And we are done. Well, not done done as we say here at bwin Games, but more or less done with the testing of our new component TRS. Today I started working on collecting all the sessions I have written and checking them into Subversion. From there my colleague Per's fantastic php-thingy does it's magic and I can see how many minutes we spent on setup time and on testing time. All the data can then be moved to Excel where we have a nice cross-point diagram where you can see how much we have tested in different areas. Had we done a proper risk analysis during the sprint planning we could also have shown how much we have tested vs. how big the risk is. Unfortunately we didn't do this, but we have had discussions with dev about where to focus our attention, so we might be able to work with that somehow. I guess we learn as we go along. One important lesson I learned is that we need to keep the Playbook alive during the sprint and update it with changes so that we can migrate the risks correctly.
But it is so awarding to see all your testing being transformed into useful data! You can actually see that you have been doing something for the last three weeks! When we were running scripted test cases in regressions I had no confidence that I had tested enough. You somehow forgot what you did the first week, and it is only what you do during the last week in regression that shows for anything. Now we have a track record for the whole sprint.
So with this happy feeling I am going out in the sun for some ice cream. See you next week!
Wednesday, July 21, 2010
Three can too play nice
When I was a little girl there were almost always problems when I and two other friends would play together. Being just me and my bff there were no problems, but as soon as that third person came along something started going wrong. It almost always ended with our parents stepping in trying to help us resolve our world wars. I have realized this week that it is much easier playing three as an adult. And as a tester, it is great!
Me and my two colleagues have finally gotten our messy test environment back on its feet and have started running our tests on a new component. During the sprint planning we selected the charters that we needed to cover and created our test plan on the whiteboard. On Wednesday we finally got started! Aah, it was good being back in bug-hunting-territory! Feeling the rush of finding something peculiar, poking it, analyzing it. It such a thrill to find something wrong, and then nail the scenario.
Anyhow, after we covered the basic tests by running some recon-sessions we got to the more complex parts. We did a couple of sessions the three of us and it was really good. All of the sudden there were three pairs of eyes on the logs. We could discuss problems, strange behaviors and, with help of our different experiences of the system, do a more thorough testing.
So hopefully we can do as much multitesters-testing as possible the rest of the sprint, because it was a really good way testing, learning and having fun!
So until next week, happy multitester-testing! (trying to name it, but I am not really sure yet.)
Me and my two colleagues have finally gotten our messy test environment back on its feet and have started running our tests on a new component. During the sprint planning we selected the charters that we needed to cover and created our test plan on the whiteboard. On Wednesday we finally got started! Aah, it was good being back in bug-hunting-territory! Feeling the rush of finding something peculiar, poking it, analyzing it. It such a thrill to find something wrong, and then nail the scenario.
Anyhow, after we covered the basic tests by running some recon-sessions we got to the more complex parts. We did a couple of sessions the three of us and it was really good. All of the sudden there were three pairs of eyes on the logs. We could discuss problems, strange behaviors and, with help of our different experiences of the system, do a more thorough testing.
So hopefully we can do as much multitesters-testing as possible the rest of the sprint, because it was a really good way testing, learning and having fun!
So until next week, happy multitester-testing! (trying to name it, but I am not really sure yet.)
Back to work
For six weeks now I have been working in our system team, preparing a release to go live. During this time I have spent three weeks integrating all of our components, trying to make them play nice with each other. The past three weeks we have been doing system verification, making sure that the release is fit to go live. It has been really fun to see how the other parts of our system work in a big live-like environment. From this week and forward I'm back in my old team, and I can finally start doing session based testing. My test team has come such a long way in these past six weeks! They are really starting to get the hang of it and it's going to be so much fun to take part in that kind of testing again. I almost feel like a rookie after being out of the loop for such a long time. Next week I will hopefully have a nice update of how it’s going, If we ever get that test environment of ours working again…
Until then, happy testing!
Until then, happy testing!
Moving on
For two years I worked with the same routines. I got a requirement and broke it down with our product manager and developers. I wrote some nice test cases, tested the thing and at the end of the sprint ran the test cases again. Voilá, tested and done! I got sooo bored with this. Last autumn I was fed up and felt that this kind of work procedure gave me nothing. Not a great feeling to have, especially since I love testing. Luckily for me, I got the chance to go to the Star West conference in Anaheim. There I got to listen to some of the most prominent testers in the world. And my, did my inspiration return! I came back to Stockholm with the feeling that QA is the best job in the world and now I could do anything!
I went to some seminars in Stockholm and came in close contact with Session Based Testing and I fell in love. Here was the answer to how I could structure my exploratory testing. We started to try it out and got the hang of it. After that we ran into some trouble. I don't know how many hours we spent on discussing what the Word document should look like, and a month ago we skipped it all together. One of my colleagues did a great job with some PHP-coding and now we use text documents that are saved into Excel where we can extract nice data such as time spend in different areas and bugs found in each sprint. All of the sudden we can show were we test, and how much we have tested it.
We are still experience some growing pains, but we are getting there. Even if sessions seem so easy to do, it's hard to do it well. It takes practice to learn how to write your notes so that they make sense in another context than when you are testing. But practice makes perfect, and in half a year I think I will be a session master.
That's all for now, see you next week!
Until then, happy testing!
I went to some seminars in Stockholm and came in close contact with Session Based Testing and I fell in love. Here was the answer to how I could structure my exploratory testing. We started to try it out and got the hang of it. After that we ran into some trouble. I don't know how many hours we spent on discussing what the Word document should look like, and a month ago we skipped it all together. One of my colleagues did a great job with some PHP-coding and now we use text documents that are saved into Excel where we can extract nice data such as time spend in different areas and bugs found in each sprint. All of the sudden we can show were we test, and how much we have tested it.
We are still experience some growing pains, but we are getting there. Even if sessions seem so easy to do, it's hard to do it well. It takes practice to learn how to write your notes so that they make sense in another context than when you are testing. But practice makes perfect, and in half a year I think I will be a session master.
That's all for now, see you next week!
Until then, happy testing!
Name it and own it again
This is one of the first posts on my bwin-blog:
When I first came to bwin Games I had a vague idea of what testing was, something about finding bugs. Now that is indeed true. I found the bugs, I did the testing. But as time went by, I started to feel that I couldn't describe my work properly. If somebody asked me - What did you do yesterday? I would say,
-Uhm, well I tested this and that and I found five bugs.
- So what kind of testing did you do?
- Ehh... exploratory? I clicked on a bunch of stuff and then they broke.
I did testing but I had no idea of what kind of testing. I had no words to describe my work. I am certified by ISTQB's. I had a bunch of testing terms in my head for a couple of days. If somebody would ask me today what equivalence partition coverage is, they would get a blank stare. The term means nothing to me. Maybe it should, I took the course. I know we need a common language, but in my opinion that language is useless, unless everyone can speak it and understand it. Using the terms of ISTQB is like having Latin as the common language of testing. Nobody speaks it, and people only know a few quotes. This hardly helps us communicate with each other, neither developers nor management.
So there is a dilemma. We have a vocabulary that we don’t understand, and still we have to be able to communicate what we are doing, something more specific than “um,.. exploratory testing”. With inspiration from James Bach I have tried to take control over my language and my work. I have started to reflect on what I do and write it down. If I have to make up my own name for it, I do. In that way, the language becomes my own. If somebody asks me what I have done I can tell them with my own words. If someone doesn’t understand, it is easy for me to explain what I did and I don’t have to get the feeling: “Sure, I have done a great job but I don’t have a fancy word to describe it with”.
So, take control of your testing, name it and own it!
See you next week, until then, happy testing.
(Inspired by James Bach)
When I first came to bwin Games I had a vague idea of what testing was, something about finding bugs. Now that is indeed true. I found the bugs, I did the testing. But as time went by, I started to feel that I couldn't describe my work properly. If somebody asked me - What did you do yesterday? I would say,
-Uhm, well I tested this and that and I found five bugs.
- So what kind of testing did you do?
- Ehh... exploratory? I clicked on a bunch of stuff and then they broke.
I did testing but I had no idea of what kind of testing. I had no words to describe my work. I am certified by ISTQB's. I had a bunch of testing terms in my head for a couple of days. If somebody would ask me today what equivalence partition coverage is, they would get a blank stare. The term means nothing to me. Maybe it should, I took the course. I know we need a common language, but in my opinion that language is useless, unless everyone can speak it and understand it. Using the terms of ISTQB is like having Latin as the common language of testing. Nobody speaks it, and people only know a few quotes. This hardly helps us communicate with each other, neither developers nor management.
So there is a dilemma. We have a vocabulary that we don’t understand, and still we have to be able to communicate what we are doing, something more specific than “um,.. exploratory testing”. With inspiration from James Bach I have tried to take control over my language and my work. I have started to reflect on what I do and write it down. If I have to make up my own name for it, I do. In that way, the language becomes my own. If somebody asks me what I have done I can tell them with my own words. If someone doesn’t understand, it is easy for me to explain what I did and I don’t have to get the feeling: “Sure, I have done a great job but I don’t have a fancy word to describe it with”.
So, take control of your testing, name it and own it!
See you next week, until then, happy testing.
(Inspired by James Bach)
Oops, I did it again
I'm sorry, I did it again. Kind of stopped blogging. One reason being that I started blogging for bwin as well. So my plan now is to move all the posts from bwin to here. Enjoy!
Wednesday, April 21, 2010
A bit too silent
Hi everybody!
Sorry about the long pause I've been taking. It was Easter, and then I was sick and now I'm sitting in a different team doing integration tests, deploying new releases every minute. So I haven't been able to continue my work on the playbook, and neither have my colleagues since new more important things came in the way. I am however glad to report that they started new playbooks for every new feature. Our biggest dilemma right now is how our test report will look like. Diagrams in 3D and stuff like that...
So if things are a bit slow on the blog the coming 2-3 weeks, don't worry. New interesting test experiences will soon be here!!
Until then, happy testing
xo
Sorry about the long pause I've been taking. It was Easter, and then I was sick and now I'm sitting in a different team doing integration tests, deploying new releases every minute. So I haven't been able to continue my work on the playbook, and neither have my colleagues since new more important things came in the way. I am however glad to report that they started new playbooks for every new feature. Our biggest dilemma right now is how our test report will look like. Diagrams in 3D and stuff like that...
So if things are a bit slow on the blog the coming 2-3 weeks, don't worry. New interesting test experiences will soon be here!!
Until then, happy testing
xo
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