QAn’t Wait to See You Again

December 19, 2018 ~ samanthatran ~ Leave a comment

Before I dive into my final installment of this CS series (for now), I wanted to say thank you if you actually read any of these posts and thank you to my new followers for dealing with the notifications you must have gotten.

For this last post, I wanted to discuss the article 5 Reasons You Are Wasting Your Testing Time by Joel Montvelisky. The author expresses how everyone can do testing but not everyone can do “good testing,” which incorporates more than just what is basic checking.

A short list of main reasons why a lot of people tend to waste time that could have been spent testing other things includes:

Not having clear goals
Not understanding what or how much the feature means to your End User
Not keeping track of what was tested and potential discoveries
Not consulting what you already know or using references
Not giving feedback that could be shared to help others

I agree with most of what Montvelisky says as I have personally noticed what has happened from my experience as a Software Quality Assurance Intern when any of the five things above took place based on a task. It is important to understand that sometimes these things may be out of your control but you should still try your best to avoid miscommunication wherever possible.

Montvelisky’s content has not necessarily changed the way I will work as I have already been consciously making an effort to understand what I am reviewing, how stuff is meant to work, logging tasks, connecting tasks to previous occurrences, and communicating with the QA team. If I had read this article before I started working, it would have been more useful as it would serve as a foundation to how one should think of testing beyond the basic functionalities.

Something I wanted to emphasize is the post-test reviews and feedback sessions with peers. I found that if someone else needed to learn about a project or a task had to be communicated with a client, logging any kinds of notes or information was better than not having anything prepared to discuss. They do not necessarily have to be posted for everyone to access but it would be good to note it in any sort of text editor for future reference. I think an example of when to note things is if you found something that does not prevent your current task from being approved but it still affects something for the overall program.

Overall, when testing things I believe you should trust your instincts on reporting things you find. It helps when you try to imagine how much it could affect a program in the long run if not brought to someone’s attention, even if it may seem minimal.

Best of Luck,

Sam

Article: https://qablog.practitest.com/5-reasons-you-are-wasting-your-testing-time/

Test Yourself Before You Wreck Yourself

December 9, 2018 ~ samanthatran ~ Leave a comment

Testing, testing. I may need your approval on this article I read by Software Testing Magazine on Approval Testing. Approval testing, as defined by this article, is a way of software testing that results in presenting the before and after of an application for a user (ex: software development team) to review it and potentially approve it. It’s more of a visual representation of testing and one of the major cons is how the results have to be checked manually.

Some testing tools mentioned include: Approval Tests, TextTest, Jest, Recheck, Automated Screenshot Diff, Depicted (dpxdt), and etc.

The main purpose of the software testing tool, using TextTest for example, is checking that the text output after running program from the command line in different ways.

What I found interesting is how a user can see that a test technically could have “passed” or “failed” but still decide to mark it as the other because they choose what feature they are looking for in the end. This makes it a little more flexible to use approval testing as it is more of a guide or guideline for a user instead of only seeing one word and then a short description of what could have gone wrong. I think this process is much more transparent or descriptive with a user about what could have gone wrong or what went right.

One way the content has changed how I will think about the testing is how there are so many more types of software or programs out there than we can imagine which help us better code or create our own software and programs. This one is especially good for visual coders and testers who like to see their results firsthand to compare what they are expecting with what they actually got.

Overall, I found this article was useful because it introduced me to thinking about a better way of logging the differences between what the reference result is versus the actual result. I did not disagree with any of it since it showed us how we can use approval testing to our advantage while still being honest about its limitations.

Article: http://www.softwaretestingmagazine.com/knowledge/approval-testing/

Top 5oftware Architecture

December 9, 2018 ~ samanthatran ~ Leave a comment

When using architecture patterns, how will you know which one to choose? Peter Wayner, an independent author for TechBeacon takes five architectures that the majority of programs today use and broke them down into their strengths and weaknesses. Through this, it seems like he is hoping to guide users to selecting the most effective software architecture pattern for their needs.

If this article does not clear up enough information, Wayner also brings up a book, Software Architecture Patterns by Mark Richards, which focuses further on architectures commonly used to organize software systems.

The fives types discussed in the article are:

Layered (n-tier) architecture
Event-driven architecture
Microkernel architecture
Microservices architecture
Space-based architecture

The one I found most interesting is space-based architecture because at first when I thought of space, I was thinking of the other kind. The one with the sun and the stars and the moon. But then I realized–what does that have anything to do with software architecture? Space-based architecture is listed as “best for high-volume data like click streams and user logs” and I think this one is pretty important, especially during times like Black Friday and Cyber Monday. I personally experienced the frustration of not being able to access a site (adidas) due to high volume and it really does not help a business.

Another architecture I found thought-provoking is micro-services architecture because of the way Wayner introduced the concept, “[s]oftware can be like a baby elephant: It is cute and fun when it’s little, but once it gets big, it is difficult to steer and resistant to change.” The author providing an example of this made me think about how a site with so many users and things happening at once actually just had many different separate services but they were put together as one. I was a little surprised to think of Netflix in that way after all the times I’ve used it but it makes much more sense now.

Overall, I found all of the information pretty useful and clear to understand as Wayner described what they were and then listed the caveats and what they were best for. I would recommend using this as a reference or quick review of common software architecture designs if someone needs it.

Article: https://techbeacon.com/top-5-software-architecture-patterns-how-make-right-choice

Is Your Interface Two-Faced?

November 28, 2018 ~ samanthatran ~ Leave a comment

When coding, users always have to be conscious about the way their code may be implemented or used in the future by different services leading to potential misuse. After reading Code Health: Make Interfaces Hard to Misuse by Marek Kiszkis, it made me think about how important communication between testing code is.

I found this content useful because Kiszkis featured some examples that can show how an interface could be misused easily. The examples included:

Requiring callers to call an initialization function
Requiring callers to perform custom cleanup
Allowing code paths that create objects without required parameters
Allowing parameters for which only some values are valid, especially if it is possible to use a more appropriate type

It is also good to remember that at the end of the day, code should be defensive but not too defensive to the point that complexity is increased and performance overall is reduced. Kiszkis says “it is not always practical to have a foolproof interface” because there will be situations where some requirements are things that cannot be expressed in an interface.

After seeing so much content based on being careful about what you code it is surprising how this article says it is not necessary to plan too hard. I kind of understand why Kiszkis would say this but personally, I kind of disagree with this. The reason why I disagree is because if someone does happen to end up with more time to work on something than expected and they know it will make something more efficient, then why not go for it?

Overall, I appreciated what was shared in this article in terms of encouraging users to try and see issues that can arise with their code when it comes to interfaces. The main takeaway for me is that if something is brought up, or triggered by undefined behavior, a user should try and make it impossible for this to happen. A way of doing so is by adding things where necessary, like certain slots in his example. It does not have to be too specific but detailed enough so that it covers different aspects, similar to how we try to prepare for everything when it comes to equivalence class testing.

Article: https://testing.googleblog.com/2018/07/code-health-make-interfaces-hard-to.html

test | prueba | thử nghiệm

November 19, 2018 ~ samanthatran ~ Leave a comment

If you happen to be reading this page translated from English to another language, hello there, you are one of the main characters of this blog post. Without linguistics, the study of language and its structure, we probably would not be able to figure out how to communicate everything we need to globally while being able to understand it at the same time while testing. There are so many online resources that cover what a specific country or region in a country uses in terms of data formats for their computer systems.

Stickyminds featured an article from Mukesh Sharma on Linguistic Testing: Setting Up Your Software for Global Quality. Sharma dives in by explaining what exactly linguistic testing is–which is testing not only localization but also internationalization. These words basically mean everything we are testing on the software either is or would be fully functioning across the globe.

I found this content thought-provoking as I never specifically thought about how developers and testers would have to consider culturally-aware attributes like the formatting for texts, dates, and currencies. As more and more people are gaining access to the internet across the world, that means there are even more and more platforms to test for gauging market readiness.

An example of a situation that could happen in real life I can think of when testing functionality on websites is for international shipping addresses. If a user, we’ll call him Zayn, from London, England is ordering something from a company based in Boston, Massachusetts (USA) and puts in his shipping address, it should not require him to select a “State” under one of the fields after he selects “United Kingdom / England” as his country option. If that field still requires Zayn to select a state when his country location does not have states, there is a problem.

This will change the way I think when I work as when developing code to solve problems or create something new, I will have to think about if the market or target audience goes beyond the USA. When testing the code, of course every possible scenario must be tested already but there will have to be more details to make sure it all goes smoothly–especially since international errors or problems usually take up more effort to fix as communication plays a big factor.

Article: https://www.stickyminds.com/article/linguistic-testing-setting-your-software-global-quality

To Stay In or Go Out?

January 28, 2018January 28, 2018 ~ samanthatran ~ Leave a comment

After going out for so many Saturdays in a row, it feels weird to come home from a Saturday afternoon of working and shopping to a night in lounging in comfy clothes for once. There’s probably a special german word for this feeling, I just don’t know how to google it.

I was asked to attend an event recently and I was given flashbacks to how I always reacted when I found out there was an event for me to attend. I mean, I want to go, but at the same time I don’t know if I really do, you know? The chart I just discovered (above, from @introvertdoodles) will help me figure out whether I should go to things now! I’m always saying “yes!” to things excitedly and then it takes up my entire calendar and now I am going to try and focus spending my energy more carefully.

An article titled “Both Introverts and Extraverts Get Exhausted from Too Much Socializing” caught my eye, and the author, Scott Kaufman mentions a research that concluded how “in general, when under stress, tired, or living in crowded circumstances, people often choose to be alone if they can.”

Every time I take a personality test or compared the sides, my results are definitely more extroverted than introverted because my energy comes from going out and about but I think I may have come to the point of getting burned out because of overloading this. It felt like so much was happening all at once like sensory overload combined with an inconsistent sleeping and eating schedule, I had almost no time for myself. I can’t wait to see what this year brings after being able to reflect on 2017 and trying to make changes.

A Fresh Start & Domain Name

November 22, 2016November 22, 2016 ~ samanthatran ~ Leave a comment

Do you see the pink backdrop in the feature photo? I spent $38 on it and I have no ragrets. (That was a reference to the movie We’re the Millers btw, it’s a hilarious movie that you should check out ft. Jennifer Anniston!)

Anyways, hey guys! It’s been a while since I last posted but now that my college winter break is approaching soon, I’ll have more time on my hands. I’m setting a goal of either vlogging or blogging (almost) daily.

I’ve OFFICIALLY bought my own domain name under my own name. I started thinking about how there are now more than a handful of Samantha Tran’s now who may or may not be considering a website and I had to get my hands on it for my future. (Sorry girls!)