Tech Notes

Agile has a refreshing approach to bugs, especially when contrasted with traditional waterfall practices. Historically, teams would postpone bugs to a stabilization phase. This stabilization phase was long and tedious, typically with high stress and long hours. Agile, on the other hand, promotes the following thought processes: Carrying bug debt is unhealthy and sometimes, even destructive. We should fix bugs, not track them. A feature isn't done until the bugs are fixed. Quality is part of the overall cost. Bugs are prioritized against new features. A bug needs to be more important than the next new feature. Notes All new features have a "bug tail." The bug tail is the diminishing number of open bugs on the new functionality. When a feature is added, bugs are introduced. Most are discovered and fixed immediately by the team as a part of feature development: some a few days later, others not until long after a story is considered ...

During this phase focus should be primarily on identification of test automation tool(s) from the technical perspective. The finalization of tool can be worked upon later after due diligence of all factors collected, during this phase. Prerequisites Test environment should be ready and available for feasibility analysis 24*7 This environment must be dedicated for tool feasibility activity to avoid any schedule slip & test data corruption Identification of test scenarios & test data Number of scenarios should be minimal (to avoid high commercial cost) Should cover all screens & all possible unique UI components of the application (e.g.) Editing of Grid control Picking dates from Calendar Filtering and selecting items in ListBox Attachments of Files Popups Trees & Submenus Reading value from Graphs (Bar, Chart etc.) Dragging and dropping of items All scenarios must be accompanied with...

This note is tilted towards ‘Software Testing’ as a professional service.... "Gross Profit Margin" is one of a key financial KPI, projects must measure, monitor and act upon. It is a key to maximum profitability. The gross profit margin is what allows the company to function. The higher the percentage, the more you can grow. The lower the percentage, the closer you are to a negative cash flow." What is the difference between Gross profit and the Net Profit for a company? Gross profit is the $ value left over from the firm's revenue after deducting the direct costs incurred in earning that revenue. Gross profit margin is the gross profit $ expressed as a % of the revenue. So, if gross profit is $1000 and the revenue was $10,000 then the gross profit margin is ... 1000 divided by 10,000 = 10%. This is a measure of the firm's profitability being obtained from it's...

This notes will cover below questions... Introduction to Blockchain What is the difference between Blockchain and Bitcoin? What are some other uses of blockchain that go beyond bitcoin? History of blockchain Could you explain the blockchain process in laymen terms? If all data is available to the public. Can anyone know my bank balance (in Bitcoin)? Introduction to Blockchain The Blockchain is a decentralized and distributed public (digital) ledger where transactions are recorded and confirmed anonymously. It’s a record of events that is shared between many parties. More importantly, once information is entered, it cannot be altered without altering subsequent blocks. WTF is the blockchain? A guide for total beginners What is the difference between Blockchain and Bitcoin? The blockchain is a technology ...

Wait problem is probably the most common errors in Selenium scripts especially for Javascript rich web applications. How long a Selenium script should wait before interacting with web elements? 2s / 5s / 15s / 1min? Until interested page is loaded? Until all images of a page are downloaded? Until all AJAX requests have been completed? Until all manipulation of DOM elements is complete? It has been observed that people frequently wait for a fixed duration in their Selenium script using Thread.sleep() function before interacting with a web element. It is a worst kind of wait that can be used in a script. Then, why people use it? One reason could be ignorance but mostly it could be due to carelessness or unavailability of time to complete a quality (stable) script. What are some ways to discourage team members to not use Thread.sleep() or similar method in t...

Insurance is a complicated and intricate mechanism where risks are transferred from one individual to a group and loss is shared on equitable basis by all members of the group. This blog discusses in brief about few core functions / operations related to Insurance industry. Insurance Types There are in general two types of insurance (1) Life Insurance (2) General Insurance. Life Insurance can be divided into two classes - (a) provide pure life insurance protection, called term insurance (b) includes a saving or investment element Few of the common General insurances are - Motor Insurance, Property Insurance, Personal Accident Insurance, Medical and Health Insurance, Travel Insurance, Credit Insurance, Third Party Insurance, Liability Insurance. Key Insurance Functions It is always better to know some unique facets of insurance company operations. The unique nature ...

An approach for testing an application is dependent on many factors and domain / industry type is one of them. Why? Because it helps in enumerating critical risks associated with an application, which can’t be ignored. For example, in healthcare, the most important aspect of testing is in safety of patients and compliance with government regulations. Listed below are tips and pointers to consider while testing the healthcare provider application(s). Introduction to Health Care Domain / Industry Healthcare Compliance & Regulatory Environment Healthcare compliance and regulatory environment are among the most complex to understand and apply. Most of these regulations are in place to ensure that hospitals protect the patient health records. This makes security testing utmost important for any healthcare applications. The the risk of violating the compliances is very risky a...

What is DevOps? "DevOps is the combination of cultural philosophies, practices, and tools that increase an organization’s ability to deliver applications and services at high velocity. This speed enables organizations to better serve their customers and compete more effectively in the market. DevOps moves the focus from development to delivery—a subtle but important distinction." What is DevOps? In a simpler term, DevOps is a ‘Soch’ (a philosophy) which encourages frequent feedbacks from customers and accordingly make changes to plan, design or deliverables. It discourages HiPPOs (Highest Paid Person’s Opinion) culture in the company. For frequent feedbacks, release should be available to customers frequently in the production environment. This implies, goal of DevOps is to minimize time elapsed from ‘accepta...

The healthcare industry, or medical industry, is a sector that provides goods and services to treat patients with curative, preventive, rehabilitative or palliative care. This industry comprises of different players including hospitals, doctors, nursing homes, clinics, diagnostic laboratories, pharmacies, medical device manufacturers, and other components of the health care system. It is one of the fastest growing industries in the world. It is important to be aware of different business processes/functions involved in this industry before making a career (e.g. software testing practitioner in healthcare) into it. Listed below are the key business functions associated with this industry (Healthcare Providers). Each business functions might have a separate (testing) challenge to solve but that will be discussed later a...

In any agile program, it is important to track both business and development progress metrics. Agile metrics helps a team to better understand their development process and also releasing quality software easier and faster. There is a big debate on the usage of some metrics and there are concerns of using it in teams. Usually, usage of metrics is guided by three rules - When a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure ( Goodhart's Law ) Measures tend to be corrupted/gamed when used for target setting ( Campbell's Law ) Monitoring a metric may subtly influence people to maximize that measure ( The Observer Effect ) Below are some popular key agile metrics at the sprint level as the sprint progresses. Pre Sprint Execution Business Value A value given to user story by...