Sayonara 2010 - Welcome 2011

2010-It’s been quite an eventful year, both personally and professionally. Year started with something quite probing i.e. testing a middleware application in a span of 5 days. I was asked to test the Service Layer part of the application and I am glad that I did it as I got to learn few more tools like SOAP UI for WSDL and RESTful web services testing. If 2009 was about learning RapidSQL then 2010 was about getting comfortable with DBArtisan. There has been some addition on how to use BPT or Business Process Testing using Quality Center and Quick Test Professional both from HP.

In last 4-5 months; I got to learn about iTKO LISA Test Automation tool which I found good for middleware and back-end test automation (or Automated Checks). It‘s not easy to use for sure, at first it looks like a configuration management tool and to make learning little difficult, a newer version of this tool does not provide updated version of help documents. I hope going into New Year; the tool owners will improve on help documentation because if they are looking to have a large user base they will have to help users and make them feel at ease with LISA.

Then there came Agile and for first 2 sprints I was kind of confused so I picked a book titled “Agile Testing: A Practical Guide for Testers and Agile Teams” by Lisa Crispin and Janet Gregory. It proved to be of immense value and helped me BIG time. So, now I have the experience in Agile environment (/methodology) as well. Few things I really liked about Agile are quick feedback and less documentation. In few weeks, I’ll put a separate post on my experience with Agile as a tester.

These are the few important things that I learned in 2010, more importantly I networked heavily and read a number of recommended books from James Marcus Bach. I hope to finish reading (& learning from) all of them by end of 2011.

There had been some disturbances as well on personal front but all is well that ends well. I am sure to start 2011 with a bang; a lot of things will change with the start of New Year on both of he ‘P’ fronts. I hope to network with lot more people in testing arena and share & learn with them. Ohh yes, I have few New Year resolutions also, I will blog more frequently then I have been doing in last 1.5 years. There are few more that I’ll not talk about.

Wishing you all, a very happy & prosperous 2011. This is Rahul Gupta signing off for 2010.

C Ya!!!

What to Blog about?

I have been little confused for last few weeks. I seriously wanted to write something but was too much occupied with work and at the same time, I could not think as what I should write about? I am not sure if any of the bloggers whom I follow, face the same problem.

I wanted to participate in BlogSTAR competition of EuroSTAR conference this year but I could not make genuine progress on that front. And when the list of finalists was disclosed, my name did not figure out there. I understood that I didn't have enough credits, reputation or number of blog posts to prove myself a suitable contender for the coveted competition. No regrets as I got to know few more people in the software testing field. I do make a point to read all the posts on a daily basis and comment as and when I feel the need or something that intrigues me.   

I am running short of topics. So I asked my friends and colleagues who are somehow related to Software Industry as "What they would like to read about testing in next few weeks?". The answers I received were really encouraging. People don't want to know much about definitions, they want to know as how testing is adding value to the organization? (seems like a typical management question.). They want me to share, day to day challenges that I or my team faces in testing, products of different nature. So after getting some inputs, I prepared a list of things that I would like to talk about in coming weeks.

There was one interesting input that I received from a guy who just started his career in Software Testing field.  

He said, "Rahul, you asked me to read blog posts from Michael Bolton, Dr. Cem Kaner, James Bach etc, but I find it very difficult to understand as what they exactly meant." I was kind of confused as that guy has very good communication skills both written and verbal. I asked myself, "Did I ask too much from that guy to do that too when he is just 3 months into Software Testing?" I didn't know that answer. I went back to that little chap and asked, "What's there that you find difficult to understand?". He replied, "I found few terminologies and ideas difficult to understand, like Heuristics". I understood where he was coming from. I faced almost similar difficulties when I started reading these blogs 2 years back. He asked for my help on understanding the things  that are not directly about testing but the knowledge gained can be applied to testing "the passion we share".  

Lets see what I can do to help him. 

C Ya !!!

Rahul