No time for ping pong
Back-and-forward conversations, especially in a written form, can go forever. They involve participants and observers; become an unpleasant show, where the initial question is successfully forgotten. You may get involved into this time-waster, or even ignite it, before you realize. I confess too, at times I find hard dealing with a ping pong problem.
But here are a few early warning signs I use to recognize the beginning of a ping pong.
2 or more subjects
Either you get too many questions or ask them. Or it's the deviation from the initial subject. Unnecessary opinions and guessing. Giving too much details.
Ignored subject
Arguing, blaming, defence. In all these conversations people simply ignore each other's point. In email, ping pong arguing can go days involving whole teams and departments.
Per my opinion, there is no universal approach to handle this problem. However, asymmetric actions usually help.
If it's not important do not reply. Maybe a person on the other side just wants to have a last word.
If it's official, urgent and important - escalate.
If it's in writing, then come and talk in person, or make a call, schedule a meeting.
If it's in person, ask to enlist all points of disagreement.
Re-think and re-frame.
Either way, taking a pause helps.
Defaulting Dependencies
Defaulting input values is supposed to simplify the workflow for a user. Yet sometimes an application has a problem accepting its own suggestion. We wrote about that. Another piece that is always worth exploring is input dependencies.
See, if an application
- has a functionality that responds on your selection by updating dependent controls (enable/disable, reload list items, change default value);
- sets defaults in accordance to each other;
- sets defaults in accordance to date, time, and regional settings;
- has a functionality that remembers user input and uses it as defaults, either on client or server side;
- has a "storage" for customizable defaults on the client side (registry, files, etc.);
...end explore if it can be messed up.
Reference Page: Mnemonics in Testing
Today's tip is a content pointer.
Testing heuristics, tricks, and oracles, packed into mnemonics, on the reference page created and maintained by Lynn McKee.
Should I run that test?
Rick Grey brought the following to my attention as a Quick Testing Tip re-post candidate. It comes from Rikard Edgren over on thoughts from the test eye. Rikard takes something intuitive and builds a very direct heuristic around it in the form of a decision tree.
Using Firebug in Internet Explorer
This tip comes from Ben Kelly. We all need to test on Internet Explorer, but we've been spoiled with tools like Firebug in other browsers. Ben has a tip to get Firebug to work in Internet Explorer:
In IE, go to your Favorites bar and copy-paste the following chunk of code and call it "Firebug". (Jonathan: In IE 7, I created a bookmark, then right-clicked on the properties, and then pasted the following code into the URL field.)
javascript:(function(F,i,r,e,b,u,g,L,I,T,E){if(F.getElementById(b))return;E=
F[i+'NS']&&F.documentElement.namespaceURI;E=E?F[i+'NS'](E,'script'):F[i]('sc
ript');E[r]('id',b);E[r]('src',I+g+T);E[r](b,u);(F[e]('head')[0]||F[e]('body
')[0]).appendChild(E);E=new%20Image;E[r]('src',I+L);})(document,'createEleme
nt','setAttribute','getElementsByTagName','FirebugLite','4','firebug-lite.js
','releases/lite/latest/skin/xp/sprite.png','https://getfirebug.com/','#star
tOpened');
Then on any website, open that bookmark and it will give you a Firebug console.
Apparently, it seems to work pretty well for CSS and DOM stuff, but has some limitations when it comes to script debugging.
Enjoy.
Documented == Unambiguous ?
A quick reminder: writing can be as much ambiguous as saying. Or even more.
Good to Check, Worth to Explore
Are you running a hiring process? There is one thing that is worth doing sometimes. Just in case you want to know where candidate's resume is originated from.
Right-click on the document's icon, then go: Properties -> Summary.
Attacking Passwords
Today's tip comes from Santhosh Tuppad. In his blog post "Password – Flaws / Risks / Design suggestions and more" Santhosh demonstrates the power of heuristic-based testing approach combined with tool-assisted tricks.
What you'll find is a friendly walk-through, comprehensive test and UX report, references for further learning, and "is there a problem" sample questions, - all in one.
A must read.
Join to earn 10x bonus
What?
To earn what? Of course, bonus in testing tips, tricks, and insights.
Join what? Weekend Testing community. Find your chapter.
Mission of WT
A platform for software testers to collaborate, test various kinds of software, foster hope, gain peer recognition, and be of value to the community.
What happens in a typical Weekend Testing session
Testers register for the coming weekend testing session at least a day in advance, by sending an email. A facilitator for the session provides a link to the product to be tested ( typically open source ), creates a group chat and a mission to achieve by the end of one hour testing session. The mission could vary from finding functional issues to exploring testability to writing automated tests to investigating bug reports and so on …
At the end of one hour ( or the decided session end time ) testers start sharing their experiences, bugs, learning, challenges, questions, and so on for about an hour. The facilitator then takes a day or two to prepare an experience report and publishes on this portal for the public to view it and also sends it to the open source developers or project owners for their perusal.
2 hours in total – that’s it. Every minute – worth it.
Read some experience reports
Bangalore Weekend Testers: Fun, Learn & Contribute
Bangalore Weekend Testing 3 (BWT-3)
Sauce Labs
In his talk on screen recording APIs, Jason Horn mentioned he's an avid fan of Sauce Labs and their hosted Selenium solutions. There are a host of features and pricing starts from free (Linux and FireFox, limited to 500 min/month) and goes up to monthly and enterprise pricing. You can try some of the premium services with a free trial if you want to check it out. While I haven't personally used the product, I really like the idea and I'll have to check them out on an upcoming project.
