A closer look at Testing

1

A closer look at Testing

Hans Axelsson

The view of testing in this presentation is that of my own and doesn’t necessarily coincide with any official company policy.

I have been inspired by James Bach, Michael Bolton and James Whittaker, together with a whole lot of blood, sweat and tears.

2

Bwin Games

Bwin Games

04/21/23 Ongame.com 4

• Started in Vienna 1999

• The worlds largest betting company.

• Bwin has over 20 million registered customers in more than 25 core markets.

• Bwin bought Ongame AB in 2006

• Bwin is one of Ongame’s largest customers

Ongame

Ongame


• Started in Uppsala 1999

• Owns the Ongame network.

• Ongame is owned by Bwin Games

Ongame

A question to the audience:

Have you ever encountered bugs in commercial software?

What is testing?


What is testing?


What is testing?


Basic facts about software development:

• For every 10-percent increase in problem complexity, there is a 100-percent increase in the software solution’s complexity. (Robert L. Glass)

• The most important factor in software work is the quality of the programmers. (Jeff Atwood)

• Humans make mistakes. (Common sense)

• Software Errors Cost U.S. Economy $59.5 Billion Annually (NIST 2002)

What is testing?


Error types and their origin *

* (From “Reducing error and influencing behaviour”, HSE Books)

What is testing?


• Questioning a product in order to evaluate it. (James Bach)

• A technichal investigation for the purpose of revealing the quality of a software product on behalf of the stake holders. (Cem Kaner)

• Try it and see if it works(Basic conception?)

What is testing?


Get different versions

Set them up

Try simple things

Try complex things

Try sequences

Try combinations

Try weird things

Try them again

Read the spec

(There‘s no spec? Oh.)

(There is a spec! Oh it‘s old and wrong)

Find inconsistenceis

Find obvious problems

Find obcsure problems

Find BAD problems

Where to look?

How to look?

What‘s there?

What‘s not there

What‘s invisible?

Did it change?

Will it change?

How about now?

Try it it worksand see if

What is testing?

So, testing is (for us) basically about:

„Try to learn sufficiently, everything that matters

about whether it can work and how it might not work.“

Different views of software

Testing as a profession

What is typical for a tester?

Curious:

A tester wants to know about the domain he/she operates in. If there is something that cannot be understood, a good tester is quick to learn and hungry for knowledge.

This way of thinking leads many testers to be good in a lot of different areas. They are often Jack of all trades.



Organized:

The software development cycle is often tightly time driven.

Must keep track of how to reproduce the abnormalities encountered.

Have to keep track of the baseline versions where problems are found as well as fixed.



Skeptical:

Question everything, but choose your main areas of attack.

A tester knows there is at least one way of crashing an application or part of it. It’s just a matter of finding it.

The knowledge that people are fallible gives the tester hope of finding bugs.


People Skills

Communication is the most important tool for making changes.

Testing is many times about showing that something DOESN’T work. The tester often have the bad news.

Reporting bugs is not (always )the same as telling developers they are doing a bad job.



How is a day af the office?


• Setting up systems (Configuration and installation)

• Populating data (Generating or deploying a fixed setup)

• Modeling and preparing tests (Tactics)

• Running tests (Either small series or long integrated chains)

• Looking at the right places (Logs, graphs, databases)

• Evaluating the result (Comparing and discussing)

• Communicating changes, deviations or suspect observations.

Working for Ongame/Bwin

• Testing is an intellectually very stimulating work.

• Testers are often developing a broad knowledge of their domain.


• Testers question the software, but they must not forget to also question their own methods and ways of working.

• Tester are sometimes treated as bad messengers, often this is a defence mechanism when someone feels guilty or gets under a lot of pressure.

It is essential for a tester to

understand this.


• Testing as a discipline is growing bigger and bigger.

• For anyone interested in test, we recommend James Bach’s site http://satisfice.com/



• Bonuses

• Excellent private health insurance

• Free breakfasts

• Yearly discount gym card

• Great VPN Solution

• Lantern Day for individual development

• Top Conferences to keep up on methods and techniques

Thank you!

Documents

A closer look at Testing