What’s cool about the training aspiring testers / fresher’s are subjected to?

Well, this blog is actually inspired by the excellent training programs that are conjured up to train fresher’s from campus in the field of Software Testing. The investment in terms of time, effort and money is just phenomenal. They typically go through a series of lectures, power point presentations, quizzes, self-reading (more like mugging up definitions for your board exams), etc… for a period of 3 – 6 months at the end of which they take up exams (again very similar to the board exams conducted by our prestigious universities). And the interesting point to note here is that these very same companies lament the fact that the university curriculum does not really prepare students for the industry. Talk about hypocrisy.

          I am not sure how many hours Sachin Tendulkar spent in classrooms, theoretically learning about the nuances of batting; listening to lectures and power point presentations rather than honing his skills on the field. Or for that matter how many lectures Aamir Khan had to listen to learn the art of acting. Well I really don’t think they would have spent too many valuable hours listening to just theoretical concepts. They are excelling in their fields due to the fact that they learnt from their seniors by observing them, picking up tips from their respective coaches, honing their skills with hours of practice, being unafraid to make mistakes with the conviction that it will only help them become a better practitioner in their chosen field.

          This is true of not only sports and the film industry. Look at the people who paint our houses so well, or our excellent carpenters. They did not pick up their skills in the classroom. Which brings us to the question – “Why can’t we do the same in the software industry? Especially Software Testing”. We can introduce fresher’s from campus to Software Testing by first letting them observe how some experienced Testers test applications / products, then engage them in ‘Paired Testing’ sessions with experienced Testers and giving them good direction to do a lot of self-learning in the Software Testing space. One really good link where there is a consolidated source of key things an aspiring tester should learn is – 

http://prabhatnayak.blogspot.com/2011/11/roadmap-for-aspiring-tester.html

          Apart from this, there are also some great Software Testing experts, whose articles one can read and follow their blogs to get regular updates on Software Testing and also new approaches to Testing, some of them are listed below – 

http://www.satisfice.com/blog/

http://jonbox.wordpress.com/

http://testertested.blogspot.com/

http://www.developsense.com/blog/

http://testobsessed.com/

Using a Mind-Map to help you Test better

Well to start off with, this technique is surely not rocket science. I was introduced to this technique by Pradeep Soundararajan, one of the most respected Software Testers in India who blew me off my feet with the sheer simplicity of the technique. A Mind-Map is essentially a very simple way by which a Tester can visually represent all the hard work he has done in a graphical manner. This include the features he has tested, the questions (both resolved and unresolved) he had about the product under test, the bugs that he uncovered during testing and so on.

            Now, you may have a question as to how a Mind-Map can actually help us as Software Testers? Well, how many times have we faced a situation where we have done a lot of sanity / exploratory testing without really documenting them and at a later point in time, not really being too sure about the Test coverage / the features that we have tested. Consider another situation where the testing team has got a clarification from the development team and not documented it anywhere. At a later point in time, there could be an issue where both the development and testing teams claim that they are correct.

            Using a Mind-Map can help us document all this and more as is evident in the Mind-Map below (the Mind-Map shown below is for a GL Posting Entry in the FI module in SAP) – 

 

            We start with creating a central node for the ‘Test Case / Feature’ to be tested.  Next, we attach the ‘Test Case’ document (if available) as a sub node. The ‘Process / Functionality’ (features in scope) is listed as the next sub node. And next we get on to the action – ‘Test Execution’ where we list down the exact test steps that we run, when a particular test cycle has been run, what are the areas where there is an issue and needs to be flagged and so on. ‘Questions’ is also another sub node that can be added, where we document the questions / queries that we have raised along with the responses that we have received. And lastly our favorite node ‘Bugs / Issues’ where we document the bugs that we have uncovered along with the flag number (if applicable) from the ‘Test Execution’ and the ‘Defect Id’ from the defect tracking tool.