Beware and BeAware of defects : My take on Defect Probing
Hi again to all who have stopped by to read this.
We all have seen so many signboards hung across at so many places.One which most of us have seen hung prominently across gates of houses is "Beware of Dog".
What has this got to do with the title of the blog? Please hold on till I complete my write up :)
Coming back to signboards ,me as a kid was not just petrified but would refuse to enter the house where such signs were hung despite the person was a close acquaintance.It is no different now since I am still petrified of pets.
Now if you have noticed the word "Beware" could make even a kid wary of something ,it carries a message indicating one needs to tread carefully.
Similarly in software testing when one encounters a defect it is something one needs to say to himself/herself "Beware" this seems a defect or "BeAware" there could be more defects lurking in the vicinity.
Now why would one be careful or wary while one encounters a defect is the question which needs an answer.I could recollect some instances why it helps a person testing a software to Probe Defects.
Let me tell you how I used to begin my task while I was a novice(I don't consider myself an expert even now,I can do fair bit of testing as I have moved away from checking ,or so I think) I would religiously login to Defect tracking tool and go through defects logged by other test engineers be it from client or from our own team.I would look at them and curse myself why I failed to log something what they have logged.
Not that I had not logged defects but I always felt I should have raised defects what others have before they did and why those defects did not occur to me.
Simply to say I was naive and stupid.I always felt I should be the guy who should log all defects and should become a superhero of sorts.This mindset led me nowhere and put me into sorts of depression.But what I learnt from this exercise was I would invariably learn more about the application that what requirement specifications don't often tell and also about way another tester has arrived at scenario which led to such defects which I missed or that which never occured to my mind.
Defect tracking tools are excellent learning ground even for seasoned testers because every person is unique not just in appearance (forget the twins ,siamese or otherwise say the chinese) but in their thinking or in their thought process as a whole.So one gets to understand some concepts which can be used or implemented while testing another application or you could end up improvising or modifying such ideas to suit you to unearth more defects.
Let me recount here an incident which happened while I was still grappling with testing (if you have read my first post about me landing into a big company and pushed or masqueraded as Lead to client when I was not even a simple software test engineer) when I was asked to test an application for this client who happened to be a giant in Publishing domain.The sole purpose of the application was to enable user to get their ads to be published for which he had to select a template where he could upload a picture and add text ,preview and in case he liked what he previewed he could order 'n' number of copies to be published.
The template was built in such manner where user could choose either 1x1 which meant 1 picture and 1 text for the picture,similarly 2x2 displayed 2 holders for uploading 2 pics and 2 textwindow for the 2 pics.
I observed for 1 x1 template the template looked fine.But for 2x2 template looked skewed with 2 pics and 1 textwindow.I promptly logged defect.Same was observed for 3x3 and so on.
Once fixed I decided to probe further,2x2 now had correct number of text windows and holders for pics and below each text field was a Done button where user could upload picture enter text and click on Done button,this should result in Done button getting disabled for first section of template.Infact clicking Done for first section resulted in Done button getting disabled for the second section of template also even when second picture and text were yet to be entered.So basically a user would be unable to submit any picture or text for remaining section of template once user had clicked on Done button.This was a faulty design!.
So a lesson I learnt that day that little probing here and there around defects certainly helps.
Just as a developer is wary of defects logged by testers a tester should also be wary of defects logged by others testing as well as defects lurking within vicinity of existing defects,also the exisiting defects can act as learning lessons for someone new to project and even for others looking for some fresh thoughts.
