What Are You Working On Right Now?

[Ronan Healy]

A thread for you to tell others about what type of testing projects you are currently involved in.

So what type of testing are you doing this week, what sort of projects are you working on?

Hopefully this thread will be a good way to tell other members what your work is about. You never know, you might find some fellow members to collaborate with or even the opportunity to offer your own experience on projects others are working on now..

[Kasper]

Project New Dutch Municipal Records Administration.
At the moment:
– write up of risc analysis for current phase (near complete)
– writing an overall test plan for the current phase (near complete)
– preparing test data sets (ongoing)
– writing integration test scripts (ongoing)
– supporting testers with set up and performing more complex technical tests (starting)
– design integration testing environment (new phase needs new environment)

So nothing much, really 😉

In the off hours I’m preparing a submission for Eurostar – not sure if I can get that finished before the deadline, but I am trying!

[Ronan Healy]

@kasper Sounds busy! I’m sure you will make the submission deadline.

[Kain Victor]

Building up a test department, test process and using mainly offshore testers.

[Stephen]

I’m working on multiple threads:

All of our clients are ITIL customers, we offer the full ITIL Service, Service Desk/Field Services/Change Management/Catalogue Request Management/Asset Management/CMDB/Capacity Management/Availability Management/Major Incident Management/Software Package support/Business to Business data connections, etc.

My current role is to manage UAT with the account support teams and the client, but I’m expanding left to start pulling the whole test practice into a streamlined end to end service.

I am working with 2 Major clients, 1 purely in North America, and 1 Global.
The North America client has a complex set up with 2 Service Desks and associated tools and duplication of CMDB, Tickets and the passing of various ticket types and state changes betweent he duplicates systems across a number of B2B’s, with at least 3 3rd Party suppliers.
Current phase invovles:
– Scehduling and rescheduling test execution with account support and clients
– Based on resource availablility
– Defect resolution
– Late delivery from engineering
– Client ‘refining’ process and requirements
– Daily Checkpoint meetings (Standups in Agile parlance)
– Daily status/readiness reports
– Daily Governance calls (*2 levels)

The Global project has a single global service desk located at disparete locations globally. Supporting 33 languages.
Current Phase involved:
– Test Planning
– Test Scenario compiling from the various work streams
– Requirements Mapping
– Presentations to the client for approval of each test deliverable (Test Plan, Requirements Matrix, Test Scenarios, Test Schedule, etc)
– Educating each team
– UAT Goals and activities
– How to write a Scenario for this UAT and client
– RASCI/Expectations

In the background I am evolving the Test Practice
– Generating a new internal Community portal
– Socialising the UAT process so I’m not the only doing it
– Moving to a new Test Management tool
– Linking the various Test Phases for re-use or tools, resources, materials
– Bringing a cross-functional Test Management role

And attempting to maintain my knowledge and learning through forums such as this and other events.

So a quiet day at the office.
This is all 1st Quarter work, with some ongoing.

I nearly forgot, this all near shore working with resources and cultures across all global reagions

[Martin]

Hi All and Happy New Year!

I am currently testing new functionality to be delivered as part of our enterprise business process management (BPM) solution. I test a complex architecture which is based on a SOA architecture and consists of a design-time eclipse based client and a run-time BPEL process engine, along with a number of other run-time components which provide an extensive range of BPM features. We also have a run-time web based client, which needs to be highly configurable in order to service a large range of customers.

Typically we focus on functional and usability testing but I like to involve myself in as many different kinds of testing as I can. Testing of our products is extremely complex due to the type, size and complexity.

Sometimes you can get lost in a huge world of complexity and one of the things I have aimed to do since the conference is to go back to basics and make sure that I am applying basic test case design techniques correctly. I have been exploring a tool called PICT, which is used to reduce the number of tests based on a large combination of tests whilst not reducing coverage using pairwise testing techniques. I have found it very useful across a number of applications. I also perform a large amount of service testing using SOAP/REST clients and automate many of my tests at that level.

We are also going through some organisational changes within our company and I am trying to use that as an opportunity to push some ideas on how QA is organised and towards becoming more agile in our processes.

We are also embarking on the first stages of our cloud release and so I am busy swotting up on all things cloud and am particularly interested in understanding how software and associated software types differ when testing services on the cloud. If anyone has any experiences of testing enterprise software applications on the cloud of can point me towards any good information sources, I would be very grateful.

Kind Regards,
Martin

[Pauline]

Besides running a busy QA team, ensuring company-wide QA (from Presales to support), and heavy involvement in restructuring?

The main focus is to get a hold on the loose canon that is Acceptance Criteria in the User Stories (or lack of). Sounds dimple, but we have a small problem of the “but we’ve always done it this ways”.

[Stephen]

@Pauline, Ah the evolving requirements. i.e. to find the requirements you have to find all previous design documentation that has been archived and lost. 🙂
Been there so many times.

Also the Tacit requirements that are supposedly understood by all, but the ‘all’ contradict each other when complaining about their requirement not being met.

[Pauline]

@Stephen – Decades of working as a tester means I’ve picked up a couple of neat tricks. I have a nice little trick for the complaints of requirements not being met – my drive for Accountability & Traceability. The policies and Strategies I put in place when I moved to my currently company has saved so many of these arguments in the time I’ve been here.

I have considered presenting at the conference, but it’s not fully implemented yet (i.e. the ACs 🙁 ) …. but once I’ve produced the white papers & case studies I may just do that 😀

[Stephen]

@Pauline. I wouldn’t worry about it not being fully implemented. By the time the conference is here……
And besides, if it’s already making a difference, it’s worth talking about. I know I’d like to know how others have managed accountability and traceability in their organisations. It seems each transition project I work on with external customers expects different ways of working.
I try to maintain a standard, but that standard is adaptable. Just trying to avoid it bending to much and breaking.

[Kim]

Hi all!

I am mainly working on growing my test team and creating a good collaborative atmosphere! A year ago there was no single professional tester at my company so we have come a long way!

@Pauline and @Stephen

Interestingly I also struggle with getting clear A/C. My main problem has been that we do not have product owner/stakeholders with a vision but generally people that work a different job full time executing the head’s of department’s wishes or how they interpret them.
But hopefully this will change soon! We are making changes to get dedicated product owners who own a product and its backlog full time. Fingers crossed this will help!

And immediately I am working on my first talk outside of my company about testing! *gulp*

[Adam Hepner]

Full time? Tests for a dental imaging software for my main customer. The big show is happening in a few days, and then there’s a major release looming.

Apart from that? I don’t know, looking around for some side projects, so seeing that so many of you are seemingly test managers and QA-managers, if you need any support in your team, then…

(click for profile)

[Ronan Healy]

I am working on some new updates for the Huddle site and getting bugs sorted that have been causing issues lately.

Are you working on anything new?

[Melvin]

Working testing reservoir engineering software, specifically Enhanced Oil Recovery capabilities. A combinations of QA, fluids mechanics, Chemistry, Numerical analysis, Risks identification, and requirements prioritization.

Different tasks in one project!

[Archana]

Other the regular testing, I am currently helping in building an android App (development + testing) 🙂

[Tassawer]

Best of luck @Ronan, Hope next release of Huddle forum will be more smoother.

[Author]

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