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Monday, May 10, 2010

Lessons learnt on WT-34

Session detail:
Bangalore Weekend Testing session WT-34
Date : Saturday, 8 May 2010
Time: 3:00pm to 5:00pm IST GMT+5:30

Mission:
Rate the website www.printme.com

Overview:
Rate the website www.printme.com on a scale of 1-5 on the following parameters.
1) First Impression
2) Navigation
3) Content
4) Attractors
5) Findability
6) User Satisfaction

You may check http://www.mcil.co.uk/review/7-10-criteria.htm for detailed information on what these parameters include.

Score each website issue out of 5, where 0 is not applicable at all, 1 is extremely poorly represented and 5 is extremely well represented. The issues with an asterix are generally considered to be detrimental to most websites and thus if they are applicable to the sites you are reviewing you might decide to allocate a negative score where -1 acknowledges that the feature is a minor distraction/irritant and -5 indicates a major distraction/irritant.

Lessons learnt:
At the beginning of the mission, I didn't open the url which I have to test or rate (i was obviously wrong). First, I go through the mcil page to know all the criteria for the parameters because some parameters were not clear to me (i.e. Attractors, Findability). Hence, i have spent some time on reading those criteria which made me more understandable about the mission, and soon realized i have less time to test. So, having quick review of the site, I have rated the site for the each of the given parameters and submit. Richard asked me a obvious question “Its the first challenges isn't it Selim - when you get access to a system and documentation, where do u start”? And I answered honestly that, i was thinking it would be good if i start from documentation for better understand about the mission but later i realized i should have a quick look on the site first. Richard gave his comment about what approach he suggest for the same, "Personally - If I have access to the system, I will go there first, play with it, and learn about it by doing. Then go back and forth between docs/instructions and the system. When I 'feel' confident, I will start testing."

One important comment from Richard about the mission was “The thing I realised was that the exercise at today's WT was all about how you approach the problem, not the problem, not the solution. Its all about being aware and working out I had choices. My challenge was to work out how I would know what choice to take - by reviewing the instructions, asking questions, and trying things.”

Time pressure always a trap for the testers. Hence, Markus Gärtner gave an interesting comment like, “time is not an obstacle, time pressure is a symptom of a trap”.

One of the participant's opinion about the session was "Guys it was overall a good show, this session was very interesting and was able to learn new things from testing knowledgeable persons like Richard and Markus". This is true indeed.

Enjoy Weekend Testing!

Wednesday, May 5, 2010

Fun way to learn on Weekend Testing

Many of you already know about Weekend Testing community
http://weekendtesting.com/
A group of dedicated testers whose vision is to learn and improve the
craft. This is a fun way to learn to test any software. Any tester can
join on any weekend testing session from anywhere through Skype subject
to prior registration. Nowadays, testers are participating on weekend
testing from all over the world and there are several Weekend Testing
chapter (Bangalore, Europe, Newzealand-Australia, Mumbai, etc.). You can
know more about Weekend Testing from here http://weekendtesting.com/about-us

Enjoy Weekend Testing!