Posts

Quality Assistant

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I am often asked about how I deal with my programmers on a day to day basis. The question means well, I am giving them bad news about their work. It is only natural for anyone to doubt - how this paid relationship works!? There is this joke / story I heard a while ago that could explain the tension between a developer and the QA. Here the Wife is the Developer and the Husband is the QA. Wife : (puts on a new pair of jeans) Does this make my butt look big? Husband : (just stares, if he tells her the truth, she might get mad. If she does not her friends will tell her the truth and she will still get mad) Wife : Honey, you can tell me. I won’t get mad. Husband : You say that now…. Wife : I promise I won’t get mad. You can tell me anything. We should be able to tell each other anything. Husband : OK, here it goes. I slept with your sister. That is how I typically roll. I gain their trust and then give them a bunch of bugs I found. It is not my job to make sure ever

Lots of Work

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“Working so hard” “There is a lot of work to do” “Such a big application” “So many bugs”  "Too much work load"  "Not enough time" What should it really mean to the person hearing it? – Nothing. I have seen members take loads of work and not bat an eye and do it with ease. I have also seen members take little work and make it look big and stress out and stress others out. I have also seen organizations that plan and work smart. I have seen organizations that plan to work really, really hard. I am not here to explain the right way of doing things. Whatever floats your boat!! Lol But, when people talk about a lot of work, it reminds me of the Woody Allen movie – Annie Hall There is a scene in the movie with a psychiatrist. The conversation goes like this - Alvy's psychiatrist : How often do you sleep together? Annie's psychiatrist : Do you have sex often? Alvy Singer : Hardly ever. Maybe three times a week.

Testing Prometheus (the movie)

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Why was this movie not good? It was not bad!! The actors were beautiful with all star cast  The acting was top notch The direction was also brilliant The CGI and stuff was excellent The cinematography was breathtaking Most of the geographical aspects of an alien planet were pretty nicely captured. But the movie lacked something. Something was missing. It even irritated quite a number of audiences. It gave the audience a visual treat but stole the original experience they have craved for decades. The core of movie which is the  story  did not know what it wanted to give to the audience. Resulting in travelling a group of brilliant scientists without letting them know their mission, a pretty girl who works out like crazy but cannot stop running straight, a zombie, an alien snake, a beautiful android who knows too much or just curious, a dead old billionaire who is not really dead, a female scientist (I don’t even want to touch that). And the alien creator guy rips of Mich

How well do you know your QA?

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QA efforts valued based on the bugs that make it to production. Once upon a time in an Asian village, there lived 4 brothers. All the four brothers were doctors. The eldest brother treated many patients for years.  He charged reasonably for the years of treatment. Most of them advanced to terminally ill condition.  Many of them died.  He talked a lot about all the reasons that lead to the patient's death and how his treatments to save the patient became ineffective due to reasons not in his control.  He was famous all over the village and a little in the surrounding villages too. He was very important to them.  He did not get a bad rep either. People thought he did his best. The second brother treated patients with care too for months. He charged an arm and a leg as his fees. A few of his patients became chronically ill even after months of treatment.  Most of his patients survived and recovered.  Few of his patients became terminally ill. He explained abo

Moron Vs. Oxymoron

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I had the luxury of working with insanely smart people. I had the misery of working with mind numbingly inane people too. I had the luxury of working for morons and reporting to oxymoron. The moron are okay, they don't know any better. They can be educated. The oxymoron's they do know better. They purposefully want you to swim against the currents just to prove a point to nobody, not even themselves. They cannot be reasoned with. I would totally run from these!! And I have.

I am a Bitch

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The Circle of Office -  I am a Bitch (not in general) I am my boss' bitch. My boss is their manager's bitch. The manager is the vice president's bitch. The VP is the CEO's bitch. The CEO is the bitch to all the stake holders. Instead of bitching about this situation, I try to be the best bitch I possibly can be (excuse the expression). When it comes to working in an office, we are confined to cubicles physically and to the manager’s invisible boundaries. Learn to live and learn to grow. If you signed up to swim in a pond, do not complain that it is not as challenging as swimming in an ocean. If you signed up to swim in the ocean, do not complain that it is not as predictable as a pond. Do the best you can. Learn to use the currents. Do not work against them. If you do, you will fail and a new swimmer can replace you. One should be replaced for sucking at ones job, not for trying to make a work place better. Update - Well, this is what I thought, t

The Hot Air Balloon

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Ever work in a company where the upper non-technical management made all the decisions, and the IT team had no team say in making the decisions. Why does that happen? A man saw a hot air balloon and starts to float. He enjoys the ride. After a while he looks down and realizes that he does not know how to get down to the ground and also that he is not in a safe place either. He hurriedly looks for civilization and finds a woman strolling. He yells to get her attention and he gets it. He asks her if she can get him down to the ground? The woman thinks for a little bit scanning the premise, she then replies - "Your balloon is 40 feet from the ground. 20 miles from the city. The air balloon cannot last for more than 1 more hour. ...." and she went on. The man in the air balloon interrupts her and asks her "You are in IT. Aren't you?" The woman replies "Yes, Yes I am. How did you know?" The man says "Well! what you explained to me is probably

To Process or not to Process

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A long time ago, there was a land lord who started the tradition of throwing a huge party for all of his town folk in his huge backyard once a year. Right before the party began, the land lord would get his men to catch his pet Cat and put her under a wicker basket and then put a brick on top of the basket. Right after this event, the party would begin. The landlord passed away and his eldest son took over the family house and the traditions. The eldest son did not have a pet cat. But every year at the time of the party he would instruct his men to get a cat. He would then put the cat under the wicker basket and then put a brick on top of the basket. This tradition was as important to this landlord’s family as having a real turkey or a fake tofurkey on Thanksgiving to most of us Americans. Nobody had any issues with this process, so they went on carrying out their practices. Now, let’s try and understand about why the landlord originally used to lock his cat right before t

Digital Fast

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  A very good friend of mine recently used this word in the sentence “I was on a digital fast, so I could not reply back to your email immediately”. My friend was on a digital fast by staying away from all social media like Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, Google+ and even emails (in certain cases). We are over stuffing ourselves with all this social media, texting and constant information update. It would be nice to take a break from all of that and go on a Digital Fast to clear our schedules and minds. It would be like tasting food and appreciating it after a food fast. It would be kind of impossible to shut down everything we use on a daily basis. But we can cut down on one digital media one day a week. (I would love to blabber about the pros and cons but you know yourself with your media better)

Testing without Requirement

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I have tested without requirements loads of times. I had no other choice!! I worked for companies whose software applications were older than me. So, how did I go about testing them? I looked at the login page (the gate way to the old world). I poked around it. I found fields for username and password and a button login. I clicked on the button. Nothing happened. I mean not even an error message. That was my first bug. The username and password fields allowed me to enter more than one thousand alpha numeric characters. Few more bugs. At this point, I was warned by my experienced colleagues that we do not need to test in those ways because the user would at most type in 20 characters only. I thought, may be my experienced colleague has a point to it. Maybe I should not spend time on doing basic software testing. I should do real functional testing; I should learn to use the application just like everybody else. Thinking so, I decided to end my test and hit on the button Logi