Testing is done by our unique imagination. When you think testing is done by best practice and fancy processes then don't be surprise that you're not doing testing, instead you're having an inventory just like what the grocery store are conducting, it is consider an unskilled labor. Unless the main reason you are testing is for marketing purposes to add flavor to a product rather that to give justice to the people using your product.

Why test?

Patriot Missile Defense System, 1991

The U.S. Patriot missile defense system is a scaled-back version of the strategic defense iniative ("Star Wars") program proposed by President Ronald Reagan. It was first put to use in the Gulf War as a defense for Iraqui Scud missiles. Although there were many news stories touting the success of the system, it did fail to defend against several missiles, including on that killed 28 U.S. soldiers in Dhahran, Saudi Arabia. Analysis found that a software bug was the problem. A small timing error in the system's clock accumulated to the point that after 14 hours, the tracking system was no longer accurate. In the Dhahran attac, the system had been operating for more than 100 hours.

Let's home our mind to that disaster. Being smart doesn't mean we need to eliminate software completely and get back to manual. Allow me to coined the idea to any situation. Assuming you have a medical software that repeateldy create a calculation error or even a simple color labeling error. Do you think it's safe or profitable to use your software? If you produced that buggy software, are you happy to have your name on it? If you think testing only exists for marketing purposes to add flavor to the product then don't be surprise that you end up back in the corner in the future. People will never use your software because they are not happy with it, worst, they will have a campaign not to use your product and apparently you lost your company.

As a tester, always have this in mind

Our main contribution as a tester is to elevate customer satisfaction by reducing the number of bugs in the program. When we think it this way before testing, our brain automatically operates the way we expect it to be.

Another meaning of IT - Independent Thinker (IT)

I was browsing photography tips and without any intention I happen to read an article that gave IT another meaning which I found out almost describe me. Let's not put more emphasis on the word "INDEPENDENT" rather let's give a shot with "INDEPENDENT THINKER" since I always collaborate with my colleague at work and the word "independent" will deviate my point. I quickly begin to relate this to software testing where I obviously used exploratory testing to uncover stubborn bugs that my company is expecting me to report.

Independent Thinkers (IT) are analytical and witty persons. They are normally self-confident and do not let themselves get worked up by conflicts and criticism. They are very much aware of their own strengths and have no doubts about their abilities. People of this personality type are often very successful in their career as they have both competence and purposefulness. Independent Thinkers are excellent strategists; logic, systematics and theoretical considerations are their world. They are eager for knowledge and always endeavour to expand and perfect their knowledge in any area which is interesting for them. Abstract thinking comes naturally to them; scientists and computer specialists are often of this type.

Independent Thinkers are specialists in their area. The development of their ideas and visions is important to them; they love being as flexible as possible and, ideally, of being able to work alone because they often find it a strain having to make their complex trains of thought understandable to other people. Independent Thinkers cannot stand routine. Once they consider an idea to be good it is difficult to make them give it up; they pursue the implementation of that idea obstinately and persistently, also in the face of external opposition.

Independent Thinkers are not the type who easily comes out of his shell. Speaking about their emotional life is also not one of their strong points. Anyway, social relationships are not particularly important to them; they are happy with just a few, close friends who find it easy to share their intellectual world. They find it difficult to establish new ties. In love, they need a lot of space and independence but this does not mean that their partner is not important to them. Independent Thinkers often make a cool and reserved impression on others; but this impression is deceptive: they can hardly bear it if people close to them should reject them. They prefer a harmonious, balanced relationship with a partner who shares their interests and with whom they can realise their visions.

How the fools think about computers

Only fools think that computers make their job done. Brilliant people think that it is him that make his job done using the computers. Humans may think slower than computers but we are not as buggy as computers do.

What I learned about test automation

I’ve overcome the first major leap of test automation: Management is behind me and has agreed to fund it by providing me the complete training with drills that carefully designed to be benefited in our industry. Now what? I've got plenty of test strategies, approaches and tactics. But where do I start? My experience has shown that just because a test is automatable doesn't necessary mean it should be automated. Therefore, analysis takes into account limited resources, budgets, schedules, and available expertise.

Test Automation Criteria
1. Is the test executed more than once?
2. Is the test run on a regular basis, i.e., reuse potential is high, such as part of regression or build testing?
3. Does the test cover most critical feature paths?
4. Does the test cover high risk areas?
5. Is the test impossible or prohibitively expensive to perform manually, such as concurrency, soak/endurance testing, performance, and memory leak detection testing?
6. Are there timing-critical components and dependencies that are a must to automate?
7. Does the test cover the most complex area (often the most error-prone)?
8. Does the test require many data combination using the same test steps (i.e., multiple data inputs for the same feature)?
9. Are the expected results constant, i.e., do not change or vary with each test? Even if the results vary, is there a percentage tolerance that could be measured as expected results?
10. Is the test outcome analysis overly time-consuming, such as expected results analysis of hundreds of outputs?
11. Does the test need to be verified on multiple software and hardware configurations?
12. Does the test automation ROI look promising and meet any organizational ROI criteria?

Sample checklist for deciding what to automate

Cases for which the answer is "yes" are good candidates for automation, provided your organizational resources and expertise allow

Software testing assures quality?

Quality comes from the people who build the product. As a tester our mission is to help them deal with the burden more effectively and efficiently. We provide them information that facilitates the assurance of quality.