The crucial guide to Software Testing for Project Managers

Nishi Grover Garg1 Comment

Being a Project manager you often need to take on new challenges and create guidelines for projects in a field you are not always familiar with.

You might have some experience working with a team of software developers, which gives you insight into the relevant testing disciplines. Or you may have directly come in as a project manager and need to begin understanding the process from scratch. Whatever the case may be, we are sure you already have enough on your plate. That is why I have gathered a few basic guidelines – both technical and methodological – to help you succeed in your new assignment as a test project leader!

My guest post for PractiTest is now up on the QA Learning Centre-

Dedicated to all PMs – here I discuss the Software Testing 101 making this a guide to all PMs to all things crucial in test process management. Read More..

https://www.practitest.com/qa-learningcenter/thank-you/software-testing-guide-project-managers/

state of mind

Do give it a read and share your thoughts!
-Nishi

 

This website is now featured in the 75 Best Software Testing blogs!

Nishi Grover Garg11 Comments

It’s a big day for me as my personal blog has been featured in the ’75 Best Software Testing Blogs’ by 🙂

Check out the complete list at ->

https://abstracta.us/blog/software-testing/75-best-software-testing-blogs/

Elated and Excited! Please give a thumbs up and follow me for testing and agile related articles.

To follow this blog –> Add your email ID on the right side panel, and receive periodic updates with new articles and posts!

Listed in top 75 blogs

Thanks a lot!

Nishi

Key QA and testing takeaways from the Agile manifesto

Nishi Grover Garg2 Comments

My first article for Global App Testing blog is now published at

https://www.globalapptesting.com/blog/key-qa-and-testing-takeaways-from-the-agile-manifesto

             >>>Agile testing leaves very little time for documentation. It relies on quick and innovative test case design rather than elaborate test case documents with detailed steps or results. This mirrors the values of Exploratory Testing. When executed right, it needs only lightweight planning with the focus on fluidity without comprehensive documentation or test cases. 

From a QA viewpoint, we can learn from the Agile Manifesto key goals; communication, efficiency, collaboration and flexibility. If you improve your QA team in these areas, it will have a positive effect on your QA strategy and company growth.

>>>The Manifesto for Agile Software Development forms the golden rules for all Agile teams today. It gives us four basic values, which assure Agilists a clearer mindset and success in their Agile testing.

Although these values are mostly associated with Agile development, they equally apply to all phases, roles and people within the Agile framework, including Agile testing. As we know, Agile testers’ lives are different, challenging and quite busy. They have a lot to achieve and contribute within the short Agile sprints or iterations, and are frequently faced with dilemmas about what to do and how to prioritise, add value and contribute more to the team.

The frequent nature of development in Agile teams means the testing methods used need to respond to change quickly and easily. In that way, Agile testing shares some important characteristics with exploratory testing.

In this article I examine the four values of the Agile manifesto to find the answers to an Agile tester’s dilemmas and improve their testing efforts. Read More

Please give it a read and share your thoughts!

Happy Testing!

Nishi

 

Is Excel holding back your testing?

Nishi Grover GargLeave a comment

My guest post @PractiTest QA Learning center

As testers, we all worked with Excel at some point in our career. If you are using
excel now this article is for you 🙂 Excel is used as test management, documentation
and reporting tool by many test teams. At early stages, most teams rely on excel
spreadsheets for planning and documenting tests, as well as reporting test
results. As teams grow, sharing information using excel sheets becomes problematic.
What used to be easy and intuitive, becomes very challenging. Encountering
difficult work scenarios like the below, becomes a day-to-day reality:

  • The simple task of figuring out which excel has the test cases you need to run, takes longer and longer.
  • Gathering the status of the testing tasks and your project can only be done by going to each desk one by one and asking them.
  • A tester mistakenly spent 6 hours running wrong tests in the wrong environment because of an incorrect excel sheet which was not the updated copy.
  • Tester’s routinely lose their work or test results because of saving/ overwriting or losing their excel sheets.
  • Most test activities are not being documented or accounted for because writing tests is considered a luxury.

excel--img

If one or more of these scenarios sound familiar to you, you are being held back in
your testing efforts by excel!

In my latest guest post for PractiTest, I have written about how excel can be a roadblock instead of a useful tool for your testing. To read the complete article, click here—->

In here I talk about issues related with use of excel in relation to

  • Visibility within the test team
  • Configuration Management of test items
  • Test Planning and Execution
  • Test Status and Reporting

Please give it a read and share your thoughts!

Cheers!

Nishi

 

The Value of Risk-Based Testing from an Agile ViewPoint

Nishi Grover GargLeave a comment

When I first heard about risk-based testing, I interpreted it as an approach that could help devise a targeted test strategy. Back then I was working with a product-based research and development team. We were following Scrum and were perpetually working with tight deadlines. These short sprints had lots to test and deliver, in addition to the cross-environment and non-functional testing aspects.

Learning about risk-based testing gave me a new approach to our testing challenges. I believed that analyzing the product as well as each sprint for the impending risk areas and then following them through during test design and development, execution and reporting would help us in time crunches.

But before I could think about adopting this new found approach into our test planning, I had a challenge at hand: to convince my team.

In my recent article published at Gurock’s blog site , I have written about my experience on exploring risk based testing and convincing my agile team about its importance and relevance using their own sprints’ case study.

Using the analysis of a sprint’s user stories, calculating Risk Priority Number (RPN) and the Extent of Testing defined, I was able to showcase in my own team’s case study, ways our testing could benefit and better itself by following risk based approach in a simplified manner.

Risk Priority Number

To read the complete article, Click Here–> 

In the article I talk about–

  • Tackling the Agile Challenges
  • Benchmarking Risks and a Focused Approach
  • Improving Test Process and Results

Do share your thoughts on Risk Based Testing!

Cheers

Nishi

 

 

 

A simplified Agile Test Strategy for Cross Environment Testing

Nishi Grover GargLeave a comment

Cross environment testing is viewed as a tedious and repetitive task and is generally a challenge to accommodate within an agile life cycle. In my recent guest post for Gurock, I showcased my own experience in an agile release wherein we created a strategy for coverage of a number of test environments to support.

Using simple steps, discussions, base-lining and agreement within the scrum team, we created a scalable interoperability test strategy which was later supplemented with automation and other tools. In this article I have talked about-

  • Testing across OS versions
  • Supporting System versions
  • Localization- multiple language support
  • Planning and Test Strategy creation
  • Additional Ownership by testers

To read more, click here.

Give it a read and share your thoughts-

https://blog.gurock.com/agile-cross-environment-testing/

Print

Thanks

Nishi

Five Tips to manage your Outsourced testing

Nishi Grover Garg1 Comment

Want to Outsource your testing? Here are my “5 tips to manage your outsourced testing”

I have begun collaborating with PractiTest and with the help of Rachel, my article has now been published @PractiTest Learning Center.

In this article I have discussed about the practical risks for teams that outsource their testing efforts. I have brought forward 5 key tips and tricks to manage their outsourced software testing along with team and people issues as follows:

  • Treat Them like your Team
  • Invest in training the Outsourced Team
  • Meet often, and also in person
  • Centralised System for Test Management
  • Account for Cultural Differences

Please give it a read and share your thoughts!

https://www.practitest.com/qa-learningcenter/thank-you/manage-your-outsourced-testing/

Thanks

Nishi

The huge success of Selenium Summit 2018 – a peek into my day at the grand event

Nishi Grover GargLeave a comment

Thanks to the fantastic organisation and management of our team and the amazing enthusiasm of the attending delegates, Selenium Summit 2018 organised by ATA at Pune on 22nd March 2018 was a huge success! All keynote talks were greatly appreciated and the hands-on workshops also were received well.

My workshop on “Selenium and Cucumber integration for an extended BDD Framework” received overwhelming response from the audience with more than a full house! 🙂

Here is a glimpse into the event and a sneak peek into the workshop too-

 

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Agenda

Thanks everyone who made this event a grand success!

-Nishi

 

 

I am speaking at the ‘Selenium Summit 2018’ @Pune

Nishi Grover GargLeave a comment

Hello!

Check it out!

I am speaking at the Selenium Automation Summit 2018 being organised on 22nd March 2018 by ATA @ Pune.

Find more details about the event at : http://seleniumsummit18.agiletestingalliance.org/

I will be presenting a 90 minute- hands-on workshop on:

“Selenium with Cucumber for an extended BDD Framework”

Are you interested in looking into the trend of Behavior Driven Development? Would you like to see it in action using Cucumber? Would you like to integrate your functional tests in such a framework using integration of Selenium within Cucumber? Then this is the workshop for you!

This workshop will cover

  • Practical issues faced by most testing teams
  • Behavior Driven Development – the definition and need
  • Extending the Agile User stories and acceptance criteria in BDD scenarios
  • Cucumber as a BDD tool
  • Integration of Cucumber with Selenium in order to perform functional tests
  • Demo using Cucumber with Selenium with a real use case
  • Usage and Benefits of BDD In agile teams

Let’s meet there!

-Nishi

Five Ways DevOps complements Agile

Nishi Grover Garg10 Comments

My guest post article for Gurock Software GmbH #TestRail blog is now up!!

“5 Ways DevOps complements Agile” – As an industry practitioner who has worked in agile for almost a decade now, I have always seen DevOps as a friend and an extension of agile. Using this article I have tried to put across my view on how this handshake between developers and operations personnel works in favor of bridging the gap from software creation to software delivery.- 

Please give it a read at – https://blog.gurock.com/5-ways-devops-complements-agile/

The major points I have touched upon in this article are –devops

  • A Focus on User’s Needs

  • Continuous Delivery

  • Concentrated Value Creation

  • Motivated Individuals

  • A Culture of Inclusion

 

To read more click here->

Cheers

Nishi