Tips to be a Champion Tester

As we know that the Testers always feel tremendous pressure when the product release is around the corner. Product Release is a milestone for any Tester irrespective of the amount of Testing have been conducted. So, it’s all about testing well in a tough situation and delivering a quality product which in turn will be shipped to the client. It’s when we have to find and report all the issues in the application and get it fixed by the Development team.
 
We know that the Testing is important throughout the SDLC. But it suddenly becomes the most important activity of all, once the product is getting ready to be released. So, the pressure mounts on the Testers to some extent. So, it needs lot of skills and experience to handle such kind of situations.
We need give more attention to the following areas during such kind of situations.
 
Functionality:
Find out the improper/missing functionality and get them fixed by the Development Team as soon as possible. 
 
Crash Issue:
Generally the product will not be accepted if the software is getting crashed itself or crashing the user’s system. So, we should test all scenarios that may cause the system crash. For example, we need to test the scenarios like Memory Leaks, DLLs, missing files due to bad 3rd party installer etc.
 
Smoke Test:
Smoke Testing to be conducted on daily basis to find the new problems and get it fixed.

Usability Errors:
Execute all possible navigation paths in your application to catch the Usability errors. 

Bugs/Test Cases/Bug Fixes tracking:
We need to regularly keep track on the priority bugs/test cases/bug fixes. This ensures that the important bugs are dealt first.
Recover Testing:
Recovery scenarios may not be handled properly in some of the applications which will lead to the loss of the data or inconsistent results.So, we should make sure that the recovery scenarios are executed properly. 
 
Regression Testing:
Regression testing to be conducted on the related modules whenever the issues are fixed.It’ll be helpful in avoiding the major issues at the final moment.
 
Cross Verification With Team(Peer Review): 
Some fixes may not be clear to a particular Testers. It’s always to have a 3rd eye on such kind of areas to avoid unnecessary issues during the latter part of the product release.
 
Deferred Issues:
Sometimes the organization used to defer some of the issues. Such kind of issues need to be handled in the future releases. So, we should make sure that the issues deferred in the previous release are fixed in the current release.
The above items are generic list. Please feel free to suggest more points :) .
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Cheat Sheet For Website Testing



Website Testing is still a confused topic among the Testers, even though a lot has been discussed and written about it. There is lot of articles about the Website Testing. This article is not attempt to explain what needs to be covered as part of Website Testing. It’s just to make you understand that there is no universal rule to testing that can fit all kind of similar testing assignments.

You can use the following Checklist as cheat-sheet for Website Testing.

Functionality Testing:

The following areas need to be covered while doing testing the Functionality of a website.
[01]. Links/ URL Testing:
There are mainly 4 types links/URL needs to be tested on a web page.
  • Internal Links [Test the links that points to the pages on the same website.]
  • External Links [Test the links that points to the pages on a different/external website.]
  • Broken Links [Test if any of the links are broken or dead]. There are n-number of tools available to check the broken links on a website/page. We can use Broken Link to test the broken links on Websites/Blogs etc.
  • Email links[Test if the Email link opens the default mail client with the recipient email id is already filled in the “To” field.
[02]. Forms Testing:Web forms should be consistent and should contain all the required input and output fields. The integrity and consistency should be tested on the web forms. 
 

[03]. Error Testing:

Error messages are the integral part of the Developed websites. Error message should guide the user when a wrong input is submitted in such a way that the user can easily understand the actual issues on the input submitted.
 
[04]. Mandatory & Optional Fields Testing:
Test whether the forms on the websites handles the mandatory and optional fields efficiently.The application should not allow to proceed unless ALL the mandatory fields are not filled.We also need to make sure that all mandatory fields are marked with asterisk(*). Likewise, the system should allow to proceed irrespective of the values filled in optional fields.

[05]. Validation Testing:
Tests the fields on the forms for field level validation.Test and validate the user inputs like ComboBox, TextBox,Dropdown List selections, KeyUp, KeyDown,KeyPress etc.

[06]. Database Testing:
Most of the websites are developed with the back end database. We need to test the integrity of the database to make sure that the website is able to process the data effectively.

[07]. Client Side Testing:
We need to test the temporary files stored on the client system. This type of Testing is conducted to make sure that the sensitive information like Password are saved without being encrypted or other readable forms.

[08]. Cookies Testing:
A Cookie is a small information that is stored on the client's machine by the Server. Later, it'll be used by the Client machine's web browser to retrieve the information about the website. Generally Cookies contains personalized user data or information that is used to communicate between different web pages.

Cookies testing to be conducted to make sure that the personalized data or information or saved in a secured way.
  
[08]. Speed Testing:
The website should load on any kind of network ie., the response of the application should be consistent irrespective of the internet speed.

[09]. Usability Testing:
The website should be easily accessible.Assume that we are developing a website with lot of difficulties to the user to navigate to each page. Then the website won't be much use for a user. We need to keep the following criteria in our mind while doing usability Testing.
  • Navigation.
  • Learning about the features.
  • Look and feel.
  • Easy accessibility.
  • Satisfaction. 
[10]. Web Security Testing:
Web security testing is also called as Penetration Testing. Security Testing to be conducted to identify the security issues/vulnerabilities and repair/remove them.
For example, we can can take file upload functionality to a website. The website should have the automated scanned software to scan and make sure that there is no virus in the uploaded file.It should also have an option to disable the virus if there are any.

[11]. Compatibility Testing:
Compatibility Testing to be conducted to test the adequate rendering of the application across different browsers(IE,Safari,Mozilla, Firefox, Chrome etc) and Operating Systems(XP,Windows 7, Vista, Linux, Mac etc.).

We need to consider the different OS versions, hardwares, screen resolutions etc. We need to make sure that the following points are covered when doing the Compatibility Testing.
  • Various Browsers.
  • Various window sizes.
  • Various font sizes.
  • By disabling/enabling the Javascript/ CSS.
  • Browsers with pop up blockers enabled/disabled.
  • Various operating systems.
  • Hard drives with less/more memory spaces.
  • Various network environments.
 I hope this articles explains the areas to be tested when Testing a web based applications. Please feel free to write your valuable comments about this article.
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