve used a bug-tracking system, there’s a good chance it was Atlassian’s industry-leading product, JIRA. Well, Atlassian OnDemand now takes those same development tools you know and love, including JIRA, into the cloud providing your team with greater affordability, customizability, and connectivity.

On the heels of this news, uTest is happy to announce a new plugin that allows bi-directional integration with JIRA. As one of only fifteen plugins that have been pre-installed on Atlassian OnDemand, we’re obviously quite excited about this news and what it means for our growing base of customers, and our global community of testers.

So what does it mean, specifically? Well, previously, companies could consolidate and track their bugs in JIRA by importing reports logged in uTest’s platform.  But now, JIRA users can map uTest data fields back to data fields in JIRA, which creates a seamless, two-way system for managing bugs found in the lab or in the wild. The end result: a greatly simplified process for test case management.

Perhaps the coolest thing about our new JIRA plugin is its one-click integration with Bug Fix Verification, a robust new time-saving feature launched in Version 4.0 of our software testing platform. Since uTest’s community performs app testing in real-world conditions – working on real devices, carriers, browsers, and operating systems – it can be difficult for customers to validate that a bug fix has addressed the problem.

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I was reading a story about some of the hilarious Easter eggs in Apple’s Siri and got to wondering where they ranked on the all-time list. For those  who aren’t familiar with the term, an Easter egg is defined (per Wikipedia) as a ” intentional hidden message, in-joke or feature in a work such as a computer program, web page, video game, movie, book or crossword.”

So what’s the best Easter egg of all-time? Since some of you may not have much of a reference point, I’m including a top ten list compiled by Focus.com. Take a look:

1. Photoshop CS2: Merlin Li … : Hold down both the Alt key and the left mouse button, then move your mouse over Palate Options in the Layers window. Let go of the mouse, and Merlin appears.
2. Gnome: Wanda a Fish: Go to the Run dialog in Gnome and type “free the fish.” Click the Run button and a fish called Wanda should pop up and wander around the desktop.
3. Skype: A Few Hidden Emoticons in Skype: Enter a chat session and type words like “drunk” and “ninja” with the brackets to view amusing emoticons.
4. uTorrent: Tetris in uTorrent: Select About in the Help menu and press “T” on the keyboard.
5. Microsoft Paint: Hidden Drawing Tool Options: Use the Ctrl key to stamp, scuff and use brush pressure, as well as to draw straight or diagonal lines with the pencil.
6. Bloodshed Dev-C++: Fish: Click About Dev-C++ in the Help menu, then click and drag the Really Flash Dev-C++ logo onto the authors button. A fish should appear, and if you click it, it will change direction.
7. OpenOffice.org: Star Wars Game: Create a new spreadsheet in the OpenOffice.org Calc. Type “=game()” intoa cell and validate it by pressing Enter. The cell will display, “Say what?” to which your typing finger will reply “=GAME(“StarWars”).” A new window will open with a little game called Star Wars.
8. Spybot — Search and Destroy: Game Hidden: Click the little icon that appears in every window you open by selecting an option on the left-hand panel. You will get access to a game where you have to fill in as may squares as possible.
9. Cool Edit Pro: Game in Cool Edit Pro 2.1: Go to Help, then click About CoolEdit Pro. Click over the two silver balls to have some fun.
10. Winamp: Spinning Fish: Bring up the Preferences box and go to Plug-ins > Input. Click the Nullsoft Vorbis Decoder, then click About. Click the fish to make it spin.

Let us know your favorite in the comment section below.

Oh, and in case you were wondering, we’ve embedded an Easter Egg of our own in the uTest iOS app. To my knowledge, it has yet to be discovered. If you’re up for the challenge, you should give it a shake – I mean shot.