KWST#2 Test conference is coming!
The second KWST or Kiwi Workshop on Software Testing with be held on the 15th and 16th of June 2012, Wellington, New Zealand. KWST is modelled on the LAWST style peer conferences and is the only testing peer conference in New Zealand. There are a number of things that make this conference unique:-
- It is an invite only conference – we are looking for industry thought leaders
- James Bach will again be back as content owner and helping grow the core of professional test leadership in New Zealand
- Some of the brightest, insightful test thinkers down under will be there
- Unlike any other conference held here, this is a CONFERence where ALL participants participate!
- The theme is Ethical challenges faced by testers which is relevant considering the prevalence of dubious practices and certifications in our industry
The twitter hash tag will be KWST2 and we will be tweeting all of the great thoughts and ideas that will flow from this conference. See http://bjosman.wordpress.com/2011/06/28/kwst-kiwi-workshop-on-software-testing/ and http://bjosman.wordpress.com/2011/07/08/kwst-kiwi-workshop-of-software-testing-day-2/ for details of last years event.
Author: Brian
Sikuli – for all those hard to reach places!
Ever had the scenario in automated testing, that you had something to automate that really didn’t fit any of your tools? Something that was as bristly as an Echidnea?
Normally I try and steer away from anything that doesn’t use standard protocols and/or interfaces. Things like Flash, Silverlight and others. Not that there aren’t test tools that handle these things but it’s just that it’s messy to say the least. For open standards like HTML or SOAP there are gazillions of ways to automate.
So I got surprised by having to test an application on -or should I rather say through- Citrix.
Web Page Analysis Basics for Testers
I usually move in the performance testing realm and one of the things I regularly do, is check for obvious omissions in website design before I get into the low down with testing.
What do I mean by that?
There is such a thing as (and I am having difficulty writing this) Best Practice, when it comes to web page development. These are technological imperatives that can be easily checked by using simple tools. You don’t need to be an HTML guru to use these or to gain more knowledge about your website under test.
A rookie tester’s guide to making the arrest
Bug Investigations
Thousands of words have been written about the investigation part, and it’s usually where the information ends. You’ve got a crack bug investigation procedure. You’ve clearly identified your oracles, you’ve mapped your coverage, you know your quality criteria. You’ve been patrolling the mean streets of your pre-release build, and you’ve noticed something out of the ordinary. The adrenaline starts pumping, and you’re ready to reach for the red and blues. We wanna take this perp down. But hold up, bronco. Before we grab the pepper spray, let’s talk about what happens after you have a suspect in your sights. You’re pretty sure you want to make the arrest, but we don’t want to compromise the sentencing later.
I do a lot of performance testing with JMeter and every now and again you get thrown a curve ball. I was trying set up a remote performance testing cluster and when invoking the servers with JMeter RMI calls the tests were executing but the valuable results were not coming back to the client. Looking at the log…
I spoke with a tester recently about capturing tests to be reused. I had a discussion with them on what they thought about the process. I will outline their task, what they were supposed to do, what they did, and the questions and comments that came from the discussion afterwards. Some valuable lessons and insight were uncovered.
A Menagerie of Testers
At KWST Brian Osman coined a term: “Possum testers”.
And that got us thinking… what other testing animals make up the testing profession zoo?
Fun, IT and Quality
A couple of days ago I had one of my epiphanies. (I’m not a genius so something probably just dawned on me 
)
The question in my mind was “Why do we keep on producing such cr*p software that people just don’t like to use?“. I need to caveat that a little as I solely focus on bespoke development for larger organisations here.
There’s lots of rational reasons why this happens. Examples are:
- Overly aggressive timelines
- No well-defined quality criteria
- Poorly understood requirements/no understanding of solution
- Bad SDLC
- Politics
- People
- Budget
- …
But there’s one that I actually never thought of listing….. FUN.
Thoughts on one New Zealand test community
In November 2009, I created software testers new zealand google group. It’s not limited to just Kiwi’s (we have members from Australia, India and the US that I know of). The point of the group was to provide a *local* forum to communicate matters related to testing. Since then, I’ve notice some interesting behaviour about the group which I would like to share here….
Performance Ideas from 1-Click-Buy
Why do we performance test?
*duh* because we want faster response times…. oh and we want to know how to scale our virtual machines…. oh and we want to tune our systems… oh and XXXXX…. there are tons of reasons. Performance testing has it’s testing rigor and we go and “hammer” the system to get at those answers.
One thing I like to do (because it’s fast and cheap) is use a calculator/spreadsheet for performance testing. I take architecture diagrams of present and future systems, infrastructure diagrams, requirements, human oracles and more and put all the numbers together. Then I check if they stack up. Like where the product tries to get 1GB of data across a 10Mbit network link in under a second. I don’t need a test to be able to tell you, that there’s a problem there.
But then it struck me today. There is something similarly simple that I am not doing (and am guessing not many performance testers do)….
Ask yourself, what is the web page that has a response time of 0.000 milliseconds and has a infinitesimally small throughput footprint?
