Software Testing Blog

In the third and final installment of our Testing the Limits interview with Lanette Creamer, we cover the Seattle testing scene; why more women don’t enter the profession; mobile testing challenges; test automation; her favorite Nicholas Cage movie and more. In case you missed them, here’s part I and part II.

uTest: The Seattle area has spawned an inordinate number of top testers (Whittaker, Bach, Bach, Creamer, et al) – what’s the deal with that?  Is there something in the water or is just a result of the Microsoft ecosystem being nearby?
LC: If there was no James Bach there would be no interview with a crazy redheaded tester named Creamer, because I would have no testing blog. If James Bach wasn’t in Seattle, I may not have had the chance to see him speak so often. Cast 2007 was in Bellevue, WA, maybe partially because that is close to Microsoft, so I guess in a roundabout way, it could be the Microsoft ecosystem being nearby that made Bellevue the location for Cast at the right time.

I prefer to think of it as something special about Seattle that fosters a unique perspective and resilience. Maybe it’s all of the cloudy weather. The grunge movement started in Seattle, and much like Nirvana, Pearl Jam, and Soundgarden, there are some innovative contrarians who aren’t afraid to blaze new trails coming out of Seattle to this day – and flannel is in style again.

uTest: Numbers-wise, the software testing profession is clearly dominated by dudes. Why do you think that is? How do we change this trend? Does it matter, or is this topic completely overblown?
LC: When all of the women who have the talent, skills, and desire to be testing are appreciated for the value they offer, and the field is still dominated by dudes, then great! It is about having the opportunity, not about enforcing some gender ratio. Right now things are not equal and fair for female testers and I’d like to see that change in my lifetime. I don’t think male testers are the problem at all. After a few curious looks, once we start actually testing or talking about it, in my experience, most testers are supportive and eager to help each other learn regardless of gender. The problem is higher up in the companies where the value testers bring isn’t well understood and diversity isn’t valued for men or women. The top reason we should care about diversity in our testing teams is because the demographic of a computer user is more diverse than ever before.

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In part II of our Testing the Limits interview with Lanette Creamer – aka “Testy Redhead” – we cover the need for Exploratory Testing; Matt Heusser and the “rebel alliance” of testing; how to create a popular testing blog; her stance on tester certifications and more from the wide world of QA. Catch up by reading part I, and when you’re done with this one, go check out part III.

uTest: In one of your recent blog posts, you mention Elisabeth Hendrickson’s STAREAST declaration that “Exploratory Testing Is Not Optional.” Why did this statement resonate so strongly for you? Do you think all testing managers should follow Hendrickson’s lead?

LC: As a frequent conference attendee and enthusiastic reader of testing blogs, I’ve seen many ideas about how to improve testing. I’ve been through countless industry trends, such as borrowing manufacturing ideas, extensive measuring schemes, and repeated attempts to automate all testing. The bottom line is exploratory testing works in practice. Not for a few months or years, but it works to find important bugs year after year no matter what other quality trends are happening. It works well side by side with automated checks, manufacturing ideas, and it can be used with session based test management to provide measures and metrics if needed. It is the one constant a tester can go back to and find bugs that impact the user experience. It is the meat in my testing sandwich. (My pun filled humor is the cheese.) To hear Elisabeth acknowledge the importance of exploratory testing in public shows me that agile testing is about more than just automation. Agile testing can be about a balanced approach to overall quality. It resonated with me strongly because it makes me hopeful for the future of testing on agile teams.

I think test managers should evangelize and defend what works well in practice on their teams. My experience has been that exploratory testing is generally undervalued considering how effective and practical it is.

uTest: What’s the deal with this “rebel alliance” thing we’ve been hearing so much about? It sounds subversive – we want in! Seriously though, what’s the mission of this group? Please explain it to our un-initiated readers.

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Next up in our Testing the Limits series is Lanette Creamer. Known to many in the QA blogosphere as “Testy Redhead”, Lanette has over ten years of experience in the software industry, including her current role as Quality Lead with Adobe. Like many of our guests, she writes a popular testing blog, publishes technical papers and has been known to speak at a conference or two. And yes, she’s on Twitter.

In part I of our interview, we get her thoughts on testers vs. hardware; the idea of “quality advocacy”; why unemployed testers should study The Price is Right;  life as a shift manager at a charity bingo parlor; and much more. When you’re done with one, be sure to check out part II.

uTest: What’s the biggest trend/challenge in testing that no one’s talking about yet?
LC: Testers are breaking out of the office like William Wallace, but with laptops, not swords. How much more affordable is it for a company to buy a great laptop every few years than all sorts of different hardware? Let someone else manage the machines so we can focus on the testing. Of course, this isn’t appropriate for every context, but I’m interested in going beyond multi-boot systems, local images, and to truly getting out of the business of managing hardware. I’m interested in cloud-based imaging. Part of my personal strategy of investing in one laptop that can run multiple operating systems is the temping ability to verify the scope of a bug on one machine. To do that without even rebooting with more built-in logging and debugging tools is really the next step to freedom from hardware and location-reliant testing.

uTest: In the last year, we’ve noticed you blog about the prospect of unemployment. What advice do you have for other testers who find themselves in this situation? Should they just wake up at noon, watch The Price is Right and eat nachos until a hiring manager comes knocking on the door? Or should they try to keep their skills sharp? If it’s the latter, then please elaborate on how to go about this.
LC: The Price is Right can teach you something amazing about interviewing. Have you ever noticed who they pick? It is the most enthusiastic people with the best stories. Come on down, job candidate! You’re the next contestant on The Job is Right. Can you imagine what The Price is Right would be like if they picked a contestant who was just above it all? Laughed at the fabulous prizes? Ignored the host? Win or lose, play the job interview game with style and be memorable. Also, I do like nachos. Layer the cheese and make them in the oven.

Well, rather than bouts of unemployment, I’ve been facing one very long pending layoff. I’ve not yet experienced the unemployment part, so maybe your readers can help me out with their advice when that happens. As a part of the CS5 team, my layoff isn’t effective until June, and it impacted every tester on my current team. The day I first became aware of my pending layoff, I felt a bit powerless. I realized that it was really up to me to decide what to do next. I decided that I wanted to end well and finish the project, and I really wanted to complete my 10 years at Adobe. I am proud of my work for my entire career at Adobe, and that hasn’t changed with my layoff notice.

Here’s what I recommend for those of you working in a job that you know is ending:

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Santhosh Tuppad has high hopes for the software testing industry – and he’s here to tell you all about them as this month’s featured guest blogger. Over the last year or so, Santhosh has proven to be one of the top testers in our global community: He is an active member of the uTest forums, Bug Battles and, of course, numerous customer test cycles. His rise through the ranks of the uTest community was highlighted as part of our Tester Spotlight series.

Aside from uTest, Santhosh is a member of the Weekend Testing, and received his formal training from fellow guest blogger Pradeep Soundararajan. For more on his background, go check out his blog or follow him on Twitter.

As you could have guessed from the title, this post is about my wishful thinking of software testing. Of course, I can’t be expected to cover all of my wishes in a single blog post, but I have done my best to highlight a few areas of great potential – and here they are:

More active software testing communities
As many of you know from being a member of uTest, software communities will play a big part in the future of testing. Although uTest is a global community, I envision similar communities popping up in every city, state and country. The Weekend Testing group, of which I’m also a member, is another great example of this.

Software testing in schools and colleges

Pradeep Soundararajan – my testing coach – said that kids sometimes ask better questions about a product than what many so-called experienced testers ask. He talked to me about how questions from school kids would lead them to solutions in their own software and products. They asked some very intelligent questions and I was amazed by the perspective they showed. It made me wonder, “Why are students  not taught about thinking (example: lateral thinking) as a skill in most schools and colleges?”

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No bugs were harmed in the planning of this Bug Battle… but they will be — starting Friday at noon ET.  That’s right uTesters — it’s time for our 2nd quarter Bug Battle competition!

And this time, we’ll be checking out the top location-based check-in services: Foursquare vs. Gowalla vs. Brightkite.  We’ll be letting our community put these innovators to the test (their public-facing websites, their check-in services, their mobile apps and their integrations with Facebook and Twitter).

And after the testing phase is complete on Monday, May 24th, we’ll be sending a survey to all participating testers to compare the usability and feature set of these three leaders.

What’s in it for testers?  Well, bragging rights, sure.  But we’ll also be doling out nearly $4,000 in prize money to the testers who report the most severe/interesting bugs and provide the most insightful survey feedback.

So it’s time to do what you do best, uTesters!  Log into your uTest account and scour these apps for quality defects and report them in a clear, concise way.  And if you do it better than your peers, you could be named the Q2 Bug Battle winner and earn some big prize money for your time.

Last year, we were psyched to take home the “Best New Company of the Year” for 2009 at the American Business Awards (a.k.a. The Stevies). This year, we’re even more fired up to let you know that the members of the Stevie Awards’ Board have named uTest a finalist in three top categories:

1. Most Innovative Company Of The Year
2. Best Blog in the Computer Services category (for this blog) and
3. B2B Communications Campaign Of The Year (for the Bug Battle!)

Although we’ve made the shortlist, we definitely have our work cut out for us to bring in these big wins. Take the Comm Campaign category for example — we’re up against huge software leaders, including EMC and Novell. See the complete list of finalists here!

The American Business Awards are the U.S.’s premier business awards program. More than 2,700 entries in virtually every industry were submitted for consideration this year. The winners will be announced on Monday, June 21 at the Marriott Marquis Hotel in Times Square/NYC. More than 600 execs from around the globe are expected to attend.

Let us know if you’ll be in NYC that week. We’d love to meet up and fill you in on the latest!

Where are you going, where have you been? Yes it’s the title of a creepy short story, but it also happens to characterize the  fastest-growing segment of consumer applications.

Location-based apps like Foursquare, Gowalla and Brightkite – apps that let you check in, find hot spots and get rewarded with prizes & accolades – are attracting thousands of new users every day. Just how popular have they become? They’re sooo popular, even uTest CEO and co-founder Doron Reuveni has attained ‘Mayor’ status (see if you can guess where).

Why am I telling you all this? Because these  geo-based apps are the subject of our latest uTest Bug Battle. We figured that since Foursquare, Gowalla and Brightkite are all global in scope, that they would provide our global tester community with a challenge unlike any of our previous bug-hunting competitions.

The Bug Battle gets started this Friday, May 14 at Noon (ET). Testers will be given ten days to search these applications (both web and mobile) for the most compelling bugs, and to report them through our online platform. We’ll be dishing out nearly $4,000 in prize money for Top Tester, Best Bug, Best Survey Feedback, Best Mobile Bug and a bunch of other categories.

More details on this Bug Battle – as well the rules, prizes and deadlines –can be found in this uTest Forums thread. Of course, we’ll be providing frequent updates via our blog, forums and newsletters.

Special note: This competition is available ONLY to members of the uTest community. Not a member yet? Find out more about the benefits of joining uTest.

Whenever a major crime has been committed – or whenever foul play is involved – a software bug is sure to be one of the usual suspects.

Without the right to a fair trial however, many of these bugs are  found guilty of crimes they did not commit. Perhaps a witness confused them with a similar looking feature, or maybe they were framed by a developer…

In any event, when they are to blame, software bugs hardly ever face the cruel and unusual punishment they deserve. Most of the time, they are back on the streets web the very next day. Where’s the outrage? Won’t somebody think of the user!

So just how lawless have software bugs become? Here’s a list of recent crimes for which they are suspects:

Market Manipulation
“The House Financial Services securities subcommittee plans to hold a hearing to examine what caused the US stock market to plunge almost 1,000 points in a half hour Thursday, and it called on the SEC to investigate possible problems with computer algorithms that may have exacerbated a human order-entry error and led to the precipitous drop. ‘Reports have surfaced that much of this movement was potentially as a result of a computer glitch,’ Committee Chairman Kanjorski said. ‘We cannot allow a technological error to spook the markets and cause panic. This is unacceptable. In this day and age and with the use of such complex technology, we should be able to make sure that our financial markets are effectively monitored and investors are protected.’” (From Slashdot)

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Up until last week, Internet domain names were a pretty mature business.  Then the folks at ICANN decided to shake things up by enabling non-Latin character ccTLDs (country code Top Level Domains – like .co.il and .co.uk ).  What does that mean for you?  Well, here’s a quick test.  Try visiting this URL: http://موقع.وزارة-الأتصالات.مصر/.

What you’re looking at is an Internationalized Domain Name, or IDN for short.  It doesn’t contain western or “Latin” letters, and chances are everything you know about URLs is about to get turned backwards (in this case, literally).  What’s worse is that different browsers handle this kind of domain name differently, and there’s no one right answer.

Are you a software tester?  Then your ship has come in because IDNs open up a whole new category of software bugs.  Let’s take a look at a few big trouble areas, but hang on tight because this gets goofy fast.

Read more…

According to Twitter co-founder Biz Stone, Twitter now has 105,779,710 registered users—and is adding 300,000 new users a day. Attempting to weed through all of the fluff can be daunting! So, if you’re interested in jumping into the Twittersphere or are just looking to follow the leading journalists and thinkers in software testing today, check out our “Top 20 Software Testing Tweeps” list below (in no particular order)!

1. James Bach – @jamesmarcusbach
2. Michael Bolton – @michaelbolton
3. Testing At The Edge Of Chaos (Matt Heusser) — @mheusser
4. Tester Tested! (Pradeep Soundararajan) – @testertested
5. StickyMinds.com (Better Software Mag) — @StickyMinds
6. SearchSoftwareQuality.com (Yvette Francino) — @yvettef or @SoftwareTestTT
7. Google Testing Blog (Copeland/Whittaker) – @copelandpatrick or @googletesting
8. Testy Redhead (Lanette  Creamer) – @lanettecream
9. Test Obsessed (Elizabeth Hendrickson) — @testobsessed
10. SD Times — @sdtimes
11. Jon Bach – @jbtestpilot
12. Software Test & Performance Mag –- @STPCollab
13. Software Testing Club (Rosie Sherry) — @rosiesherry or @testingclub
14. Lisa Crispin — @lisacrispin
15. Fred Beringer — @fredberinger
16. uTest (shameless plug! ) — @uTest
17. Weekend Testing (Santhosh/Parimala/Ajay) – @weekendtesting or
18. Santhosh Tuppad — @santhoshst
19. Ajay Balamurugadas — @ajay184f
20. Parimala Shankariah — @curioustester

Update! Thanks for everyone’s recommendations. Here are a few we missed: @sbarber, @QualityFrog, @dailytestingtip, @sdelesie, @Rob_Lambert, @chris_mcmahon, @hexawise, @marlenac, @shrinik, @sbharath1012, @sellib, @TestingNews.

Please feel free to add any active Tweeps you think we may have missed in the comments! We welcome your recommendations.