Session Based Test Management (SBTM)

Better Testing


Session Based Test Management is a formalized approach that uses the concept of charters and the sessions for performing the Exploratory Testing.A session is not a test case or bug report. It is the reviewable product produced by chartered and uninterrupted test effort. A session can last from 60 to 90 minutes, but there is no hard and fast rule on the time spent for testing. If a session lasts closer to 45 minutes, we call it a short session. If it lasts closer to two hours, we call it a long session. Each session designed depends on the tester and the charter. After the session is completed, each session is debriefed. The primary objective in the debriefing is to understand and accept the session report. Another objective is to provide feedback and coaching to the tester. The debriefings would help the manager to plan the sessions in future and also to estimate the time required for testing the similar functionality.


From WikiPedia:

Session-based testing is a software test method that aims to combine accountability and exploratory testing to provide rapid defect discovery, creative on-the-fly test design, management control and metrics reporting. The method can also be used in conjunction with Scenario testing. Session-based testing was developed in 2000 by Jonathan and James Bach.

The debriefing session is based on agenda called PROOF.

  • Past: What happened during the session?
  • Results: What was achieved during the session?
  • Outlook: What still needs to be done?
  • Obstacles: What got in the way of good testing?
  • Feeling: How does the tester feel about all this?

The time spent “on charter” and “on opportunity” is also noted. Opportunity testing is any testing that doesn’t fit the charter of the session. The tester is not restricted to his charter, and hence allowed to deviate from the goal specified if there is any scope of finding an error.
A session can be broadly classified into three tasks (namely the TBS metrics).

  • Session test up: Time required in setting up the application under test.
  • Test design and execution: Time required scanning the product and test.
  • Bug investigation and reporting: Time required finding the bugs and reporting to the concerned.

The entire session report consists of these sections:

  • Session charter (includes a mission statement, and areas to be tested)
  • Tester name(s)
  • Date and time started
  • Task breakdown (the TBS metrics)
  • Data files
  • Test notes
  • Issues
  • Bugs

For each session, a session sheet is made. The session sheet consist of the mission of testing, the tester details, duration of testing, the TBS metrics along with the data related to testing like the bugs, notes, issues etc. Data files if any used in the testing would also be enclosed. The data collected during different testing sessions are collected and exported to Excel or some database. All the sessions, the bugs reported etc can be tracked using the unique id associated with each. It is easy for the client as well to keep track. Thus this concept of testers testing in sessions and producing the required output which are traceable is called as Session based test management.
Tools available for Session Based Testing:

References – Software Testing Guide Book – Software Testing Research Lab – http://www.SofTReL.org

 


Webinar: Beyond Software Testing with Agile Team Support in Visual Studio 11 Beta

Uncategorized

Event Date: 03/20/2012 02:00 PM Eastern Daylight Time


Presenter: Matt Nunn, Senior Product Manager for Visual Studio, Microsoft
Visual Studio 11 Beta brings much more to the table than just enhanced testing tools. It introduces a whole new range of agile tool support for all members of the team. Now testers and other team members who do not spend their time writing code (business analysts, product owners, ScrumMasters, agile testers, stakeholders, etc.) can be even more integrated into the process of developing software, from testing requirements to providing feedback, and participating with the whole team from planning to execution.
Experience firsthand the enhanced functionalities included in the Test Professional product including storyboarding, agile team planning and management, and stakeholder feedback. You’ll see Visual Studio 11 Beta’s new exploratory testing tools, enhancements to IntelliTrace, new debugging and diagnostic tools, and tools that ensure developers build the highest quality code possible.


You’ll learn how Visual Studio 11 Beta offers:
– New agile planning and management tooling
– Help closing the agile loop from storyboards to getting stakeholder feedback
– Tools for exploratory testing
– Code review through the My Work pane
– IntelliTrace during development, test, and production
– And how all of this is available either on premise or in the cloud

Visual Studio 11 Beta significantly enhances the capabilities available to testers and other non-development professionals. With its enhanced functionality and improved integration, Visual Studio 11 Beta has everything agile team members have ever wanted.

Click here to register for the webinar

HP Israel [Unified Functional Testing (UFT)] invites Tarun Lalwani for feedback conference

HP Israel [Unified Functional Testing (UFT)] invites Tarun Lalwani for feedback conference

Uncategorized

About Tarun [For those who dont know..]

Tarun Lalwani started his carrier with Infosys back in 2004. He has been a protagonist since then in the Test Automation community. He has over 17,000 posts to his credit on various QTP forums. He started a blog, KnowledgeInbox.com, in 2005, on which he has posted over 100 articles. He has also developed several freeware tools and made them available to the automation community.

He has authored two bestselling books on QTP, And I thought I knew QTP and QuickTest Professional Unplugged. His first book, QuickTest Professional Unplugged, won the best automation book award at the 2nd Annual ATI Automation Honors presented by Automated Testing Institute (ATI).
Tarun has many awards to his name. He was awarded for the best feedback on QTP 11 Beta by HP in June 2010.
=======================================================
HP’s Israel R&D team, which works on its Unified Functional Testing (UFT) — formerly known as QuickTest Professional (QTP) — and Business Process Testing (BPT) products at its Quality Center (QC), recently invited Tarun Lalwani to Israel for a four-day feedback conference.


The conference was organized by HP to gather Tarun’s feedback on its tools, and also to share with him some of the features of its upcoming releases. This was the first time HP had invited any user from outside of Israel for feedback.

During the four days of the conference, Tarun had a series of meetings with different teams within HP, including the QTP/ BPT Dev, QTP Management, QTP QA, QTP documentation and Service Test teams. He also had a chance to meet their Ukraine and China teams over video conference.
The meetings involved discussions on various aspects, including:

  • Likes and dislikes of the user community on the QTP and BPT tools
  • Usability feedback for the QTP and BPT UI and features
  • Requests for new features in QTP and BPT to increase their usability and flexibility
  • Focus of the QTP QA teams on stable releases
  • Improvement of documentation and help to increase usage of help files by users
  • Debugging enhancements required in QTP and BPT
  • Need for new development language support

Tarun presented his points of view on QTP and UFT to HP’s management and made suggestions on how to take UFT to the next level. A few of his sessions were dedicated to listing out ways by which QTP can be improved as a product.
He was also allowed to have a sneak peak at the latest build of HP’s upcoming QTP and BPT releases. A few of the new features in the upcoming UFT release are:

  • New improved IDE with IntelliSense for classes
  • Multiple Document Interface (MDI) features for opening multiple tests within QTP
  • Integration of BPT as well as Service Test into QTP (giving rise to the name, UFT)
  • Insight — an innovative, new image-recognition feature for carrying out image-based automation
  • New canvas for designing test flow

Some of event pictures:

From Left to Right – Rachel, Tarun, Ayal, Avivi, Iris
Meeting with HP Team
Meeting with HP Team
Meeting 2 with HP Team
Meeting 2 with HP Team

Career in Software Testing – Life as a Tester

Testing Basics


(An Article for beginners and fresher testers)
The myths revolving around the field of Software testing that it is a field which does not require any specialization of any sort as far as skill or talent is concerned has proved to be wrong. It is has in fact become the backbone of every organization now and it is the tester who brings out the maximum portion of revenue to the business due to its capability to find bugs at a stage where if left uncaught could prove really expensive for the business.Typically, you can find two category of software testers- Black Box and White Box Testers. Being a Black Box tester keeps you away from all the hassles of programming language and you seem to enjoy your work and playing with the application just like the end user does. So it gives you more insight to think about the way the end user can perform his actions and accordingly find the bugs.

White Box testers on the other hand have a life which plays around the programming techniques as well as their capability to analyse more into coding and can be helpful to the development team. There is no difference in the salary anyways as far as differentiating between their categories is concerned. A tester earns the same as any other developer does since they equally play a vital role in the enhancement of the organization.

Life as a Software tester does not seem to be as easy as it appears for the reason that they act as a foundation to any product for their ability to find hidden bugs even under the circumstances when the product appears to be free of bugs. In case, it gets missed by the testers, it the organization who has to borne the losses in terms of money as well as reputation. So as a tester, you need to make sure that you get yourself familiar in depth on the application you intend to work.

With capability of finding bugs at an early stage, a tester if often appreciated for his work without which there would have been thousands of dollars spent unnecessary on doing something which could have been caught by the expertise of the testers. Working for 8-9 hours in an office is as much essential for a tester as it is for a developer.

It can be figured out from above the importance of a Software Tester in an IT industry and his life does not seem to be that much easy as it appears to be.

Guest article by Varun Arora.

Also Read – Why Software Testing is a challenging job?


Database Testing Basics – How to test and what to test?

Database Testing


[Note – This post is for beginners. More details on DB Testing are available here –
More on Database Testing –

What is Database Testing?
Database testing involves the tests to check the exact values which have been retrieved from the database by the web or desktop application. Data should be matched correctly as per the records are stored in the database.

How to Test Database?
Database testing is one of the major testing which requires tester to expertise in checking tables, writing queries and procedures. Testing can be performed in web application or desktop and database can be used in the application like SQL or Oracle. There are many projects like banking, finance, health insurance which requires extensive database testing. Below is the discussed point that how to test database: Database Testing

  • First of all, tester should make sure that he understands all the application totally and which database is being used with the testing application.
  • Figure out all the tables which exist for the application and try to write all the database queries for the tables to execute since there are many things which are really complex, so you can take the assistance of developers and figure out the queries. Test each and every table carefully for the data added. This is the best process for the testers to perform the DB testing, it can be done for any application and it does not matter application is small or big.
  • If things are really complex then tester can obtain the query from the developer to test the appropriate functionality.

Database is the spine of the application and tester should make sure to test very carefully. It requires skill, proficiency and sound knowledge.

What to Test in a Database?

  • Check all the functionality which is happening on every action performed in the application. Actions can include deletion, addition or save options. Check whether the added record is added in the DB with the exact value. Check the deleted record gets removed from the database. These are major roles which need to be monitored seriously.
  • Nowadays database is getting more complex due to the business logic which plays an important role for the applications. Tester should make sure that values have been added correctly after the implementation of the business rules.

Hence, these are the above mentioned basic things that how and what to test in a database. Database testing is really a complex task and it should always be performed if tester is much experienced in this field.

– Article by Mandeep Singh
More on Database Testing –