STC Magazine

In case you haven't already noticed the post on the Software Testing Club website, the Club has decided to start branching out and the first step we have decided to take is to publish a magazine

Here is the official blurb

If you are interested in writing about software testing then why not contribute an article to the Software Testing Club's (STC) new magazine due to be published in January 2010.

The STC are inviting anyone in the software testing community to submit articles for review on any testing subject you want to write about. The STC are accepting articles from anyone working in the testing industry with a testing story to tell. Experienced writers are welcome just as junior testers are. So if you have something to say, post it to the following address: rob@softwaretestingclub.com.

Visit here for more detailed information regarding your submission.

Exciting times for the STC which has grown rapidly over the last couple of years to become one of THE sites a tester should have in their bookmarks.


Even if I say so myself

The New Bill Gates ?

On the commute home the other night one of the free London papers had an article about Mark Zuckerberg with the title Facebook’s Boy Wonder: the new Bill Gates?

Maybe he is - carrying on with my research into social media and Web 2.0 I got the error message shown above on Facebook.
A quick Google on the error message led me to the Facebook Developers Forum and a thread all about a similar bug. First reported on 2008-09-05
Later in the thread is a plaintive request "Any chance of getting this bug fixed?" , later on "Any progress on this?" and "Any chance that this well ever be fixed? I see this about a third of the time when I post a new comment."

Later on that evening I found a bizarre bug where searching for "fish" returned an error page, searching for "fosh", "fishy", "fash" and "fush" all returned search pages. Worked fine on the wife's computer and on other peoples computers ( I posted a request on Facebook for other people to try a search for "fish" )

So, to summarise
Bugs that are not fixed for months and months
Random BSOF - Blank Search Of Fish

Maybe the headline had a point...

Black is black

While investigating the latest in social media applications ( aka wasting time playing games on Facebook ) I got the error message above

Seems that 'hide' is doing such a good job at hiding that is undefined but the message below that saying that 'null' is null is a classic.

Now back to my social media investigations....

The keys are under the mat

I just checked out the latest on LinkedIn and saw a question on one of the many testing groups from someone wanting advice on how to write a test plan on security testing.

Nothing really new about this, as one of the moderators of The Software Testing Club and regular reader of SQA forums I'm used to people asking the most basic testing questions ( the 'remove post' function can get some heavy use ).

Wonder what will happen to the person asking the question ? He'll probably get told to use Google, he'll find some basic security plans there, incorporate them into his test plan, send them off to the CEO, CIO, CFO, Old Macdonald and the mild mannered janitor, gets it signed off and yet another app with security flaws hits the market.

A test plan for security testing should be very simple.
Find out how important security is to the stakeholders.
If it's important, get a security expert in.

Is that a cop-out ? Should all testers be able to do security testing ? Do you do security testing on top of the other testing activities you do - if so, how confident are you that have done it well enough ?

Taking Up The Challenge From Matt

Matt Heusser has posted a great " How would you test this ? " challenge. It's a great idea and gives a real world problem to solve

Here is my answer:

Day 1: Find company template for Test Strategy and write strategy

Day 2: Send draft test strategy out for review to CEO, CIO, CFO, D0BEDO, Support Team Manager, Training Team Manager, Documentation Lead, Old McDonald and The Janitor ( a mild-mannered one )

Day 3-5: Spend time explaining difference between test scope and test types to various people. Change font of document after feedback from CEO. Receive Out of Office reply from CFO. Add diagrams to document at request of Old McDonald

Day 6: Send out Final Test Strategy for official sign-off.
Receive Out of Office reply from CFO

Day 7: Find company template for Test Plan and write plan

Day 8: Send draft test plan out for review to CEO, CIO, CFO, D0BEDO, Support Team Manager, Training Team Manager, Documentation Lead, Old McDonald and The Janitor ( a mild-mannered one )
Receive Out of Office reply from CFO

Day 9-12: Spend time explaining difference between unit, system, integration and UAT testing to various people. Change font of document after feedback from CEO. Receive Out of Office reply from CFO. Add diagrams to document at request of Old McDonald

Day 13: Send out Final Test Plan for official sign-off.
Receive Out of Office reply from CFO

Day 14: Fill out form HBR-786-ABC-911-999-FOR to request access to test environment

Day 15: Fill out form RRR-987-ASDF-ASDF-GHJ to request testing resource

Day 16: Form HBR-786-ABC-911-999-FOR returned as I hadn't filled in section 16.5.4

Day 17: Form RRR-987-ASDF-ASDF-GHJ as I hadn't filled in section 14.5.9

Oh dear, just re-read Matt's blog

"Keep in mind, this is an agile shop that delivers working software every two weeks"

FAIL