There are many areas in Testing which have been around for a long time now. But, we can still see different nuances to the familiar areas of testing in our project experiences. In this issue, we have a couple of articles which reiterate this theme. An article on Test automation highlights the interactions between Manual & Automation tester & developer and how their work impacts each other. In the next article, the importance of looking beyond the functional and cross device testing of Mobile applications is illustrated with the case of Battery life testing. We look forward to such ideas and perspectives from your projects & experience
4
JUNE 2014 VOLUME 1.9 MARLABS NEWS LETTER FOR INTERNAL TESTING UPDATES AND KNOWLEDGE SHARING Editorial … Quality : Over the Horizons Welcome to the latest issue of Test Digest. There are many areas in Testing which have been around for a long time now. But, we can still see different nuances to the familiar areas of testing in our project experiences. In this issue, we have a couple of articles which reiterate this theme. An article on Test automation highlights the interactions between Manual & Automation tester & developer and how their work impacts each other. In the next article, the importance of looking beyond the functional and cross device testing of Mobile applications is illustrated with the case of Battery life testing. We look forward to such ideas and perspectives from your projects & experience. Happy Reading! THE TRIO ................. 2 BATTERY CALIBRATION TESTING ................... 3
Transcript
JUNE 2014 VOLUME 1.9
M AR L ABS N EW S L ET T ER FO R I NT ER N AL T EST ING U PD AT ES AN D KNOW LED G E SH ARI NG
Editorial …
Quality : Over the Horizons Welcome to the latest issue of Test Digest.
There are many areas in Testing which have been around for a long time now. But, we
can still see different nuances to the familiar areas of testing in our project
experiences. In this issue, we have a couple of articles which reiterate this
theme. An article on Test automation highlights the interactions between Manual &
Automation tester & developer and how their work impacts each other. In the next
article, the importance of looking beyond the functional and cross device testing
of Mobile applications is illustrated with the case of Battery life testing.
We look forward to such ideas and perspectives from your projects & experience.
The TRIO [The significance of collaboration between QA & Dev]
There are loads of articles on automation lately, but one thing that needs to be emphasized is the bond an automation tester shares with manual testers & the developers. Every tester is aware of the interactions between manual tester & automation tester; but addition of developers is something untouched by most of the articles. There is always an emphasis given to the test cases & automation test scripts, but should the developer really be involved/concerned with test automation, or should the developer only be involved only once the automation suite detects a bug, just to fix the issue?
It’s quite evident that the automation tester has to foresee the future requirements & the changes that the application might face while designing scalable Test automation frameworks. But is that a prerogative only for the automation tester? how about the manual tester, shouldn’t their test suite really cater to the future applica-tion changes? Fact is even a manual tester should foresee these changes and create the test cases accordingly in a modular reusable manner - thereby maintenance is not only limited to automation testers, but also is a concern of manual testers.
What about developers? It’s a clear thing that the Developer creates the application, focusing on the UI, the interior functionality, unit testing whether the application is working or not as per the requirements, while the tester creates the test cases and tests to ensure no bug is leaked or goes undetected.
But the role of the Automation engineer typically starts only once the application is stable , the require-ments frozen (very much if not all) , and the test cases ready , which highlight on what to test & how to test. To
this extent, the Automation Engineer needs to come out with a strategy in line with the Application technology, stability and future roadmap. But is it a one way street?
The answer is NO. There are many issues which the Automation Engineer faces because proper develop-ment practices are not taken care by the developer. First of all, the key problem an automation tester faces is that of object recognition, it is duty of a developer to assign proper (unique) IDs to each of the object on GUI, thereby eliminating object mismatches/not founds/ identical objects found. These unique ID play a very important role when it comes to automation; Tab order, just in case the objects are not recognizable etc… are something seldom given a thought (or high priority) by a developer. For a manual tester, these factors don’t really make much differ-ence as human mind is any day superior to the working of automation tool.
But for an automation tester or for the tool, each of these small things make a big difference. If the devel-oper creates an application keeping in mind these minutest details , it creates an initial flow , wherein automation tester can focus more on logic than finding round-about ways to automate a test case step which is easily possible
-- by Vikas Joshi
manually but takes good lines of code to automate, just be-cause object is not recognized etc.. This in turn gives an upper hand in automating faster & thereby shortening the testing lifecycle & catching defects earlier & faster.
Manual testers also have to keep in mind these details while writing test cases, tab order, placement of objects on
UI , whether each object itself is behaving as ex-pected or not etc… needs to be thought of while cre-ating test cases. These application design issues if sorted out earlier in the lifecycle, can revoke many roadblocks for creating a good automation suite. And we all are very much aware of the good Return-on-Investment a good automation framework built around a well-designed application can offer.
Imagine this scenario: If a person goes for a hike in the mountains, his smartphone records his route on a map, as well as provides data on time, speed,
etc. If the hiker should get lost, or if dark fell due to unfavorable weather conditions, the detailed map data could still lead him back safely along the
exact route he had followed.
However, what if the phone battery died halfway through the hike? Needless to say, the longer the expedition, the more critical the app’s memory, and
its life and standby time become. It would also be desirable for the phone to have standby power to make emergency calls.
So, even though the app had brilliant features, just due to the phone’s short battery standby time, it would be
rendered almost useless in circumstances like these.
Battery Life Testing
Some companies, which specialize in test and service management solutions, maintain a database of differ-
ent services and application with statistics on their frequency and time for which they are used, both indi-
vidually and for typical user profiles, such as a student, a mobile business executive, or a housewife. This
means that companies can run accurate tests on individual applications and scenarios in the lab, and also
replicate realistic real-world usage conditions to generate an accurate measure of actual performance in a
user’s hand.
This service is typically aimed at mobile operators, who want to test a large number of devices concurrently to make decisions on which devices should
they promote on their networks and sell in their stores. On the other hand, device manufacturers want information on how well their devices are oper-
ating, are they at par with the competition’s devices, and if they need to improve their devices.
As demand for battery life testing grows, the industry also witnesses a need for a mobile test solution that would have all these features. It should
include automated software testing, offering a choice of typical user profiles to simulate actual everyday usage, along with the ability to tailor those
profiles to meet specific variations.
It should be supported by a cloud infrastructure to provide content for any chosen customer usage profile, further minimizing the effort involved in
testing effort, thereby speeding it up for mobile Battery Life Testing.
Battery Calibration Testing :
An Over View
-by Narendra
Working Towards Precision -By Jon Bach
Few thoughts on ‘Best Practices on Testing’ http://jonbox.wordpress.com/2014/05/31/working-towards-precision/
Security, Smart Devices, and Industry Trends -By Jonathan Vanian
An interview with Ray Potter, Founder of SafeLogic http://www.stickyminds.com/interview/security-smart-devices-and-
industry-trends-interview-ray-potter
Test Magazine ‘Test Magazine - Online downloadable Editions http://www.testingmagazine.com/digital-issues/
Pioneering Test Automation -By Rudy Labagnar,Scott Parshall
Testing Automation - Challenges & Best Practices https://vts.inxpo.com/scripts/Server.nxp?LASCmd=AI:4;F:QS!
10100&ShowKey=20099&AffiliateData=TWcommhome Schedule @ June 5, 2014 - 2:00pm ET Assuring Quality in a Big Data Implementation - By Kannan Subramani & Avadhoot Panse
Key strategies and capabilities needed for big data QA/testing
Scheduled @ June 12, 2014 - 2:00pm ET Beyond Automation: A Strategy for Faster Software Delivery - By Richard Moran, VP, FIPIC
Faster Software Delivery through Leveraging the cloud & Database virtualization https://vts.inxpo.com/scripts/Server.nxp?LASCmd=AI:4;F:QS!
10100&ShowKey=19623&AffiliateData=TWSMHome [This event is available on demand] Top 5 Strategies for Improving Mobile App Performance Testing - By Wilson Mar, HP
About improving mobile app testing https://vts.inxpo.com/scripts/Server.nxp?LASCmd=AI:4;F:QS!
10100&ShowKey=15429&AffiliateData=TWComm [This event is available on demand] Speak Up; To Make Things Better !!
