How to win the Testing World Cup?

The “World Cup” fever has taken over. And what will be a better time to write something about world cup than this? But in no way this article is related to world cup cricket! So please excuse me if you expected some nice world cup cricket analysis here.

But this article is surely about how to win the “Testing World Cup”! Never heard of it? Well, I am sure you must have faced such situation at some point of your career. Okay, let me come straight to the point. What does world cup means to a cricketer? It’s a life time dream, right? But at the same time the pressure and excitement is also just too much. To me, world cup is all about handling the pressure and keeping yourself cool in a really tough *pressure cooker* situation. The team who handles this well wins the cup!

And as testers we regularly face such situations whenever there is a Product Release round the corner. For us a Product Release is like a “World Cup”! Regardless of how much testing you have done and how much bugs you have caught, everybody waits till the Release with lot of enthusiasm. Coz, a Product Release is like a “Testing Mahakumbh” for any tester. The tester /testing team, who can handle the pressure and perform well, wins the cup! So it’s all about testing well in a tough situation! So here is where the testing skills come handy for a tester. It’s when we have to decide whether the Product is of good enough quality to be shipped. It’s when we have to find all important issues/bugs and get them fixed by the development team.

No doubt testing is an important process throughout the whole SDLC. But it suddenly becomes the most important activity among all, once the Product is getting ready to be released / shipped. So the pressure mounts on the testing team to a great extent. So it needs lot of skills and lot of experience to handle such tremendous amount of pressure. These are some areas that need attention during such high times:

1. Try to find crashing bugs. No user would like to use a Product that ends up crashing his system. So be careful and watch out for all sorts of things that can lead to a crash; like memory leaks, database errors, poor exception handlings, corrupt .dlls, missing system files due to a bad installer etc.

2. Try and identify the improper and missing functionalities and get them fixed.

3. Don’t forget regression testing. It’s your friend in tough times. Neglecting it may cost your product dearly. I am sure that no serious tester would forget regressing his older bugs as he knows
how important is regression testing.

4. Smoke test your Product on a daily basis to look for new problems.

5. Have a track of all known bugs, test cases and bug fixes and sort them on priority basis. This will help you ensuring that the most important ones are dealt first.

6. Try and identify usability errors. Try out all possible navigation paths and all other little things that may affect your Product’s usability in an adverse manner.

7. Keep your ears open for your help desk call transcripts. Sometimes your user may find some important bug/issue and report it to your help desk (which you might have entirely missed). [I am assuming that a pervious version of your Product is already there in the market and you are testing your latest version now].

8. And last but not the least, don’t Panic!

If you and your testing team can handle this situation well, then no doubt you will end up winning the Testing World Cup in style. I hope you understand what I mean by wining (getting promotions, salary hikes, bonus, and of course the most pleasing among all - a gentle pat from you Manager on your back). So, are you ready for the Testing World Cup?
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About Debasis Pradhan

Debasis has over a decade worth of exclusive experience in the field of Software Quality Assurance, Software Development and Testing. He writes here to share some of his interesting experiences with fellow testers.

11 Comments:

  1. Hey, Debasis!

    I don't believe that you have 2 yrs of experience, u might have 20 yrs of testing experience. Its really amazing.
    I really become a FAN for you now. :)
    Keep it Up. You are the Best.

    Purna

    ReplyDelete
  2. Thanks Purna for all those nice words. But I am still a learner and have a long way to go! Any way, thanks for becoming my FAN and I promise I won't give you any chance to change your decision! :) Keep coming back for more interesting articles in future.

    - Debasis

    ReplyDelete
  3. hi dear.. its a really impressive note.. really awsome .. great going with information... nice perception.. take care bye Suraj mamu

    ReplyDelete
  4. Pradhan,

    You doing a wonderful job.
    Cool yaar.Hats off

    ReplyDelete
  5. @ Kalpana,

    I am glad that you liked the posts. Thanks for those kind words. Keep reading and keep coming back in future for more such posts that might interest you!

    --Debasis

    ReplyDelete
  6. hi debasis,

    nice articles. i tried searching for context-driven testing but couldn't find any article. i'm new to testing and want to pursue my career in testing, a little bit about me.
    i want to know the framework for context-driven testing. is it possible to write an acticle w.r.t the above mentioned framework.

    thanks any way. it's a pleasure reading your article ( although i've read only one article )

    regards,
    Deepak

    ReplyDelete
  7. @ Deepak,

    I am glad to hear that you are interested in starting a career in software testing industry! Anyway, it is sad that you did not find anything on context-driven testing by searching the net! I will try to write an article on this topic soon! Keep coming back to make sure you don't miss that post! :)

    thanks any way. it's a pleasure reading your article (although i've read only one article)

    It is a pleasure having readers like you on my blog too! :) Happy Testing...

    -Debasis

    ReplyDelete
  8. Hi debasis

    I am vinay a software tester . It is simply unbeliable that u have a just 2 yrs of experience.

    From many days i am looking for Good blogs and my search is complete

    ReplyDelete
  9. @ Vinay,

    I am glad that you found my writing and my blog interesting. But I would like to humbly disagree with you when you say that: From many days i am looking for Good blogs and my search is complete! There are many more good (even better) blogs out there in the blogosphere. I wish you all the best to find them as well. :)

    Happy Exploring...
    -Debasis

    ReplyDelete
  10. Debasis the phrase practice make men perfect best suites u.hats off

    raji

    ReplyDelete
  11. Hi Debasis,

    I have a query in m mind. Exactly what is the role of a white-box tester?
    Is the white-box tester required to be programmatically very strong?

    Thanks
    Sephali

    ReplyDelete

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