The influence of technology advancements in driving Business value across Industries to adapt to the new digital consumer behavior is increasing by the day. The new age consumers are highly informed, assertive and demand higher quality and per-sonalization of services delivered to them. Another key trend impacting the industry is pervasive computing–providing an environment for power of computing - anywhere, anytime, any device. The biggest outcome of pervasive technology is the ability to make quicker decisions at the right time by analyzing data and gathering intelligent information from the abundant data sources and various channels - portals, social me-dia, blogs, end-use behavior etc. All these trends need QA to respond with appropri-ate QA solutions, strategies and methodologies.

We are indeed living in ex-citing times and this is a unique opportunity to im-agine and create solutions for future using the possi-bilities of computing. We are seeing multiple trends in the Domain of Software Testing: There is an increas-ing shift from Quality to Business Assurance; Cus-tomers are looking at Out-come and Value based models. Software develop-ment model and cycles are increasingly becoming more Agile. QA as a discipline needs to be more agile, adaptable and innovative

With growing importance of

quality, testing become

paramount in releasing

software to client

Editorial...

B U S I N E S S N A M E

and the role of tester is even more complex - to understand the Business, Technology & Process as-pects and provide an inno-vative and smart QA solu-tion. In addition to this, QA is gradually becoming more technical and has de-veloped its own niche disci-plines (for example: mobile testing, cloud testing, SOA, BI testing, Big Data testing etc.). This journey for vali-dating tomorrow's enter-prise requires a lot of focus on innovation, co-creation and collaboration.

At Marlabs, we need to be prepared to take advantage of the emerging opportunities to address Business challenges. This newsletter is one of our efforts to enable the Test-ing team to connect not just with their fellow members but also with folks outside testing realm, to be aware of Industry, Software, Testing trends and share ideas and best practices in a spirit of shared learning.

Issue: Sept 2013

Marlab’s

I N S I D E T H I S

I S S U E :

Notes from CDO 2

Why Testing is

not Dead !!! 2

Marlabs Updates 4

Quality News &

Views 5

Intro to Pairwise

Testing 6

Cartoon Space 7

Notes from CDO .. Over the last 2 years, as a business strategy, we are investing on Software Testing considerably. Though we are competing in a crowded market, we feel that, we can be a differentiator in terms of value creation for our customers. To enable us to be a differentiator, we have to build a passionate team who enjoys Software testing and are ready to come up with creative ideas in Testing which is customer centric, through productivity improvement, cycle time reduction to make

Testing cost effective.

As a career too, software testing is challenging, crea-tive and needs very good communication, analytical, problem solving and questioning skills. Initiating a News Letter of this kind is very thoughtful, at the same time continuing this with quality and timeliness is equal-ly challenging. Wishing the Software testing team all

the best.

Anil

Raghavan

T E S T D I G E S T P A G E 2

Why Testing is not Dead ...

By Rajesh Prabhu Natarajan

During the 6th Annual Google Test Automation Conference 2011, the opening keynote ad-

dress “Test is Dead” was presented by Alberto Savoia, which you can see at below link (which I

can’t embed here due to file size limitations):

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X1jWe5rOu3g

What is so evident is that the fine line between white box testing and black box testing is

getting transparent and thinner by the day. Let’s go in to history for a moment. A couple of

decades back, there was not a concept of independent testing (rightfully so) because of the

lesser dependency towards online and real-time applications. It was a time when the develop-

ment process itself was very fragile. The roles in a project group was not separate and devel-

oper was almost taking care of all phases of the project. It was an OK approach just because of

the smaller size, complexity and the way applications were used.

So called Older way of software testing:

a. Requirement

b. Design and Code

c. Testing

d. Maintenance

Testing is an infinite

process of

comparing the

invisible to the

ambiguous in order

to avoid the

unthinkable

happening to the

anonymous.” -

James Bach

Testing Is Not Dead

After lot of years now, the value of independent testing is questioned again.

1. What if the developer either takes care of testing or does extended testing along with

white box testing?

2. What if I do not have testers or have <5% of developers with very minimal testing?

3. What if I release the app without testing and take care of defects as it comes from my

customers?

These are very valid questions that needs careful thinking. Much talked Modern way of soft-

ware testing:

Requirement ==> Testing

Design and code ==> Testing

Maintenance ==> Testing

Note that the key difference is not just in phases but also about the roles on who is doing each

of these testing. This assumes mostly that developers does testing too; which is probably a bit

going back in time before the concept of 3rd party independent testing came in to existence.

The answer to decide if testing is required may lie in the below questions.

1. What does the app do?

2. Who are the audience?

3. Is that mission-critical?

4. What is the defect tolerance level?

5. How much risk is business willing to take?

and the most important of all…

6. How disciplined is your development team to write better code?

Answers to these questions will decide the depth of testing that may be required.

While the new approach talks about a much more agile/dynamic/optimized testing approach, this

may not be applicable to all areas particularly in verticals like BFSI, Aviation etc., This approach may

apply more towards verticals like media and communication based apps which has a higher toler-

ance level towards defects.

Hence don’t get carried away when someone says testing is dead.

Testing in my view will live forever.

T E S T D I G E S T P A G E 3

continuation of ‘Why Testing is not Dead’ ...

T E S T D I G E S T P A G E 4

Trainings 1. The following trainings were conducted at our offshore loca-tions a. Automation using RFT b. Performance Testing Best practices

C. Selenium training

2. As part of TKG session, we are had an overview of the below projects in July a. FORTITUDE Project b. POLARIS Project c. ENDURANCE - MAINTENANCE PROJECTS

Certifications Congrats to Vanitha Shivakumar and Santhi Priya for clearing the ISTQB foundation level certification

Tools The infrastructure for Testlink has been setup within Marlabs and is available for project use. You can access this at : http://tcoe.marlabs.com/Testlink/login.php Please contact Admin.Testlink@Marlabs.com for access

External Conferences

Few of our colleagues recently attended the Step-In summit 2013 Testing conference at Bangalore. The conference had many interesting and thought-provoking sessions on current and emerging topics of testing

Publications Couple of technical articles were published in Toolsjournal.com : a. ‘Test Data Management for Non-functional testing’

by Ramesh Viswanathan b. ‘Maximizing the utilization of Test Automation’ by Vikas Joshi

…. Few members from Marlabs testing team have attended an STeP-IN SUMMIT 2013 - the 10th Interna-tional Conference on Software Testing. During the conference different events have been planned to ensure that there is maximum take-away to address different needs for all levels of professionals.

The conference theme “Next Generation Testing: Learning from the past; Preparing for the future” has been chosen,

keeping in mind the evolution of Software Testing into a sophisticated discipline over the last two decades

while acknowledging the fact that the Post-PC era is challenging old paradigms and methods of working.

STeP-IN SUMMIT 2013 endeavors to extract the best from past learning while focusing on new technologies,

models and methodologies to address current challenges.

Below are few of the interesting session which was part of conference.

1. The Value of Testing

2. How to bullet proof Releases

3. Tactics in testing social networks

4. Testing the shrinking world

from Sriharsha Kumar

T E S T D I G E S T P A G E 5

Free Testing Magazines

(eBooks)

May 2013 TeaTime with testers April/May

Better software magazine about agile

Testing Circus May

April 2013 Testing Circus April

Logigear magazine about Test Automation

NZTester April-June

Professional tester magazine (the trouble with good ideas)

Automated Software Testing magazine

TESTmagazine April issue

March 2013 Tea time with testers

Testing Experience

OZTester April-June

TestingCircus March Edition

Better software magazine

Agile Record - Kanban

February 2013 Logigear Februari - the rapidly changing testlandscape

Testing Circus

Test Magazine

Professional Tester

January 2013 Tea time with testers

Better Software magazine Lessons learned from Ancient wisdom

News & Announcements..

Enterprise Tester 4.8 brings tighter integration with Atlassian’s JIRA

Link : http://www.ministryoftesting.com/2013/08/enterprise-tester-4-8-brings-tighter-integration-with-atlassians-jira/

The Evolving Skill Set of Tomorrow’s Top Testers by Scott Barber

Link : http://www.ministryoftesting.com/2013/08/the-evolving-skill-set-of-tomorrows-top-testers/

Building an efficient component-based test automation framework (whitepaper)

Link : Click Here

Getting Started with API Testing

Link : Click Here

Why Agile Development Fails (Sometimes)

Link : Click Here

Security News You Won’t Want to Miss

Link : Click Here

SmartBear Collects 5 ATI Automation Awards at TestKIT Conference

Link : Click Here

Why HTML5 Tests the Limits of Automated Testing Solutions

Link : Click Here

“Everyone knows

that debugging is

twice as hard as

writing a program in

the first place. So if

you are as clever as

you can be when

you write it, how will

you ever debug it?”

– Brian Kernighan

The Software Test Manager has the challenging responsibility of ensuring highest levels of Quality within increasingly shorter Cycle times. While Quality requires greater Test coverage, Exhaustive testing has the practical constraints of reduced cycle time and the need of quick testing turnaround times.

Business applications are getting increasingly complex, with multiple possible

scenarios for a given Business functionality. The need to cater to a diverse market means that applications have multiple input conditions and a range of values for each of the inputs.

A dilemma for the Tester is how to ensure Quality under these circumstances? Exhaustive testing for all the inputs and their range of combinations is very time con-suming and often impractical idea. On the other hand, an incomplete coverage raises the possibility of slipped defects.

Pairwise testing is a test technique based on combinatorial methods and pro-vides a balanced solution which ensures maximum Test coverage with a reduced number of test combinations. How does Pairwise testing work? In any complex software system, defects or failures can be categorized as:

• Single Modal—in which something works or fails by itself, independent of other factors

• Dual Modal—in which even though two things work individually, they fail when paired together

• Multi Modal—in which three or more things in combination don’t work together

The underlying principle is 1. The vast majority of defects are caused by the interaction between a small

number of factors ie. single and dual modal causes . 2. The number of failures resulting from the interaction of more than 2 parame-ters is progressively less 3. Testing a large number of random combinations results in inefficient tests

Hence, the focus is on a technique which optimizes test case design to identify single and dual mode failures. The below figure illustrates how the impact of test case optimization increases sig-nificantly as the number of test factors increase :

T E S T D I G E S T

Introduction to Pairwise Testing

By Rajesh Sundararajan

P A G E 6

T E S T D I G E S T P A G E 7

continuation of ‘Introduction to Pairwise Testing ...

Let’s understand this better with an example: Take the case of a software to select cars which has the below options Manufacturer: Honda, Toyota, Maruti (3 options) Category- Hatchback, Sedan, SuV (3 options) City: Bengaluru, Mysore (2 options) Exhaustive testing of all possible scenarios/combinations will require 3 X 3 X 2 = 18 tests. Let’s apply the All pairs technique. The number of test cases where each column pair value occurs at least once is 9. If we take the example of “Honda” in the Manufacturer’s column, we can see that it forms a “pair” with each of the values in the other col-umns at least once.

Original rows – 18; Optimized rows – 9; Savings/Benefit = 50% . As the

number of variables and their options increase, the benefits will be that

much higher.

The above example was simple and we could organize the All –pairs

manually. How do we do this using a tool? There are many Free and

Web-based tools listed at http://www.pairwise.org/tools.asp . Use any

of them and share your experience.

Points to note:

All-pairs is a technique and needs to be understood well and evaluated before applying it.

It is very similar to and often confused with Orthogonal Arrays. Both use the basic principle of “paired varia-

bles”, but Orthogonal arrays are “Balanced” as they have all pairs equal number of times.

Cartoon Space...