The adverse impact(s) of poor testing methods – A tester’s interpretation from a newspaper report.

I am unsure if you know, but Amit Trivedi (An Indian music composer, lyricist, and singer) undoubtedly has a melodious voice and excellent music-composing skills.

His song. Pashmina, from Fitoor (2016), can give any music lover a soothing pleasure.

If you are reading this post, you may want to try the song on your favorite music streaming application, and if you choose to do so, pay attention, especially to the last few seconds where the guitar is played beautifully. I loved that.

Back now? Good

So what about the Pashmina song, and what does it have to do with testing? Nothing.

It was just for your brain’s refreshment. So thank yourself now and me later.

Now, I am a vivid reader of The Hindu (One of India’s daily published newspapers). So every morning, when I pick up the newspaper and before even opening the front page, I pray that I must see at least all pages full of news on testing.

LOL! What a lunatic thinking style. And…

Trust me (in the 21st century) or not, the God of Testing almost always listens to my prayers and gives something to read on Tests, Testing, and Testers. The lucky tester I am. No?

So one day, in December 2022, I noticed an exciting news (article) on complaints about using obsolete testing methods and techniques to detect and confirm contamination of Pashmina Shwals with Shahtoosh fibre.

See the image below as I captured a click from the newspaper hardcopy.

A news clip from The Hindu (Delhi NCR), back in December 2022

While reading the news, I started imagining the following structure

1. Mission of testing and stakeholder(s)
2. Testing process and test cycles
3. Testing results and bug and product status reporting
4. Decisions based on results

And, here are my interpretations from the statements made in the newspaper report

Mission of testing:

1. Test to find evidence of no contamination
   • Establish the difference between two materials that have similar physical properties and tangibility.
2. Test quickly and reliably.
3. Report testing results as reasonably quickly as possible so that..
   • Further testing processes and the final export approval process is quick.
   • There are no additional issues on the importing side
   • Finally, traders generate sales and revenue to remain in business

After reading the report, I found it safe to talk only about the reported observations on the Testing process, methods adopted, and consequences as mentioned in the paper because commenting on the decision process, decision-making, and decisions is not my area of expertise.

From the highlighted areas, you should be able to identify some commonalities between testing software to detect bugs and testing highly loved (at least in my part of the country) pashmina shawls to detect contamination.

I am listing down those commonalities as far as I can understand…

1. Obsolete testing methods
2. Predominantly observed limitations of old testing techniques
   • e.g. Light Microscopy and / or forensic methods, in the context of above report
   • The human expertise limitations: This may be controversial for some and require a skeptical POV, but now let’s assume what is reported as ‘As is.’
     • Increased number of false positives
3. Lack of advanced test technique(s)
   • DNA testing
   • Scanning electron microscopic tests
4. Delayed testing cycles & inconclusive results (including false positives) resulting into.
   • Loss of reputation, sales and revenue
   • Financial and criminal prosecution

Note: If you read this news closely and in iterations, let me tell you this, and I am not exaggerating (at least in my mind, LOL).

You will start appreciating that this article (news) offers great insights to a curious and attentive software tester.

1. Start reflecting on his/her testing skills
2. Understand the value of a expert tester and his tools/methods
3. Realize power of learning about testing problems in domains other than software
4. Value of context driven and good testing
5. Adverse impacts of inadequate testing methods

Now as I told you that I pray and God of Testing responds, I was praying again and this popped up on April2, 2023

See the image below as I captured a click from the newspaper hardcopy.

A news clip from The Hindu (Delhi NCR), 02 April 2023

I don’t think I need to list down the commonalities once again. But,

I repeat that you will start appreciating that this article (news) offers great insights to a curious and attentive software tester.

1. Start reflecting on his/her testing skills
2. Understand the value of a expert tester and his tools/methods
3. Realize power of learning about testing problems in domains other than software
4. Value of context-driven and good testing
5. Adverse impacts of inadequate testing methods

I enjoyed typing this post and hope you have enjoyed reading it; if not, it is okay.

Stay tuned for the next post; if I would be consistent here. LOL!

होली के रंग, बच्चों के संग

H-Hate O-Out, L-Love, I-In

ये होली के रंग हैं 
इस होली पर, एक नया सा रंग है
और सोने पे सुहागा ये 
कि इस समय हम बच्चों के संग हैं!

कल शाम से
ये बच्चे 
मुझ बोरिंग से इंसान को 
कर रहें है उत्साहित ,
और जबरदस्त तरीके से 
प्रोत्साहित!

कि कल पक्का चलना है तुम्हे 
हमारे संग 
निकलो इस, लाइफ इन दी रूम, वर्क फ्रॉम होम 
से बाहर
और खेलो हमारे साथ होली 
कभी तो हो लो मस्त मलंग !

बच्चों के कुछ प्यारे से दोस्त भी, आ गये है 
शिकायत का पुलिंदा लेकर 
कि आते नहीं तुम नीचे साथ खेलने 
मोटे पेट वाले अंकल 
बाँध रखी है पैरों में 
क्या आंटी ने 
कोई संकल?

उत्सुक, आनन्दित, प्रफुल्लित 
वाह रे ये बच्चे!
क्या है जो ना सीख पाऊं इनसे?

संभाल ली है 
इन्होने अपनी छोटी सी पिटारी 
जिसमे है 
पचास ग्राम गुलाल 
इतना ही एक दो रंग 
और 
बन्दूक जैसी छोटी सी पिचकारी!

छज्जे पर तैयार रहेगा 
कुछ लीटर पानी 
एक छोटी बाल्टी 
भतीजा रो रहा है 
बिना बात के 
बगल  में बैठा, मार के पालथी 

होली के आने पर 
इस बार 
कुछ राहत है 
कि 
अपने अपने घरों  से बाहर निकल पाएंगे 
रंग खेलेंगे 
गले अपने नये पुराने पड़ोसी को
खुले मन से लगा पाएंगे

जो मन कुछ उदास थे 
कुछ जीवन जो नाराज थे 
हो भी सकते हैं ठीक 
शायद कुछ उमंगों में 
इस बार की होली की रंगों में 

बच्चों  से सीखा 
वर्तमान में रहना 
उत्सुक रहना 
ध्यान से देखना, जानना 
ज्यादा नहीं मानना

तो निश्चय है अटल 
कल बनते हैं 
थोड़े से बच्चे 
अक्ल के कच्चे 
रंगों के सच्चे!

- संदीप गर्ग
-- स्टूडेंट ऑफ़ सॉफ्टवेयर टैस्टिंग 
-- स्टूडेंट ऑफ़ लाइफ 

Meaning of ‘Life’?

जीवन का अर्थ?

सुना है शब्दों  के अर्थ होतें हैं ?
या शायद नहीं?

मैं मानता हूँ कि 
शब्दों के लिये सिर्फ नये शब्द होतें हैं 

अर्थ का 
क्या अर्थ है?

जीव की यात्रा होती है 

अनुभवों की यात्रा 

मैं और तुम, सब जीव हैं
अभी सजीव 
और बस अभी 
निर्जीव 

सजीव से निर्जीव की यात्रा 
और 
निर्जीव  से सजीव की यात्रा 
कोई धर्म , कोई अवतार , कोई महापुरुष 
क्या तुम्हे बता सकता है?

हो सकता है 

लेकिन 
अनुभव की यात्रा मेरी है 
यात्रा में आनंद है 
अर्थ में बस नये शब्द!

संदीप गर्ग 
स्टूडेंट ऑफ़ सॉफ्टवेयर टेस्टिंग 
स्टूडेंट ऑफ़ लाइफ 

The untitled, The unpublished, until now…

मैं निद्रामग्न एक सत्यान्वेषी,
अचानक उठा, कुछ जागा, और देख पाया 
भ्रष्ट होते,
कुछ नष्ट होते 
अपनी विधा, विद्या, कला और विज्ञान को,
धूमिल होती अपनी व्यावसायिक छवि को!

सोचा कुछ क्षणों को 
विचारमग्न रहा कुछ दिनों को,
कि,
क्यों बन गया मैं प्रतिनिधि 
श्रंगार और भक्ति रस का ?
जबकि गुरु दक्षिणा दी है मैनें 
शिष्य बनके ‘शोक रस’ की शिक्षा का!

जिज्ञासा और प्रश्नों में डूबे अस्त्र शस्त्र चलाता था 
वाद, संवाद, और कभी विवाद के अश्वों पे होके सवार,
आह
अब क्यों कुन्द हो गयी उन शस्त्रों की धार?

कहाँ गयी निडरता, नीति और योजना?
कहाँ गया कौशल, कहा गयी सजगता ?
कहा गयी निपुणता, उपयुक्त समय पर
सत्य सूचना सुनाने की कि जोखिम है

अथवा ये सूचना देने की 
कि मैं समर्थ हूँ यह कहने में 
कि जो होगा अच्छा होगा!

कुछ महिमामंडित यंत्र 
कुछ अविकसित तंत्र 
कुछ आत्ममुग्धता 
क्या  बन गए मेरी मुख्य साधना?

जिज्ञासा, प्रश्न, विश्लेषण, चिंतन
स्वाध्याय, अध्ययन, ज्ञानार्जन, स्व-कौशल
क्या बन कर रह गये प्रतीकात्मक मनोरंजन 
और दिखावे के साधन?

समय कम है 
जीवन का 
जीविका का
और  
उससे भी सर्वोपरि 
स्वयं के शुद्धिकरण का!

चिंता सरल है
चिंतन सरस पर कठिन 
शोकाकुल करना, दुखद समाचार देना, सचेत करना 
अप्रिय लग सकता है 
पर यही तो कर्तव्य है मेरा !

अगर मैं रहा मतिभ्रष्ट 
अगर चलता रहा होकर पथभ्रष्ट 
तो निश्चित है कि 
मैं करूंगा अपमान 
अपनी शिक्षा का 
अपने गुरुओं का 
और कारण बनूँगा
अपने विज्ञान, कला, कौशल और चिंतन के नाश का !

उठो, जागो!


२१ नवंबर २०१७ की एक रात, एक स्वप्न या मनोस्थिति या सत्य या भय या कुछ और ?

संदीप गर्ग 
‘सॉफ्टवेयर टैस्टिंग  का एक छात्र’

The cost of Inconsistency…

I first published this blog in July 2014, Then, stopped abruptly. After few years, I restarted blogging with a brand new one Blog – https://thetestanalyst.wordpress.com/. Somehow, I was not consistent here as well. One day I paid the cost as I made a login related error and I was barred from accessing the site for adding posts. I tried multiple times to recover the account but no success. I decided to come back and found that fortunately, the ownership of https://testingjourney.wordpress.com/ remains with me.

I thought to move the content from now abandoned blog to this one but then decided to post all the links here (starting from first post in April 2018 [start] up to November 2018 [end]).

So, here are the links for all the posts.

https://thetestanalyst.wordpress.com/2018/04/09/qc-wallclock-users/

https://thetestanalyst.wordpress.com/2018/05/01/mind-map-the-biases-and-the-choices/

https://thetestanalyst.wordpress.com/2018/07/22/nice-sunday-in-bengaluru-as-i-saw-it/

https://thetestanalyst.wordpress.com/2018/11/03/manual-functional-v-s-non-functional-why/

https://thetestanalyst.wordpress.com/2018/11/05/mot-30-days-of-api-testing-day-1/

https://thetestanalyst.wordpress.com/2018/11/05/mot-30-days-of-api-testing-day-2/

https://thetestanalyst.wordpress.com/2018/11/05/mot-30-days-of-api-testing-day-3/

https://thetestanalyst.wordpress.com/2018/11/05/mot-30-days-of-api-testing-day-4/

https://thetestanalyst.wordpress.com/2018/11/05/mot-30-days-of-api-testing-day-5/

https://thetestanalyst.wordpress.com/2018/11/05/team-my-point-of-view/

https://thetestanalyst.wordpress.com/2018/11/07/mot-30-days-of-api-testing-day-6/

https://thetestanalyst.wordpress.com/2018/11/11/testing-challenge-test-without-giving-inputs-part-1/

https://thetestanalyst.wordpress.com/2018/11/10/assembling-a-game-with-kids-team-work/

The question for me is would I be consistent? Let me retry and time will decide.

Day 399 – More than a year of Thinking, Study and Practice

I am back exactly after 1 year, 1 month, 3 days. In my first post, I suspected that would I be able to continue this blog? YES. I would be and this time more frequent and responsible posts.

In last few years I did some fundamental changes to improve my testing skills in terms of Thinking, Study and Practice. I introduced some good books, articles, videos to my Testing library. Then, I joined weekend testing on skype and attended sessions on that. I actively involved myself in different Testing activities like Meetups, Conferences in order to learn. I started commenting (with good enough knowledge I had at that certain time) on different blog posts, articles either to appreciate the author for insights, asking questions or contrasting the views. All for mutual learning and not to criticize someone’s work

I started identifying ‘Context’ while I test some product / project for my employer or as a freelancing activity and I became more confident. In all, to keep it short, Everyday more of Thinking, Study and Practice of Software Testing. I am happier than ever.

I will post today about some books that are a MUST (from my perspective) for every Professional Software Tester

As I said fundamental changes, I started reading (and thinking, making sense out of) Jerry Weinberg’s books. One of the treasure is Perfect Software And Other Illusions About Testing and another one is Exploring Requirements: Quality Before Design

These two books, when you study sincerely, take notes and apply ideas in your thinking and practice, give your testing skills a new dimension, an invitation to “Think Deep” and apply.

As James Bach said in some of the lessons (Lesson 17 about Epistemology & Lesson 18 about Cognitive Psychology) in his classic Lessons Learned in Software Testing: A Context-Driven Approach, that “…lots of people who never studied these subjects have done good testing, but if you want to do better than good, learn this stuff.…”. In analogy with the subjects, similar I can say about the worth of the Jerry’s work as I mentioned above.

So let’s say you are interested in understanding what a Test Case is (beyond what is commonly understood), open chapter 22 of Exploring Requirements...to have a better idea of “Test Case”.

In my further posts, I will talk more about treasures like these and I may also post some snippets (the lessons, chapters, paragraphs that hit my brain deeply) from books I read, after getting permissions from the authors.

Happy Learning and thanks for reading 🙂

Day 1 – Attended a Workshop by Santhosh and Business Talks by Praveen

Day 1

I attended a workshop in Gurgaon arranged by Smitha and delivered by Santhosh Tuppad. Santhosh delivered a speech on Hacking followed by Hadoop Testing by Ankit. Both were good but as a newbie in Hadoop, it was kind of ‘Let me think’ about it stuff about Hadoop Testing. Santhosh’s talk actually had me realized about my less knowledge about ‘Computer’ Itself. One can easily link that ‘Less Knowledge’ with kind of job they are doing or just any other thing. But to me, its simply lack of that passion about ‘Computers’. So, thanks Santhosh!

He talked about ‘Hacking Mindset’ instead of ‘Teaching Security testing’ and that’s a good thing. We as a tester should own responsibility of ‘Why’ we are interested in certain kind  of testing and ‘How’ we want to learn it. Genuine guys like Santhosh can show us the path, we have to walk.

Later, in the evening, I had opportunity to talk to my brother Praveen. We had a ‘Thought Exchanging’ conversation over so many things including How to trade off between “Being a Technology Geek” and  a “Business Owner” / “Stake Holder in Business”. We agreed upon that “Culture”, ‘Like Minded People” and “Vision” plays crucial role in “Making / Suggesting Decisions”. Anyone has more tangible to add ? It reminded me of a lesson “Know your Stakeholders” from on of my favourite book “Beautiful Testing”.

Overall a fantastic day in terms of Meeting Santhosh (No doubt about it), Meet some other enthusiastic Testers involved in Security Testing, I also met Gaurav Bansal from Xebia (who actually read my first post and encouraged me as well) and finally a wonderful evening with my brother Praveen.

More to come…

Day 0 – Confessions and Thanks Giving Day to my Coaches

Preface…..

My Dear Friends, Scholars, Coaches, Critics…

This is my first blog which I created after giving a lot of thought. My thoughts about Why I want This (just because I don’t have a blog at all, NO, that’s not the reason), For Whom (For Myself so that I can ‘Impose’ my so called ‘Testing Knowledge’ to others, NO, that’s not true as well ), Would I be able to continue it given my impulsive nature (I am not sure yet but I am Committed), Who will guide me in this Testing Journey Redefined (Some of the Fine and well ‘Testing’ Educated people on this earth, Explorers, Fellows, Colleagues) Would you accept my confessions, understand me or simply Discard me (who knows?) because you have other far Informative, Interesting blogs by Intelligent testers across the globe?

So I thought all about such questions and I found that except everything I thought about, one thing is true that it’s my passion for Software Testing that led me to instantiate this blog. I am not even giving a single thought while writing this because I want to connect to YOU in a simple “non-mechanical” manner. A simple human being who is seeking Software Testing pearls, Want to be a Professional Tester, a Scholar and learn from everyone who is willing to teach me provided I fulfill the prerequisites of their ‘Lesson Classes’.

I titled my blog as “Testing Journey Redefined” because, so far whatever I did in Testing, I think I was unable to “Realize” that in terms of ‘Actual Understanding of Software Testing’, ‘Contribution to Testing Community’, ‘Connecting to community’, ‘Value add I did so far or may be didn’t’.

So I decided to redefine my ‘Testing Journey’. Now, I would like to thank some great Testers (I interacted personally, over chat only, email communication, read papers / blogs / books / articles)

I am thankful to…

James Bach (http://www.satisfice.com) (we had a little skype chat few months back over ‘Test Strategy’) and his insightful answers on my questions, actually made me realized the “Emptiness” in me as a True Testing professional.

Dr. Cem Kaner (http://www.context-driven-testing.com/) whose papers (not all but certain) opened my eyes (I believe a bit late but yes I am AWAKE).

My brother Praveen who is a Technology geek and he made me realize the value of Technology Knowledge for a Testing professional.

Santhosh Tuppad (http://www.testinsane.com), not only because he is a good tester, but also because he is a straightforward person which whom I spent (not spent, Invested) few hours and we shared our thoughts about Personal Thinking, Experiences and Testing as well

Pradeep Sundararajan (http://testertested.blogspot.in/). See He Ho of moolya.com :). It was my tough time and he helped me in coming out of that.

Michael Bolton (http://www.developsense.com) for his insightful blogs

Shrini Kulkarni (http://shrinik.blogspot.in) – wow what a Thinker….

Alan Page (http://angryweasel.com/blog/) for teaching ‘What should be automated’. It’s a new way for me to think about Automation

Ajay Balamurugdas (http://enjoytesting.blogspot.in/) – His passion and contribution to testing community is admirable

Parimala Hariprasad (http://curioustester.blogspot.in/) – Some of the testing lessons and professional learnings really helped me in Think Big

Twitter 🙂

So Thank you to all of you. The people I mentioned above are my very first coaches (As I admit, soem of them may not even recognize me as their ‘Testing Student’ and that’s completely acceptable) on this “Redefined Journey”.

When I came out of my comfort zone (in fact a closed dark room of self-created Testing Practitioner Palace), and got “Opportunity” to “Talk”, “Study”, “Listen”, “Think” about the Real ‘Software Testing’ as Practised, Explored, Understood, Realized by these people, I found a way to Redefine my Journey.

Would I be able to understand ‘Software Testing’ the way it should be understood?

Would I be successful to continue this journey with great achievements?

What would be my learning curve?

What would be my honest and worthy contribution to ‘Testing Community?’

Answers are hidden, but, I believe I would be able to achieve my goals because it’s only the passion for this knowledge, I ‘Redefined’ my ‘Testing Journey’ and I will continue Walking, Running, Learning….

More to come…

-Sandeep Garg