What do you do when you are "just a QA person" or "just a tester", and you *know* *know* *know*, down in the deepest depths of your coding soul, that the developers on your team are DOIN IT RONG?
Do you quit the job and go find some decent coders? Nah ... What fun is there in that?
Yesterday, I attended Agilepalooza 2009 in Charlotte, NC. There were 2 main tracks, one for learning about agility with several speakers lined up and one for "advancing agility", which was Open Space format. David Hussman was there, and so was Jeff Sutherland, with whom I got to have a great discussion about testing on an agile team. It was a VersionOne sponsored event, and yes, it was myself who yelled out during the introductory meeting "Does anyone use Rally?" You don't have to believe me that I honestly did not know at that point that V1 sponsored it, though I sure played on that point later.
ANYWAY, I digress. I *love* going to conferences, especially those that allow for the opportunity to have in-depth discussions with others out there "in the trenches". I get some practical knowledge out of talks, but I get the *most* out of talking to individuals, and being able to say "I am struggling with this particular problem right now ... have you dealt with this before, and/or do you have any suggestions?" I have found that most of the Agile community, and especially the testing-focused subset, are always very willing to help and share and ask for your help right back.
So I had the opportunity to ask a few people my most pressing "What do you do when ... ?" questions, and here are some of my highlights.
Q: "What do you do when you know that the software you are developing against is unstable and likely not even following normal standards?"
A: Try Fxcop (I'm working on .NET apps), or FindBug for Java. WOW! I have actually heard of FindBug before, but haven't worked that deeply on Java programs in some time, so I have not spent much time with it. I got an opportunity to check out the fact that Fxcop has a whole type of messages centering on Performance, which happens to be a specific focus for my current project. I CAN'T WAIT to be able to use it.
Here's where this answer gets creative though. In true "don't pull punches" form, I would be the type to toss all 8,000 errors (arbitrary number) at my dev team. Instead, it was suggested that I pick a SINGLE error, print it out, and take it to a developer. I can tell them that I was using this tool (Fxcop), and here was an error (relevant to current work) that might help our current efforts. I love the idea, and I don't think I would have ever thought of it on my own. It is so simple, yet so ingenious .... I'll be doing this one soon.
Q: "What do you do when you are having trouble automating tests around custom controls that require some specific events to be called?"
A: Grab a network sniffer and watch exactly what events get called in the background! In this particular case, the suggestion was to use Knoppix (a lightweight Linux distro), which has a sniffer built in, or Chris McMahon suggested wireshark.
So, my background on this question is that I have been trying to throw some automated tests onto our web client, and we use Infragistics controls. I know that IG (Infragistics) uses Webaii internally, but still have been unable to get through exactly what I need to call and in what order to get Webaii to interact with these guys. The disappointing thing is that Telerik, who released Webaii AND who also makes custom controls (RAD Controls), posts right in their forums and on blogs about how to automate their controls. Infragistics does not. I have tried many permutations of interactions with these controls (my immediate need has been a WebCombo and a button), and have eventually had to put them on a back burner for other tasks.
However, if I can get past that one hurdle immediately, I can move forward with starting the seriously overdue task of putting some automation around our software.
Ok, those are my 2 biggest takeaways from yesterday, and I am sure there will be more later .... For the record, I have to give credit to Jared Richardson for the ideas presented above. It was really great to meet him and to talk with him about some specific issues, even if he did almost fall off the table listening to me :)
