Training New Testers Remotely – Part 2 of 3
Cong’s response (only edited formatting)
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Summary
One of the most important things in testing, is to have a sufficient number of perspectives. We can either look at a product by its elements: Structure, Function, Data, Platform and Operations-SFDPO, or by quality criteria from customer’s point of view, CRUSPIC-Capability, Reliability, Usability, Scalability, Performance, Installability, and Compatiblity. Note that scalability and performance are closely related, and usability, what might annoy or frustrate the person or program that uses the product, and installability should not be forgotten.
In test design, risk-based testing will try to anticipate a problem and test for it. Rapid Testers model the risk in four parts. There is a risk when a victim may be affected by some problems caused by a vulnerability in the product that is triggered by some threat. The model itself is a good application to the exploratory testing we do here at Platespin. When deciding how and whether to test the risks on the risk list, where risks are assessed via a combination of the four parts, tasks are prioritized and used to guide exploratory testing.
As a tester, especially a tester in exploratory testing, we examine the criteria (CRUSPIC) from a user’s point of view. Surprised, annoyed, puzzled, frustrated, or maybe satisfied, emotions are generated when user experiencing our product. Emotions, “arousals”, should guide us in testing and work as oracles that trigger heuristics and wake us up to the discovery of a new problem, a problem that might be function-wise correct but interfere customer’s goals.
In addition, there are several key points that can lead to successful testing: A diversity of workflows tends to expose sequence-related bugs; A scriptable or programmable API to a product makes it more testible (which is the case that we use vmware ESX and vCenter) ; shortening the feedback loop between developer and end-user is a powerful force for beneficial change; real (realistic) circumstances tends to reveal problems and to help identify the kinds of problems that are important to real users.
5 Bugs discussed with developers
Edit – removed bugs that were discussed
Please point out anything you like.
Thanks,
Cong
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