On 22nd April I received an invitation for paired testing from Ajay. It was a pleasant surprise as this was straight from one of the most eminent tester and contributor to the testing community. But we could not finalize any date/time for this exercise. I was reluctant to approach Ajay for this due to multiple reasons. On 9th May at 7:00 AM received a message from Ajay to have one hour time for testing together. So we decided 5:00 PM IST to meet on Skype.
I went online at 5 PM believing the next 1 hour to be a nice learning experience. Ajay was also present online. We decided to test some desktop application and as we were on Skype we thought of testing Skype only. We decided that for first 25 minutes Ajay will test/demonstrate and then for next 25 minutes it would be my turn for testing application.
We picked the Skype>Advanced Feature for testing. Ajay shared his screen so that I can view testing progress of a renowned tester. Ajay open up the feature and make a quick note of the functionality. Skype advanced features allows you to take a back up of your contacts in VCF file format. Ajay did not directly jump to testing which I think most of tester would have (including me). He browsed to www.fileinfo.com and gets info about VCF file format, gets some test data ready (from outlook). While testing he makes a good observation regarding vcf file size which many of us might not have make.
After 25 minutes he put an end to his testing having few interesting observations like inconsistency in using blocked People and blocked contacts term, File size, save button enabled when nothing to save is there.
My observation after witnessing Ajay testing session was
- Effective use of time: He completed his testing before the time limit keeping time for any Q&A. In our daily testing activities this time can be utilized to analyze our testing results, to identify if there is any gap.
- Perfect Planning: Though he only have 30 minutes to test the feature I think he had done full justice to the feature by giving required coverage to the feature. This was possible because he has the plan in place before beginning the testing and not deciding things on run.
Now, it was my turn to begin testing. So after having an option to test same feature or different feature Ajay give me an option to test “Contact > Search for skype users” feature.
I noted the start time and straightaway jumped to testing. I browsed the feature to get familiar with feature.
I am always for documentation while doing testing. So I make a note of what the Search feature is about and what are the different parameters through which we can test. I started testing with the idea to generate sanity test ideas for feature and later on see how stable the feature is about.
I started testing the feature without giving details to test data. I assume ashish_maheshwari as my username which was instead “maheshwari_ashish”. So I was doing the testing with wrong input for all duration.
I spend around 30 minutes testing “Contact > Search for Skype users” and found 1 Bug Candidate.
Now is the turn for getting most of the one hour spent or I would say most valuable learning so far
- I did not make ask about the mission making the assumption to do the functional testing for “Contact > Search for Skype users”. This was one of the biggest learning for me.
- Test your tests first. Another blunder I made is not testing my test. I keep on testing with wrong input for almost half an hour. If I could have tested my input initially I could have avoided most embarrassing moment.
- Smart Documentation is the essence of smart testing. I am a firm believer for documentation but I spent around 5 minutes in documentation which is more than 15% of total time spend. Had I followed smart documentation strategy I could have spent more time for testing. Smart documentation can be applied if I had used phrases instead of complete sentence, avoided unnecessary documentation and documenting only what it is necessary
- Assumptions are best tool for suicide. All assumptions I made turns out be invalid assumption and was the main reason for my ineffectiveness in this particular testing session.
- Saving the product in between. Though we have been told many times before also about “saving work” in between but often we forget to save our work and title of editor remains “Untitled” and when s/w crashes or power cut happens we are helpless courtesy us.
- Mention Time Zone: This would have helped setting tone right and who know, this can act as evidence in court and remove any position for ambiguity regarding time.
So all in all, this was the most learning experience of my testing career till now. Thanks to Ajay for sharing these pearls with me.
