Songs about Testing, QA

I was looking for some music related to Testing or QA to use in a presentation.  The pickings are slim, but I found these.


Works on My Box
- Art Leonard
http://artleonard.com
http://artleonard.com/audio/ART_LEONARD-Works_on_My_Box.mp3

Art Leonard is a Seattle-based Christian, radio and novelty songwriter / performer. His software engineering anthem, "Works on My Box", made a big splash at a major software development company and is now played to new employees at orientation.

Feature Creep

- Geordie Keitt

http://tester.geordiekeitt.com
http://tester.geordiekeitt.com/2009/08/cast2009-feature-creep-song-video/

I performed this a month or so ago at CAST2009 in Colorado Springs, where Becky Fiedler recorded it. The intro to this song went, “This song is written from the perspective of a piece of bloatware that used to be sleek and clean.” I did this during a Lightning Talks session, meaning I had to bring it in under 4 minutes. That’s why there’s little time for dramatic pauses…

Black Box

- Geordie Keitt

http://tester.geordiekeitt.com

http://tester.geordiekeitt.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/03/black-box.mp3

Cem Kaner and James Bach presented a course on Black Box Software Testing that I took circa 2003. I performed this song, Black Box, to wrap up the training.

Rapid Tester

- Geordie Keitt

http://tester.geordiekeitt.com

http://tester.geordiekeitt.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/01/rapid_tester.mp3

I this wrote on the occasion of attending my first RST class at James Bach’s Satisfice world headquarters in Front Royal, VA. I’ve edited it slightly since then as my understanding of the material has grown, but the essence remains the same. It borrows pretty much everything from Steve Earle’s beautiful song “Someday”.

Not on The Test

- Tom Chapin and John Forster
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8dAujuqCo7s

Ok, so this one isn't really about QA or software testing.  It still made me laugh and has a few poignant lessons about metrics and relying solely on a script, rather than on rational thinking:  ".. Don't think about thinking, it's not on the test!"

Bugs
- Ron Brown
http://www.songsforteaching.com/intellitunes/bugs.htm
http://www.songsforteaching.com/intellitunes/clips/bbbbugs.mp3

Another one that isn't really about software.  But it's a cute song, and how can you not like a song that starts off "B-b-b-bugs, bugs, bugs"?

Piece of Crap
- Neil Young
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ovum-GjYWKQ
http://web.archive.org/web/20040131135434/http://www.se.fit.edu/people/James/misc.html

While it's not really about software, this song fits well. I was particularly looking for a music video that James Whittaker and some of his students performed a while back. I tried all the searches I could think of, but no luck. Fortunately, my friend Martin sent me the above web archive link.

Know of any others I could add to this list?

---

This article originally appeared in my blog: All Things Quality

	My name is Joe Strazzere and I'm currently a Director of Quality Assurance. I like to lead, to test, and occasionally to write about leading and testing. Find me at http://AllThingsQuality.com.

State Of Testing Survey - Last Chance

It's your last chance to participate in the annual "State of Testing" survey. Won't you help?

Our friends at PractiTest and Tea Time with Testers are running their annual "State of Testing" survey again.

Last year, almost 900 testers responded, and helped to paint a clear picture of our profession. We learned about salaries, the size of test teams, the experience of testers, what testers actually do (besides testing of course), and lots more.

This year, almost 1000 testers have helped so far. How about you?

Please go to http://qablog.practitest.com/state-of-testing/ and fill out the survey. It's fast, it's easy, and it will help us all!

---

This article originally appeared in my blog: All Things Quality

	My name is Joe Strazzere and I'm an experienced Quality Assurance professional. I like to lead, to test, and occasionally to write about leading and testing. Find me at http://AllThingsQuality.com/.

Poor ISTQB Foundation Certification Exam Questions

A few months ago, my team was charged with preparing for, and passing the ISTQB Foundation Level Certification Exam. I retired before the team took the exam, but was present for our preparation work.

As part of the preparation, we took a series of online "practice exams". While taking the exams, I wrote down a few questions that seemed "off" to me.

Here's one:

Test cases are designed during:

1. Test recording
2. Test planning
3. Test configuration
4. Test specification

To me, this is a poor question.

When I'm testing software, I design test cases all the time. 

• I design some test cases during a dedicated session I set aside for just that purpose. 
• Some I design and prepare while I'm initially reading the requirements (if any exist). 
• Some test cases are suggested by others after reading a draft of my list of planned tests. 
• Often, while I'm creating my test automation, other tests come to mind, and I add them to my list of tests to be execute.

What do you think? Is this a good question to ask as part of a certification exam?

By the way - what do you think is the correct answer?

---

 This article originally appeared in my blog: All Things Quality

	My name is Joe Strazzere and I'm an experienced Quality Assurance professional. I like to lead, to test, and occasionally to write about leading and testing. Find me at http://AllThingsQuality.com/.

Would You Test Software Designed To Cheat On Tests?

Das Cheat?

The U.S. Environmental Protection Administration announced Friday that the Volkswagen AG had surreptitiously equipped its diesel vehicles with software designed to recognize when those products were being tested on a dynamometer, essentially an automotive treadmill. In such a situation, the full complement of emissions controls systems would operate at their maximum, bringing the vehicles into compliance with U.S. - and even tougher California - emissions standards.

But once the testing would be completed, according to the EPA, the vehicles would revert to a different mode, effectively allowing emissions levels to increase by as much as 40 times.

• Volkswagen AG admitted that it built “defeat device” software into its diesel cars from 2009 to 2015 that automatically cheated on U.S. air-pollution tests
• Software is built into 11 million vehicles worldwide
• It could cost VW around $7.2 billion to fix the cars
• Volkswagen's CEO resigned due to the scandal
• VW designed the software to have the 3.0-liter engine run on two modes: “temperature conditioning” – the cheating mode – and “normal mode.”
• The car reverted to normal mode “exactly one second” after the software detected that EPA testing conditions had stopped
• VW has blamed a few rogue engineers for the scheme

It's pretty hard to believe "a few rogue engineers" would concoct and execute a scheme like this that, if discovered, could have catastrophic repercussions for the company. 

Imagine you worked for VW (or were a contractor), and were assigned to test this "defeat device" code. How would you feel? And how would you feel now that it's public knowledge?

See also:

http://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2015/09/22/442457697/11-million-cars-worldwide-have-emissions-problem-volkswagen-says

http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonkblog/wp/2015/09/22/anatomy-of-volkswagons-deception-the-recall-that-never-fixed-any-cars/

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-09-19/volkswagen-emissions-cheating-found-by-curious-clean-air-group

http://www.networkworld.com/article/2985059/software/so-you-re-a-vw-software-engineer.html

http://www.nbcnews.com/business/autos/volkswagen-11-million-vehicles-could-have-suspect-software-emissions-scandal-n431456

http://www.foxnews.com/leisure/2015/09/22/volkswagen-says-11-million-its-cars-are-equipped-with-emissions-test-beating/

Update:

Apparently, VW's cheating was worse than originally reported, and extends to some Audi and Porsche models as well.

The EPA, California Air Resources Board and Environment Canada discovered the additional cheating while testing Volkswagen's vehicles. They have found nothing similar while conducting tests of other car companies.

Volkswagen engineers took a sneaky approach when fitting these vehicles with the "defeat device" software, the EPA alleged.

See Also:
http://www.usatoday.com/story/money/cars/2015/11/02/epa-diesel-suv-volkswagen-audi-porsche/75044132/
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/11/03/business/some-porsche-models-found-to-have-emissions-cheating-software.html?_r=0
http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-vw-action-20151102-story.html
http://www.consumeraffairs.com/news/epa-more-vw-diesels-have-defeat-device-software-110215.html

---

This article originally appeared in my blog: All Things Quality

	My name is Joe Strazzere and I'm an experienced Quality Assurance professional. I like to lead, to test, and occasionally to write about leading and testing. Find me at http://AllThingsQuality.com/.

Free Web Sites Where You Can Practice Your Testing

If you miss a note, I'll whack you with this stick!

As the old joke goes: "How do you get to Carnegie Hall? Practice, Practice, Practice."

And how do you get to be a good Web Tester? Practice, Practice, Practice. copyrightjoestrazzere

Here are some free web sites that might help you with your manual or automated testing.

ParkCalc Widget

http://adam.goucher.ca/parkcalc/

copyrightjoestrazzere

A copy of the parking fee calculation widget from the Gerald R. Ford International Airport.

This "application" has some serious flaws, and has been the subject of lots of exploratory testing. Often the goal is to try and attain the highest parking fee you can, and discover the features/bugs in the widget along the way.

Read more here:

http://www.shino.de/2010/06/20/parkcalc-automation-getting-started/

http://testkeis.wordpress.com/2010/04/11/a-testing-exercise-parkcalc/

http://weekendtesting.com/archives/976

http://www.infoq.com/news/2010/05/testing_challenge

http://testingdisciple.wordpress.com/2010/07/19/my-solutions-for-parkcalc-exercise/

http://www.grr.org/ParkCalc.php

Brown and Donaldson (B&D) online brokerage Web site

http://bdonline.sqe.com/

The case study featured in The Web Testing Handbook by Steven Splaine & Stefan P. Jaskiel and the SQE Web testing training seminars.

B&D is a fictitious online brokerage firm created with the specific purpose of providing you with the opportunity to practice the Web testing techniques discussed in the book and training seminars, thereby gaining real-world interactive Web testing experience.

It even includes sample Requirements and Test Plans.

The Mercury Tours Web Site

http://newtours.demoaut.com/

Used in conjunction with the tutorials for some HP (formerly Mercury Interactive) products, such as QuickTest Pro.

Altoro Mutual Web Site

http://demo.testfire.net/

The Altoro Mutual website is published by Watchfire, Inc. for the sole purpose of demonstrating the effectiveness of Watchfire products in detecting web application vulnerabilities and website defects. This site is not a real banking site. Similarities, if any, to third party products and/or websites are purely coincidental. This site is provided "as is" without warranty of any kind, either express or implied. Watchfire does not assume any risk in relation to your use of this website. For additional Terms of Use, please go to http://www.watchfire.com/statements/terms.aspx.

InsuranceWeb Web Site

http://demo.borland.com/InsuranceWebExtJS/index.jsf

This site is a fictitious representation of an online company for the purpose of demonstrating Borland Solutions.

Find its web services documentation here:

http://demo.borland.com/InsuranceWebExtJS/webservices.jsf

Know of any other sites used for practicing your web testing craft? Shoot me a note, and I'll add them to the list and give you all the credit!

---

This article originally appeared in my blog: All Things Quality

	My name is Joe Strazzere and I'm currently a Director of Quality Assurance. I like to lead, to test, and occasionally to write about leading and testing. Find me at http://AllThingsQuality.com/.

The State Of Testing 2015

The State of Testing 2015

Back in January, I asked you to help my friend Joel Montvelisky and complete this year's survey he and his company PractiTest ran in association with the magazine Tea Time with Testers. 

Many of you responded, and the results are in!

It's an interesting read. You'll get location, background, experience, and salary information from respondents around the world.

You will find some results that probably aren't surprising ("Testers learn on their own") and some that could be surprising ("Testers are documenting less than in previous years").

You'll hear what Managers look for when hiring testers, and lots more.

Check it out - it's worth your time!

http://qablog.practitest.com/2015/07/the-state-of-testing-report-for-2015-is-out/

---

This article originally appeared in my blog: All Things Quality

	My name is Joe Strazzere and I'm an experienced Quality Assurance professional. I like to lead, to test, and occasionally to write about leading and testing. Find me at http://AllThingsQuality.com/.

Bruce Asks All Things

Ask All Things

Bruce asked a great question:

We have a large number of tests that we would like to automate.  However, it takes time to automate each test, and we have several thousand tests that could be automated. 

Is there an average or maximum number of tests that QA people automate using tools like Selenium or Ranorex?  Thanks for your help.

Sincerely, 

Bruce 

Nice question, Bruce! And one that many folks contemplate when they encounter a large system that needs a lot of test automation.

At one place I worked, we automated over 8,000 tests.

In that particular shop the UI and much of the underlying code was very, very stable. New functionality was added, but it was virtually always added in new instances, and seldom involved changes to existing instances. Thus automated regression tests were able to pay back the investment, and maintenance wasn't overly burdensome.

I know of no industry averages or maximums. Even if there were such averages, I don't see how it would be of much help for your individual case.

Instead, you should consider the full cost of automation in your shop (including initial setup and ongoing maintenance) against the benefits you expect to receive.

Some factors to consider: copyrightjoestrazzere

• Do you have sufficient expertise already on staff to create this automation, or will you need to go outside your organization to get it?
• Do you have time in your schedule to plan, design, develop, test (yes - your automation needs some testing!), document, and deploy your automation?
• How much ongoing maintenance will this automation need?
• How much is the current lack of automation costing your company - both in terms of bugs escaping to Production, and the cost of manual testing you must perform due to the lack of automation?

Many companies choose to start small. Automate only the parts that matter most (perhaps the riskiest or most critical parts of your system), weigh the costs versus benefits, and then decide what to automate next (if anything).

Some companies choose to plan automation for new systems, but only tactically go back and automate legacy systems as time permits.

Other companies choose to outsource the initial automation effort, then bring the maintenance portion in-house.

Let's throw this question to the readers - Do you know of an average or maximum number of tests? Do you know of other factors to consider as you think about automating a large system? Have you faced a large automation effort like this? If so, how did you handle it?

-joe




Do you have questions? Use the new "ASK ALL THINGS" widget over on the right-hand panel. Send me questions about anything:

• about the testing profession
• about test automation
• about bug tracking
• about being a Manager
• about testing and QA jobs
• about quality
• anything!

I'll read through the questions, pick some that not only interest you and me, but questions that I think will interest others. Together we can not only get you the answers you need, but we can provide others with some useful information as well.

Ask All Things!

---

This article originally appeared in my blog: All Things Quality

	My name is Joe Strazzere and I'm an experienced Quality Assurance professional. I like to lead, to test, and occasionally to write about leading and testing. Find me at http://AllThingsQuality.com/.

Perfection Is

What is Perfection?

Perfection

According to Google (and Google knows everything), perfection is..

• Perfection is the enemy of good
• Perfection is a disease of a nation
• Perfection is the enemy of progress
• Perfection is not attainable
• Perfection is in the eye of the beholder
• Perfection is achieved not when there is nothing 
• Perfection is an illusion
• Perfection is my enemy
• Perfection is attainable
• Perfection is overrated
• Perfection is not possible
• Perfection is low standard
• Perfection is boring
• Perfection is subjective
• Perfection is not enough
• Perfection is a perspective
• Perfection is a mistake
• Perfection is a myth
• Perfection is a state of mind
• Perfection is opinion
• Perfection is like chasing the horizon
• Perfection is the enemy of profitability

Can you add to the list?

---

This article originally appeared in my blog: All Things Quality

	My name is Joe Strazzere and I'm currently a Director of Quality Assurance. I like to lead, to test, and occasionally to write about leading and testing. Find me at http://AllThingsQuality.com/.

Like To Find Bugs? Like To Travel? Here's How You Can Do Both!

If you are good at hunting down bugs, you could earn travel miles from United Airlines. In fact, if you are the first to find a particular remote code execution bug, you could earn 1,000,000 miles! copyrightjoestrazzere

The program was implemented in May, and so far two testers have each found 1,000,000-mile bugs.

Jordon Wiens, a software security researcher in Florida was one. The bug he found would have allowed an attacker to execute code remotely on one of United’s systems. In addition to the remote code execution bug, Jordan found another that earned him 250,000 additional travel miles. Should he choose to do so, he can now travel from the United States to Europe about forty-one times, courtesy of United and his bug-hunting skills.

United won't reward you for finding bugs in their onboard Wi-Fi, entertainment systems or avionics. But they do offer miles to testers who find a variety of bugs on United-operated, customer-facing websites such as united.com, beta.united.com, mobile.united.com, mystatus.united.com, smartphone.continental.com as well as bugs on the United app, and other United properties.

The severity of the bug determines the reward:

Bug Bounty payout structure

Severity	Examples	Maximum payout in award miles
High	Remote code execution	1,000,000
Medium	Authentication bypass Brute-force attacks Potential for personally identifiable information (PII) disclosure Timing attacks	250,000
Low	Cross-site scripting Cross-site request forgery Third-party security bugs that affect United	50,000

So if you like to travel, read and follow the United Airlines Bug Bounty instructions, roll up your sleeves, and find some bugs. If you are skilled enough and quick enough, you could be "flying the friendly skies" soon.


Also see:

http://www.united.com/web/en-US/content/Contact/bugbounty.aspx

https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/the-switch/wp/2015/07/16/why-united-airlines-is-rewarding-hackers-with-millions-of-free-miles/

http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-33552195

http://www.csmonitor.com/Business/2015/0717/United-Airlines-awards-bug-bounty-Is-it-getting-cybersecurity-savvy

http://consumerist.com/2015/07/14/first-united-airlines-bug-bounty-payout-is-one-million-miles/

http://www.thehoopsnews.com/2015/07/19/6896/united-airlines-hackers-given-million-free-flight-miles-under-bug-bounty-program/

http://triblive.com/usworld/nation/8766543-74/united-wiens-million

---

This article originally appeared in my blog: All Things Quality

	My name is Joe Strazzere and I'm an experienced Quality Assurance professional. I like to lead, to test, and occasionally to write about leading and testing. Find me at http://AllThingsQuality.com/.

Nine Years - And That's All

Nine Years - And That's All Folks!

I recently marked my nine-year anniversary at my current company. Actually, it's now my former company. After nine years, I left.

It was a difficult decision, but for me, it was the right one. It was time to move on to the next phase of my life.

It's hard for me to believe that I was there for nine years. Yet when I look back at all we accomplished, it sometimes seems like far more:

• When I started, there was no real Quality Assurance Team. Whatever small bit of testing occurred was being performed by Product Management folks in their spare time. Since then, we created a terrific team in the US, augmented by some good contractors, and a small team in India as well. copyrightjoestrazzere
• Bugs were not being tracked in any central system. There were a few emails floating around, and an occasional spreadsheet, but no place where people could go to find the status of bugs. Most recently, we used Bugzilla, and people grew tired of me asking "Do we have a bug report for that?"
• Lots of people came and went over the past eight years. Initially, the biggest change was the prior CTO being replaced by my boss.  Since then, many other folks left.re
• We changed a significant portion of the infrastructure behind most of our applications. It became far more scalable and sustainable, although we continued to make changes.
• We formalized many of our development and testing processes, and created the necessary processes where none existed before.
• We went from fighting fires every day, to a much more stable, dependable set of systems. Where before many of our systems needed manual, hands-on attention every day, most ran in a much more automated fashion.
• The product lines changed over time. We weeded out some products that were single-customer, poorly funded products. We created some new products, and retired others.
• A few years ago, we were purchased by a much larger corporation. It wasn't all bad, and it wasn't all good. The volume of big-company administrivia started out small, but increased, and it continued to increase.
• My QA Team was reorged a few years ago. At that time, my current boss reported to someone in the corporate office, rather than the local General Manager. She also had responsibility for more than just our local division. That meant we had even less contact with my boss than before.
• As part of reporting up into corporate, we were required to use all of the formal corporate time-reporting, project management and metrics systems. For me, it was a lot of time spent on administrivia, rather than more productive work. I tried hard to minimize the impact on my team, but I couldn't eliminate all the overhead.
• We recently completed a massive project to move our production infrastructure into the corporate facility. We purchased new hardware, new software, database upgrades, etc, etc. We embraced new processes for security, administration, installation, and support. And of course we often "improved the applications" as we migrated them. With almost all the variables being changed at the same time, this was a big task for everyone involved, and a very big testing task. It was "interesting", and a huge drag on our time for building and testing revenue-producing applications.
• We experimented with a few Agile projects. They took many wrong turns, took longer than anticipated, and didn't end up in viable products. Still, we learned a lot.
• Last year, my QA Team was reorged yet again. This time, I reported directly to someone in the corporate offices in New York, rather than into the local Development group. The new boss had no real background in QA at all - he was primarily concerned with Governance. That was rather different than any other place I had ever worked. No time for any testing - for me it was basically all project management, all the time.
• Eventually, it became clear that the role of a QA Director in this company no longer fit with what I believed in or what I wanted to be doing.

Lots of work, lots of changes. All in all, it was a pretty good nine years. But now that company is behind me.

I'll really miss all of the local people I worked with over the years - they are a great bunch of smart, hardworking people who care about quality. I'm sure they will all continue to be successful.

But I won't miss the administrivia, the many processes, the long string of estimates that were required, the ever-growing number of metrics, all the purported "Best Practices", and the seemingly-endless series of reorgs.

I'm going to take a step back for a while, to relax a bit, to evaluate things, and to spend more time with my grandchildren. I have a lot of projects I want to try, a lot of reading to do, and a lot of writing ahead of me (I hope). Stay tuned!

---

This article originally appeared in my blog: All Things Quality

	My name is Joe Strazzere and I'm an experienced Quality Assurance professional. I like to lead, to test, and occasionally to write about leading and testing. Find me at http://AllThingsQuality.com/.

What's the State of Testing in 2015? Take this Survey!

What's the State of Testing in 2015?

My friend Joel Montvelisky has asked me to pass the word about a survey he is running in association with the magazine Tea Time with Testers. As they did last year, they are trying to discover the state of testing in the world today.

And as I did last year, I'm asking you all to pitch in and help!

As Joel says:

We all want to understand more about our testing community. And this is why we ran the first State of Testing Survey, a year ago. In that survey we asked our fellow testers about their jobs, their challenges and what they thought about their professional future. 

The response to that survey was overwhelming, and the results were really interesting. You can get the previous State of Testing Report from the QABlog site (http://qablog.practitest.com/state-of-testing/year-2013/). 

Still, we believe that it is important to see not only a snapshot of our reality but also how it evolves and progresses over time. This is why we are now running the Second State of Testing survey. We believe it will allow us to understand how our community sees its reality today, and also start plotting the path we are taking in our professional endeavour.

So, as a valued member of the professional software testing community, can you help out this worthy cause?

Go to https://www.surveymonkey.com/s/state_of_testing_2015 and fill out the questionnaire. I know this will be helpful not only to you, but to all software test professionals worldwide.

Thanks!

---

This article originally appeared in my blog: All Things Quality

	My name is Joe Strazzere and I'm currently a Director of Quality Assurance. I like to lead, to test, and occasionally to write about leading and testing. Find me at http://AllThingsQuality.com/.

Be A Tester - Because Testers Live Longer!

Live Long and Test!

Six years go, I wrote an article titled "Optimistic Developers, Pessimistic Testers". In it, I explained how developers tended to be naturally optimistic folks, while testers tend to be more pessimistic.

A study I happened to read recently, indicated that "being overly optimistic in predicting a better future was associated with a greater risk of disability and death within the following decade," and that "pessimism about the future may encourage people to live more carefully, taking health and safety precautions."

The conclusion is clear - Testers live longer! copyrightjoestrazzere

Yet another great reason to be a tester.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/02/28/pessimists-live-longer-lives-study_n_2781598.html

http://www.apa.org/news/press/releases/2013/02/pessimism-future.aspx

---

This article originally appeared in my blog: All Things Quality

	My name is Joe Strazzere and I'm currently a Director of Quality Assurance. I like to lead, to test, and occasionally to write about leading and testing. Find me at http://AllThingsQuality.com/.

Ask All Things

Ask great questions!

Years ago, I got what I consider a terrific compliment. A coworker said "As usual, Joe asks great questions."

For me, asking questions is an important and natural part of doing my job as a tester. I even wrote an article about it.

And now, I'm inviting you to ask me some great questions.

Use the new "ASK ALL THINGS" widget over on the right-hand panel. Send me questions about anything:

• about the testing profession
• about test automation
• about bug tracking
• about being a Manager
• about testing and QA jobs
• about quality
• anything!

I'll read through the questions, pick some that not only interest you and me, but questions that I think will interest others. Together we can not only get you the answers you need, but we can provide others with some useful information as well.

Unless you tell me not to, I'll share your name so that others will know that you ask great questions!

So, who wants to be first? Ask all things!

---

This article originally appeared in my blog: All Things Quality

	My name is Joe Strazzere and I'm currently a Director of Quality Assurance. I like to lead, to test, and occasionally to write about leading and testing. Find me at http://AllThingsQuality.com/.

Testing Circus Magazine - With Jean Ann Harrison on the Cover!

Jean Ann Harrison in Testing Circus

Testing Circus is an online magazine for testers. From their website: copyrightjoestrazzere

Testing Circus is a free to download monthly International Software Testing Magazine. Testing Circus is conceptualized, founded and edited by Ajoy Kumar Singha. Testing Circus is subscribed by thousands of software testers worldwide. Well known testers like Pradeep Soundararajan, Vipul Kocher, Vipul Gupta, Lisa Crispin, Narayan Raman, Trish Khoo, Markus Gartner, Santhosh Tuppad, Parimala Shankaraiah, Ajay Balamurugadas, Bernice Niel Ruhland, Rob van Steenbergen, Jaijeet Pandey,  Doron Reuveni, Michael Talks, Marc Rambert have written for Testing Circus magazine in the past. Testing Circus is one of the world’s leading English language magazine for software testers and test enthusiasts. It has established itself as a platform for knowledge transfer in software testing profession.

And this month's magazine features a good friend and former co-worker Jean Ann Harrison!

Jean Ann and I worked together years ago at Softbridge - a company that developed and marketed one of the earlier automated testing tools called ATF. I headed Quality Assurance and later Engineering, but also did some Product Management and Customer Support. Jean Ann was our primary telephone support person, and she did a terrific job helping our client base - software testers from all over the world.

Clearly, Jean Ann has gone on to bigger and better things in the intervening years. She is now a recognized speaker at software testing conferences, and in recent years has found a nice niche in the mobile testing space.

Read more about her in the June 2014 edition of Testing Circus: http://www.testingcircus.com/testing-circus-2014-june-edition/

Congratulations, Jean Ann!

---

This article originally appeared in my blog: All Things Quality

	My name is Joe Strazzere and I'm currently a Director of Quality Assurance. I like to lead, to test, and occasionally to write about leading and testing. Find me at http://AllThingsQuality.com/.

What's The State Of Testing? The Results Are In!

What is the state of Testing today?

Back in early December I asked you to help out my friend Joel Montvelisky conduct a survey about the state of testing in the world today.

Many of you responded - thank you!

And now the results are in!

Check it out here: http://qablog.practitest.com/state-of-testing/

What do you think? Does any of it surprise you? (I have to say the answers to the question "How do you report your testing?" surprised me a bit.

---

This article originally appeared in my blog: All Things Quality

	My name is Joe Strazzere and I'm currently a Director of Quality Assurance. I like to lead, to test, and occasionally to write about leading and testing. Find me at http://AllThingsQuality.com/.

Have You Ever Faked It? I Have.

One of our web applications is designed to present one User Interface when viewed from a desktop system, and a different User Interface when viewed from a mobile device or tablet. That way, the UI can be more tailored to the capabilities of the device being used. copyrightjoestrazzere

In order to accomplish that trick, we use WURFL to detect the device type from the User Agent String, and tell the web application about the device being used. When WURFL tells us that it's a mobile device or tablet, a redirect occurs - into the mobile-optimized UI.

When testing this application, we used a wide variety of mobile devices. We used desktops, phones, and tablets. But the vast majority of functional testing was performed using just a desktop system and a few tricks. Those tricks allowed us to "fake out" the web application, and make it think that the requests were actually coming from a phone or a tablet.

WURFL (Wireless Universal Resource FiLe) is an API and database that uses the User Agent String sent with every web request to determine characteristics about the requesting environment. Properly used by the web application, the API can divide the requests into desktop requests versus phone/tablet requests.

Normally, your browser presents the web application with a User Agent String that reflects the characteristics of your actual device, operating systems, browser, etc.

For example Chrome on Windows 8 might present this for a User Agent String:

Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.2; Win64; x64) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/32.0.1667.0 Safari/537.36

While Safari on an iPad might present this:

Mozilla/5.0 (iPad; CPU OS 5_1 like Mac OS X) AppleWebKit/534.46 (KHTML, like Gecko ) Version/5.1 Mobile/9B176 Safari/7534.48.3

Thus if you could tell your browser to use a "Safari-in-iPad" User Agent String, the web application would think you were actually coming from an iPad, and redirect you to the Mobile UI. This is exactly what we did.

We used two different ways to fake the User Agent String. Primarily, we used Firefox and the User Agent Switcher from Chris Pendrick. We also used Chrome and the command line switch --user-agent.

By faking the application out, we tested both the desktop and the mobile UI from the same browser on the same desktop machine. This saved us a lot of time, and made it far simpler to automate as well.

Sometimes faking it is easier, and more efficient as well.


User Agent String:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_agent

WURFL:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WURFL

For Firefox:

User Agent Switcher

Chris Pederick

http://chrispederick.com/work/user-agent-switcher/

For Chrome:

Override User Agent

http://peter.sh/experiments/chromium-command-line-switches/#user-agent

---

This article originally appeared in my blog: All Things Quality

	My name is Joe Strazzere and I'm currently a Director of Quality Assurance. I like to lead, to test, and occasionally to write about leading and testing. Find me at http://AllThingsQuality.com/.

Does Agile Really Lead to "Amateur, Untrained, Unmotivated" Testers?

Amateur, Untrained, Unmotivated - and Agile?

Recently, I was reading an article on James Bach's blog titled "Test Jumpers: One Vision of Agile Testing". It's an interesting article and like most of James' writing, it was thought-provoking. The notion of a "Test Jumper" (he compares it to the elite firefighters known as Smoke Jumpers), is intriguing, and seems like a lot of fun. copyrightjoestrazzere

There was one point that really caught me eye though. In this article, James wrote:

"The value of a role like this arises because in a typical dedicated Agile situation, everyone is expected to help with testing, and yet having staff dedicated solely to testing may be unwarranted. In practice, that means everyone remains chronically an amateur tester, untrained and unmotivated."

When I asked him to write a bit more about this point, he replied:

"This has been a longstanding philosophical difference between the programmer-dominated culture of Agile and the culture of skilled testers. Attitudes vary from place to place, of course. But what I'm saying is that to do any technical activity well you must study and strive to improve. If you are focused on programming, you study that. If you are focused on testing, you study that. It is possible to study both, but programming is so interesting and all-consuming that it is VERY rare for a programmer to study testing to any great degree. 

Some of them seem to be offended when I say that. I think that's because they honestly don't realize how deep I am speaking when I speak of studying. Many of them seem to see little worth learning in the testing sphere."

At my company, we are about to embark on several projects that for the first time will be Agile. I'm worried about the quality bar and the tester role in these projects, so I'll be on the lookout for the problems that James warns about.

I will be assigning professional Testers to the projects, but for at least one of them this is only a part-time assignment. I'm hoping that this will provide sufficient testing, but the Agile Team themselves will be deciding how the testing tasks are divided up, and how much professional and amateur time is devoted to testing versus all the other activities that must take place.

For those of you with Agile Testing experience:

• Do you agree with James' assessment? 
• Are you doing anything to counter that trend?
• Any other suggestions?

I hope to write a follow-up a few months down the road as these projects progress.

---

This article originally appeared in my blog: All Things Quality

	My name is Joe Strazzere and I'm currently a Director of Quality Assurance. I like to lead, to test, and occasionally to write about leading and testing. Find me at http://AllThingsQuality.com/.

Perhaps They Should Have Tested More in 2013

Perhaps They Should Have Tested More in 2013

2013 saw some "interesting" bugs show up in the news.  Perhaps these companies should have tested more?

The Chicago Board Options Exchange (CBOE) experienced a shutdown lasting 3.5 hours, paralyzing the biggest U.S. venue for options trading.

Perhaps They Should Have Tested More - Chicago Board Options Exchange
http://www.allthingsquality.com/2013/05/perhaps-they-should-have-tested-more.html

A $4,000 toilet, the Satis was released with a hard-coded bluetooth PIN of "0000".

Perhaps They Should Have Tested More - Lixil's Satis Toilet
http://www.allthingsquality.com/2013/08/perhaps-they-should-have-tested-more.html

When iOS7 was released, it wasn't long before someone discovered a way to bypass the lock screen, and access all photos contained on the iPhone.

Perhaps They Should Have Tested More - Apple iOS 7
http://www.allthingsquality.com/2013/09/perhaps-they-should-have-tested-more.html

Honda was forced to recall over 344,000 minivans to correct a problem with the software controlling the vehicle's stability control system.

Perhaps They Should Have Tested More - Honda
http://www.allthingsquality.com/2013/11/perhaps-they-should-have-tested-more.html

---

This article originally appeared in my blog: All Things Quality

	My name is Joe Strazzere and I'm currently a Director of Quality Assurance. I like to lead, to test, and occasionally to write about leading and testing. Find me at http://AllThingsQuality.com/.

What's the State of Testing? Take this Survey.

What is the State of Testing?

My friend Joel Montvelisky has asked me to pass the word about a survey he is running in association with the magazine Tea Time with Testers. They are trying to discover the state of testing in the world today.

As Joel says:

Some weeks ago I was looking for information to write a post about the advances in the testing world in the last 5-10 years and I realized that there is no centralized set of information that provides visibility into what is happening and what are the trends in the world of testing today.  In principle I was looking for something similar to the State of Agile survey that I review each year when it goes out, and I was not able to find something that provided this information. 

So I contacted some friends at TeaTime with Testers and we decided to make this into a project.  To release a State of Testing Survey that will provide a snapshot of our testing reality and help us to capture some of the trends as they shift year by year.

Joel knows a lot about testing, is a terrific writer, and an all-around nice guy.

I'm going to be taking this survey, and I'm very interested to see the results.

Can you help out, too?

Go to http://qablog.practitest.com/state-of-testing/

---

This article originally appeared in my blog: All Things Quality

	My name is Joe Strazzere and I'm currently a Director of Quality Assurance. I like to lead, to test, and occasionally to write about leading and testing. Find me at http://AllThingsQuality.com/.

Want to be a part of All Things Quality?

To Do: Connect with Joe at All Things Quality

Here at All Things Quality, I have two places where I list blogs I like.

The People in Testing tab above lists people by name, along with links to their blogs/websites.

I've limited this particular list to blogs that: copyrightjoestrazzere

• Are exclusively, or at least mostly, about QA or Testing, or have significant QA/Testing content
• Have had some activity recently
• Aren't just commercial sites
• Contain articles I find of interest

The What People Are Writing tab above dynamically displays a small excerpt from the most-recent article in blogs related to QA/Testing that I read fairly regularly. And it provides a link to the full article.

This list has a limit on the number of items it supports, so I tend to weed out blogs that haven't had any updates in a while, and I usually don't include a blog until it has a history of good articles.

If you'd like to be on one or both of these lists, and you think your blog would be of interest to others in the Testing/QA field, send me a note and I'll take a look at it.

And if you would like to return the favor, please consider adding a link to All Things Quality on your blog as well!

---

This article originally appeared in my blog: All Things Quality

	My name is Joe Strazzere and I'm currently a Director of Quality Assurance. I like to lead, to test, and occasionally to write about leading and testing. Find me at http://AllThingsQuality.com/.