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02 March, 2012

Why not to hurry with your action plan !

There are different kinds of person and obviously different kinds of problem solving strategy. So where is this blog coming from? This is based on my latest project assignment. A team which has some process in place (not the best though, but people admit it and want to move to next level), some problems as perceived by me because of me being new to the team and not yet saturated with things around. So how do you go about tackling it?

Take some time in understanding why there are certain things dealt in a certain way, understand what people values and what not, what is important to them, why they do certain things in a certain way? Based on your previous experience or theoretical team (which you would have read in blogs or some books) chart out what things are already in and what else you want to get in. Discuss with your team members and get their feel on that stuff. Chart out a plan with time line attached to it and go for it. Analyzing this way and having spend some time you would know where the obstructions will come from and who will come to your rescue when you hit a dead-end.

You might need to involve other stake holder as well and take ownership yourself for few items to drive and prove that it works. If it doesn't work input the feedback/learning back into the system and re-work. Simple :)

27 February, 2012

10 days in UK (Ipswich)

UK was always on my travel list. I am in Ipswich for some project work for some time. It’s a good place. I am staying in a hotel near to harbour so I get a very good view from my window. Almost all the pics are shot from my window :)

DSCN3004 DSCN2982 DSCN2983 DSCN2985 DSCN2986 DSCN2987 DSCN2988 DSCN2990 DSCN2991 DSCN2992 DSCN2993 DSCN2994 DSCN2995 DSCN2996 DSCN2997 DSCN2998 DSCN2999 DSCN3000 DSCN3001 DSCN3003

Some more pics on the way…

31 January, 2012

We call it “vodQA” and it’s free to attend!

What is it?  vodQA is a platform for members of the software testing industry to strengthen the QA community by sharing and learning new practices and ideas. vodQA is a series of testing events hosted by ThoughtWorks across our India offices. This is the first time it will take place in Bangalore. The series is open to all testing professionals from the IT industry.

Read more details here.

VODQA

25 January, 2012

“When” and “Why” about Locators

 Generally when we are writing our automation test in Selenium or any other driver , the first thing we tend to do is start looking for object Id. Thought we have multiple ways of getting the hold of the object on a webpage like:

  • Id
  • name
  • Link text
  • XPath
  • DOM

Id or name is the most simplest and easy to use locators. Advantages with them is it increases the readability of your test code. It’s also better than other locators in terms of test performance. If you are using lot of Id’s and your test code is becoming too clumsy then one suggested way of using Id’s would be to have a separate file and then probably you can rename them if they are not properly named in the page source (Google page “q” as their search box Id).

Link Text is mostly used with links and limited to that. They are easy to use. However they are a little problematic to maintain because of often changing link texts.

Next is the famous XPath, simple to use (if you are using Firebug or any other add-in  to get it) but makes your test code look ugly. XPath should generally be used when the object is having neither Id nor name. Problem with XPath is when we run the test, browser runs it XPath processor to check if it can find any object, which actually impacts the performance. One important thing which we tend to forget while using XPath is, it ensures the order of elements. So it should be used to verify some object with respect to certain other object. One example could be to verify if “Today’s Deal” appears with in the header section of the Amazon home page.

DOM I haven’t used much so can’t comment on that.

12 January, 2012

Testing Web application using AndroidDriver

This blog is mostly like a  “How to” post on testing web application using Eclipse IDE, JUnit and AndroidDriver. What all you need ? Eclipse (version 3.7), JUnit, selenium-server-standalone-2.15.0.jar and of course Android SDK.

Before you do anything, you need to install Android Emulator on Windows, and then install WebDriver on that emulator:

Post the set up, you can refer below to download the sample test framework from Github to get started

This is a test framework skeleton and can be leveraged for specific testing requirements.