The Art of Software Testing

When this book was first published in 1979, software testing was far from an exact science. Considered the “dark art” of software development, it was a little–understood process without a set of standard principles.Twenty–five years later, software testing hasn’t really changed but The Art of Software Testing has.

In addition to all the major software testing topics (such as higher–order testing, white and black–box testing, debugging, code inspections, and walkthroughs) this fully updated Second Edition features current information on testing software projects, including vital Internet–based e–commerce applications, as well as details on Extreme Testing, which supports the widely used Extreme Programming development methodology.

Just like the first edition, this revision fills the gaps in the professional literature and provides a practical, rather than theoretical, discussion of the purpose, nature, and principles of proper testing.

Many programming students enter the workforce without the proper understanding of software testing. This book covers all the essential topics for those students, but also provides all the detail and precision that working programmers might need during the testing phase. Appropriate for programmers and students at any level, The Art of Software Testing, Second Edition presents all the latest new ideas and techniques–many illustrated with helpful examples.

Global IT Professional Network - uniting professionals arcoss the world!

Today, the term Information Technology has ballooned to encompass not only aspects of computing and technology but business fields too. Information technology has been changing the way business is done for more than 20 years, and its role in decision making has catapulted. Investors use IT to learn more about company performance so that they can make better investment decisions. Companies use IT to get information about their costs and their customers so that they can improve performance. Consumers use IT to learn more about products and services so that they can stretch their dollars. Competitors use IT to compare their performance with that of their peers.

Today's most businesses completely rely on technology in performing core business processes with constant desire to improve efficiency through the better using of technology. But while technology has enabled delivery of increasing amounts of information to businesses, it has introduced new complications for IT professionals. As the more technology integrated into business processes the more multi-disciplinary knowledge it requires from IT specialists. Dealing with business process automation means that IT people have to understand business logic itself, which means more interaction with customers and industries where technology operates.

To help IT professionals evolve their skills to meet the changing roles and responsibilities let's create an informational platform tailored to facilitate communication, knowledge sharing and cooperation between professionals from various IT spheres.

I'm very glad to introduce the new professional group on LinkedIn "Global IT Professional Network" designed to connect professionals across the world providing them with a robust platform for communication and cooperation.

Link to the group: http://www.linkedin.com/groups?gid=1891674

Integrating our strengths for reader's benefit

Dear Friends and Readers!



In this entry I'd like to share an information not directly related with the main subject of this blog which is latest news and updates from Information Technology, Software Testing and QA and IT Outsourcing spheres, but the news related to the blog itself and its authors.

As I represent Ukrainian IT outsourcing provider I belongs to IT community and try to keep up with industry evolution. Exploring large amount of information every day I am trying to share most relevant findings with other professionals by providing natural and independent information covering various IT subjects. As my company, Mirasoft Group, was founded in 1989 by the group of scientists of the Kiev Institute of Cybernetics (leading research institute of National Academy of Science where the first computer in continental Europe was built :), it remains the oldest one among East European IT companies employing specialists with more than 20 years of experience in IT sphere. Cooperation with such experts gives me a deep insight on many problems and challenges in IT industry. Attending numerous technical seminars organized by global power-houses and possessing years of software development and testing expertise our experts helping me to cover very actual and complex subjects for today's IT world thereby attracting other respected professionals to join our discussions in world's leading communities and networks (Linkedin, Ecademy, Facebook, Plaxo etc). Receiving such a great support from my technical colleagues I am always so proud to write entries from our whole company, Mirasoft Group, mentioning all professionals stayed behind and contributing to our work.

However, due to recent merger of our company with one well-established European IT Network - Levi9 Global Sourcing we need to integrate and operate under one brand which is already connecting development and testing centers and delivery operations throughout Europe. By uniting with other professionals from various areas under one roof we’ll try to integrate our knowledge and expertise in various technology fields for readers' benefit. Combining our strong expertise in Software Testing with Levi9 Global Sourcing multiple competence knowledge we’ll work hard to keep you updated about latest innovations and software releases and methodologies in Testing and QA areas.

The main focus of our blogs as well as our commitment to provide independent and natural information about IT sector will remain. We just continue to inform you under Levi9 brand – globalization, you know…


Please see the full list of our blogs available for you:

1. Software Development Blog
2. Software Testing Blog
3. Nearshore Outsourcing Blog
4. Ukrainian IT Mission Blog
5. Technology and IT news, Video Blog


Thank you for time and attention, we’ll work hard to repay :)

The growing role of Software Testing

Today, most software and technology organizations run dedicated quality assurance department with complete staffing from junior testers to senior quality assurance engineers. The reason behind this is Software testing not only uncover that a product works properly under required conditions but can also initiate that it does not function properly under specific conditions. The scope of software testing includes examination of code as well as execution of that code in various environments and conditions as well as examining all aspects of code.

Although testing is an integral part of SDLC, emphasis is given to keep it independent from development. In the past, software testing was merely executing a series of steps manually and punching various key strokes as an attempt to break the application and testing was carried out after development was over. Today this has changed and the software testing activity starts right from the requirements definition stage and testing professionals play the role of arbitrator, mediator, translator, negotiator between the parties to ensuring that their ideas not only accurately specified and designed, but that the criterias required for effective quality and testing are captured and articulated into models and tools so that tests are accurately generated to verify the design and validate the requirements.

In many organisations today, ‘test driven development’ is the norm. This increased focus on quality has greatly increased the scope of testing activity. Testing is now compared at par with other IT services in terms of revenue for companies and also for the kind of remuneration and career growth it has on offer for a professional to enter this domain. In, addition the recent development of complex web-applications, where multi-layered designs were architected in order to hold complex business logic, which also have to be supported in various platforms and network structures will further increase the potential areas for failure and as a result the need of efficient testing approaches. Testing and Quality assurance are becoming more important in software engineering process as they add more value to businesses in their desire of brining products and services to market as rapidly as possible, with minimal risks.

However, Software testing should not be taken as an alternative to software development, contrary testing professionals should work closer with Subject matter experts, Business analysts, system architects and end users to mitigate the risks and increasing benefits of business changes.

Central and East European Conference on Software Engineering Techniques

The 4th IFIP TC2 Central and East European Conference on Software Engineering Techniques takes place in Krakow, Poland on October 12-14, 2009.

The mission of the conference is to integrate
researches and practitioners mainly from Central and Eastern European
countries with the aim of building theoretical and empirical
background for software engineering areas.

The conference was told to be a forum for presentation and evaluation of both,
currently used methods and techniques and new approaches or directions in
software engineering. Main topics of the Conference will include all aspects
of software development and testing:

- Model-driven software development
- Software development methodologies
- Software requirements engineering and modelling
- Software quality assurance
- Software measurement and metrics
- Software testing, analysis and verification
- Software products and process improvement
- Agile software development methodologies and practices
- Evidence-based software engineering
- Software project management

The results of recent pool "What is the future of software testing?":

The results of recent pool "What is the future of software testing?":

Votes so far 47:

1. Will depend on programming trends( 3 answers 6%)
2. Future of testing in automation: automated unit testing; automated functional testing (17 answers 36%)
3. Software testing will get harder, more expensive and therefore less efficient ( 1 answers 2%)
4. Software testing will always have a future. As long as developers will write code there will be bugs, and the need for specialists to test them ( 32 answers 68%)
5. Reduction of QA costs, by increasing the quality of the code and reducing production time (5 answers 10%)
6. Non-functional testing: performance, application security testing etc. should increase (12 answers 27%)
7. you have different opinion ( 2 answers 4%)

Quality Engineered Software and Testing Conference 2009

The Quality Engineered Software and Testing (QUEST) conference runs from the 20 - 24 April 2009. The conference provides with unique opportunities for professionals from Testing and QA related areas to get the latest information from industry leaders and practitioners as well as to take special certification preparing courses and practice examinations. Also, there will be various interactive workshops and special roundtable discussions so that participants will be able to connect with fellow practitioners, contribute to the industry, and explore the career possibilities it offers.

Software quality topics include agile methods, assessments/CMMI, defect management, inspections/quality gates, measurement, organizational change, people/team effectiveness, process improvement/six sigma, project management, quality management, release management, requirements.

Testing topics include integration testing, performance testing, requirements-based testing, security testing, test automation, test design, test estimation, test management, test planning, test techniques, tools effectiveness.


The conference website: www.qaiquest.org/chicago.

Mirasoft Group Software Testing Services

Check out this SlideShare Presentation:

Mirasoft Group Software Testing Services

View more presentations from Sergey Lesnikov.

Software testing market will growth despite the crisis.

Recent report from software consulting firm Ovum claims that the worldwide software testing services market is projected to reach 56 billion dollars by 2013, despite the global economic crisis that has already hardly hit technology industry. But according to Ovum despite this slowing, testing services will grow at a compound annual growth rate of 9.5 percent from 2008 to 2013, faster than most other technology services.

More and more companies are specialized in software testing services, with India establishing itself as the favourite provider. According to Alexander Simkin, a senior Ovum analyst and author of the report, both an outsourced and in-house testing services markets will grow over the next four years, but not at the heady rates seen over the last four years. Indian providers will compete with European and North American testers in terms of quality while continuing to offer cheaper rates.

However, the high demand has resulted in a skills shortage in India, so we could see increasing numbers of testing services jobs going to other low-cost territories. Recent scandals in Indian IT outsourcing markets could also affect on the alignment of forces in Global IT outsourcing market as Indian providers are losing their advantage against global competitors, and customers are choosing other attractive offshore work centers.

The challenges in Agile Testing

As global crisis hit hard, more and more becomes concerned about how it will impact on the information technology sector. Companies become more cautious and sometimes reluctant in giving software business. Some customers withdrawing their long term projects while others using the opportunities to renegotiate contracts and quoting lower price. Recent IT scandals also add fuel to the fire, and as a result customer satisfaction levels fall and many projects going much longer than expected and cost more than planned. And all this happens while customer wants to get better business processes from software providers in order to increase customer satisfaction and save more money.

In this tough environment more and more companies are start to explore how “Agile with different flavors” can help their Enterprises more reliably deliver software quickly and iteratively. The roles of Test Professionals become more important in implementing Agile Projects. Innovations are increasingly being fueled by the needs of the testing society at large. But the most challenging role to adapt to agile development is the role of Tester. That's because agile development contradicts so many things that many Testers have been taught is 'best practice'.

In an agile development environment you cannot wait for things to happen. You must be proactive. This is true for all team members, but it is especially true for Testers. QA team members cannot let anything get in their way of testing. If they don’t follow the requirements they need to speak with the Product Owner for clarification. If they are not sure how programmers is going to implement the new code, they need to discuss how the code will be implemented with the developer. They must become self directed experts at removing any obstacles that prevent them from testing.

So, what are the challenges face Testers when working with Agile development teams and how they can meet that challenges?

Recently, browsing through Software Testing Help I found one interesting article: Tips to be More Innovative in the Age of Agile Testing ..., written by J.B. Rajkumar - experienced Trainer, QA Manager, frequent Speaker for Colleges, Universities and International Conferences.

According to him Agile Testers face lot of challenges when they are working with Agile development team. And they should be able to apply Root-Cause Analysis when finding severe bugs so that they unlikely to reoccur. While Agile has different flavors, Scrum is one process for implementing Agile. Some of the challenging scrum rules to be followed by every individual are,

- Obtain Number of Hours Commitment Up Front
- Gather Requirements / Estimates Up Front
- Entering the actual hours and estimated hours daily.
- Daily Builds
- Keep the Daily Scrum meetings short
- Code Inspections are Paramount


Mr.Rajkumar claims in order to meet the challenges, an agile testers needs to be innovative with the tools that they have. And here is some important keys for innovation:

- A good Agile Tester needs to be extremely creative when trying to cope up with speed of development/release. For a tester, being creative is more important than being critical.
- Testing professional must be highly talented and strives for more learning and innovating new ideas. Talented Testers are never satisfied with what they have achieved and always strives to find unimaginable bugs of high value and priority.
- An Agile Tester should not be afraid to look at a developer’s code and if need be, and in extreme cases, to correct it.
- He must have a comprehensive vision to client’s expectations and delivery of the good product.
- He must be empowered to work in Pairs. He will be involving in Pair Programming to bring shorter scripts, better designs and finding more bugs.
- Tester should be passionate and contributes something unique that may be in terms of their innovative ideas or the way they carry day-to-day work.


And finally, Agile Tester must have multiple skills like, Manual, Functional, Performance testing skills and soft skills like Leadership skills, Communication skills etc. As in this new world Testing Professional will be concentrate on adding value to the business and the software development life-cycle and will operate in a new and elevated position where the combination of their structured driven approach, creativity and ability to articulate and define quality and testing criteria in to the new models will be critical to the success of the business implementation of technology.

HP released new updates for its Performance Center and Application Lifecycle Management service

Recently HP released new updates for its Performance Center and Application Lifecycle Management suites, which includes auditing tools for software and web-based services as well as upgrades for the LoadRunner load testing tool. The Performance Center 9.5 release contains a set of tools which allow IT management and programmers to better monitor and measure the performance of new IT systems and software.

"The current wave of application modernisation seeks to increase agility and lower costs through the adoption of new technologies and processes," said Jonathan Rende, vice president and general manager of business technology optimisation applications at HP's software and solutions branch.

HP hopes that the new Performance Center and the new Application Lifecycle Management service will allow IT organisations to better plan and manage development cycle, provide support and software lifecycle management for large-scale enterprise systems.
"The current wave of application modernisation seeks to increase agility and lower costs through the adoption of new technologies and processes," said Jonathan Rende, vice president and general manager of business technology optimisation applications at HP's software and solutions branch.

What about Test Automation?

Please note that this article has been already posted in previous entries. It was some technical reasons which required to re-post it. Sorry for this.


According to the Wikipedia Test automation is a process of writing a computer program to do testing that would otherwise need to be done manually.

Test automation has come a long way in the past 20 years. The first test tools provided with a simple capture/playback capabilities: recording and playing keystrokes, then capturing and comparing screens. While simple to create, these tests proved almost impossible to maintain, and capture/playback tools were eventually replaced by more powerful and flexible test scripting tools. But those the first automated tools required extensive development skills and efforts to fulfill which in turn made Test automation process quite expensive while not necessarily improving maintainability. Moreover individualized scripting approaches, accompanied with lack of documentation resulted in obsolescence or rewrites script libraries comprising tens of thousands or more lines of code.

All those facts produced a doubtful reputation of Test Automation as a tool for visionaries, and automation tools were perceived as under-utilized, (20-40% usage model). Moreover Software Testing in the era of mainframe systems was merely executing a series of steps manually and punching key strokes as an attempt to break the application.

That era was followed by the event-driven client-server environment in which applications were deployed in various hardware platforms in conjunctions with other applications. As a result the scope of testing has increased as failures and unexpected behaviors have become more prominent.

Recent development of new web-applications with multi-layered structure and complex business logic further increased potential fields for failure. New emerging technologies such as SOA, web services and SaaS along with tendency of Web applications to move toward integrity of business operations to a large audience of users are significantly change the trends in application testing.

An underestimation of the significance of engagement software testing into Analysis and Design phases has lead to business requirements and functional designs which do not meet key criteria for testable systems. The need to develop quality applications in less time and cost will require more structured and automated analysis and design techniques, with Static Testing becoming “automated” and built as part of the analysis and design requirements capture tools.

Automation and “robot” driven testing techniques will be more important and add more value as we move into technologies that support the businesses in their goals to deliver products and services to the market as rapidly as possible, with minimal risks.

Test automation will become more essential to maintaining a technological edge and controlling costs by reducing capital expenses from equipment sharing, improved ability to trace problems, and reduced complexity. It enable companies to get products to market faster at a time when head count may be shrinking.

Poll: What is the future of software testing?

Please indicate your answer in comments to this entry:

1. Will depend on programming trends
2. Future of testing in automation: automated unit testing; automated functional testing
3. Software testing will get harder, more expensive and therefore less efficient
4. Software testing will always have a future. As long as developers will write code there will be bugs, and the need for specialists to test them
5. Reduction of QA costs, by increasing the quality of the code and reducing production time
6. Non-functional testing: performance, application security testing etc. should increase
7. Your forecast


Please note: the answers were selected from previous polls where specialists from QA related areas express their thoughts. I just want to share it so that we’ll be able to match it with our own vision.

CloudTest Global Platform - the perfect platform for testing Web applications and networks

Soasta - one of the leading cloud testing company recently announced its CloudTest Global Platform for load and performance testing Web applications and networks. This new platform provides companies of all sizes with possibility to simulate Web traffic and conditions by leveraging the elasticity and power of Cloud Computing. This platform enables cross-cloud testing on today's leading cloud platforms. The CloudTest Global Platform enables load generation from virtually thousands of servers from more than 15 locations around the world.

The Cloud is a platform for testing Web applications and networks. Using the elasticity of the Cloud The Platform provides computing power and virtual users from major locations worldwide. Companies concerned about variable and spiked Web traffic can easily simulate, under real world conditions, changing volumes whether it means millions of users in a short burst of time or simultaneous users originating from New York, London, and Hong Kong all hitting the same application at the same time.

Apple testing new OS

Snow Leopard is an Apple desktop and server operation system which is currently in the development process will succeed the sixth release of Mac OS X 10.5 aka Leopard. Apart from all those 300 changes and enhancements featured its predecessor the new one will not focus on new end-user features, but rather on improving performance, efficiency and reducing its overallfootprint.

Though "Snow Leopard" was first previewed at last June’s Worldwide Developers Conference, developers got a last test build of Mac OS X 10.6, back in the beginning of December.

But last week Apple has finally tapped a handful of choice developers to test third party application support against its operating system in a sign the software is nearing a stage of refinement and optimization.

For this moment only a few details are available, an information source said that the user interface is largely untouched. There are a few bug fixes for the Finder, and the build is said to have more stability and speed. Developers are still being asked to focus on printer drivers, third-party apps, and Exchange support.

Though the preliminary release is expected to be as early as March, Snow Leopard may need a bit more time before it is fully ready for release. As it's known that the new release focuses on multi-core processing, chances are good that the release will coincide with new desktop hardware, expected to use newer four- and possibly eight-core processors from Intel.

What is your trade in software testing?

To better understand about readers of this blog and their requirements, I would like to start a quick readers pool. Such pools can help me to plan my articles.

Please indicate your trade in software testing in comments to this entry:


1)Manual Test Engineer
2)Automation Test Engineer
3)Working on both Manual and Automation testing
4)None from above (please specify)

What is the future of Software Testing?

Outsourcing was the main way a lot of testing gets done in 2008, but it wasn't always in that way. In the beginning, very little testing was outsourced. Testing was performed by people employed within the same organization that wrote the software. Developers and testers worked side by side to get the software written and tested.

For the last decades Software Testing industry experienced big changes as testing moves earlier in the process and becomes more important for whole cycle of development. Today, testing plays significant role in development process to ensure reliable quality and security of the product. Software testers and analysts are now key part of any product team. Outsourcing giants are deriving up to 10 per cent of revenue from software testing services and significantly growing each year.

However, there is a gap that exists in testing that deteriorates quality, productivity, and the general manageability of the entire development lifecycle. It is the gap between bug creation and bug detection. The larger the gap, the more time a bug stays in the system, and the longer bugs stay in the system the more expensive is to remove them. In the future testers should eliminate that gap by change the way they do testing.

In 2008 developers introduce a bug right before an accident just with a few concerted attempts made to find the bug until the binary is built. Inserting the bugs programmers allow them to feel free until far too late in the process where testers depend on late cycle bug finding. But Testing is too important to wait until the end of the development cycle to start it.

Recent announcements of the leading organizations ranging from Symantec to Microsoft about Top 25 programming errors that lead to security bugs emphasize an avoidance of those mistakes by programmers and computer science programs. All that proved once again that "Quality has to be everyone’s job".

So, what is the future of software testing? Will it be a testsourcing era, where test techniques move deeper and earlier in the development and testers will do work more similar to software design than software verification. Will Software Tester deal with structural bugs or business logic bugs? Dealing with business logic bugs means that Testers have to understand business logic itself, which means more interaction with customers and industries where software operates. In this case Testing not only moves earlier in software development cycle but involve itself with requirements and prototypes that it haven't done before.

As for the numbers there are some estimations of Indian companies indicated that global software testing business will reach $13Bl by 2010. But as Satyam scandal rocks outsourcing industry we may have different forecasts. As for the main trends in the industry there are suggestions that software testing in the future will look very different than it does today. The recent development of new emerging technologies such as SOA, web services and SaaS, alongside with agile approach in software development and increased emphasis on 4Rs will significantly change main trends in application testing.

In increasingly automated and "robot" driven engineering environment , the Testing professional will continue to be pivotal in the Software Engineering Lifecycle. Working in multi-disciplinary teams alongside with Subject Matter Experts, Business Analysts, Architects and End Users, they will continue to play the roles of: arbitrator, mediator, translator and negotiator between other parties, ensuring that their ideas are not only effectively specified and designed, but that the criteria required for effective quality and testing is captured and articulated into the models and tools, so that test are accurately generated by the "robots" to verify the design and validate the requirements.

In the future Testers will concentrate on adding value to the business and software development lifecycle and will operate in a new more important position where the combination of their structured process driven approach, creativity and ability to articulate quality and testing criteria into the models will be crucial in the success of Business implementation of technology.



Viva Testers ;)

Top 25 Programming Errors for Software Testing

Recently experts from more than 30 US and international cyber security organizations announced the consensus list of the Top 25 programming errors that lead to security bugs and that enable cyber espionage and cyber crime. Most of these errors are not well understood and accepted by programmers; their avoidance is not widely taught by computer science programs; and their presence is frequently not tested by organizations developing software for sale.
The impact of these errors is a tremendous. Just two of them led to more than 1.5 million web site security breaches during 2008 - and those breaches infected the computers of people who visited those web sites, turning their computers into zombies.

Among people and organizations cooperated in the project there are respected security experts who come from leading organizations ranging from Symantec and Microsoft, to DHS's National Cyber Security Division, NSA's Information Assurance Division, the University of California at Davis and Purdue University. The initiative was managed by The MITRE and the SANS Institute, financial support came from the US Department of Homeland Security's National Cyber Security Division.

Despite there were some heated discussions the experts came quickly to agreement. "When facing a huge application portfolio that could contain many thousands of instances of over 700 different types of weaknesses, knowing where to start is a daunting task. Says Jeff Williams, Aspect Security CEO and The OWASP Foundation Chair, "Done right, stamping out the CWE Top 25 can not only make you significantly more secure but can cut your software development costs."

The Office of the Director of National Intelligence expressed its support saying, "We believe that integrity of hardware and software products is a critical element of cybersecurity. Creating more secure software is a fundamental aspect of system and network security, given that the federal government and the nation's critical infrastructure depend on commercial products for business operations. The Top 25 is an important component of an overall security initiative for our country. We applaud this effort and encourage the utility of this tool through other venues such as cyber education."

Software testing tools will use the Top 25 in their evaluations and provide scores for the level of secure coding in software being tested. In parallel with this announcement, on January 12, one of the leading software testing vendors is announcing that its software will be able to test for and report on the presence of a large fraction of the Top 25 Errors. Application development teams will use such testing software during the development process.



Prepared by TestLabs of Mirasoft Group

Based on SANS Publications

Main trends in test and measurement in 2009

 

The current economic crisis has already affected almost every industry around the globe including both IT and technology industry. Recently two technology giants Google and Lenovo announced of significant shortening of their contract (Google) and permanent employees. This global economic climate has changed the outsourcing behavior of many IT companies by placing additional constraints on their budgets and makes them seek to get more for less.

Given this tight economic conditions it's very reasonable to figure out how you can organize your IT more efficiently. For test engineers it can be translate into how to perform testing more cost-efficiently than ever before. Followed this uneasiness National Instruments (NI), a worldwide player in test and measurement recently identified main trends that will significantly improve the efficiency of test and measurement systems in 2009.  So here they are, software-defined instrumentation, parallel processing technologies and new methods for wireless and semiconductor test. As NI claims these trends will help engineers develop faster and more flexible automated test systems, while reducing their overall cost of test, companies from all industry segments will achieve significant benefits from applying these methods on board.

More and more engineers are using software-defined instrumentation along with the latest commercial technologies to achieve new levels of measurement performance and lower test costs by applying the latest technological advancements such as multicore processing and field-programmable gate arrays (FPGAs) in their test systems to meet the demands of new application areas such as wireless and protocol-aware test.

 

Prepared by TestLabs of Mirasoft Group Ukraine-based offshore IT service provider

Based on publications: National Instuments