In this episode Matthew and Federico sit down to talk about the personality, skills, and traits of a successful QA member. Join them as they each enumerate what they think makes up a great QA member. Tune in and learn what it takes to become a Mercury 7 astronauts, errr…, a great QA member.

News

• Windows 7 has been released to manufactures.

“The Right Stuff”

• What are the types of testing
  • Application
  • Framework
• What are the types of Testers
  • Automater
  • Coding QA (yes it’s a pun on the name)
• Matthew’s Wish List
  • curiosity
  • awareness
  • assertiveness
  • humbleness (think skin)
• Federico’s Wish List
  • curiosity / creativity
  • attention to detail
  • awareness
  • technical skills
  • ability to judge customer value

In this episode Matthew and Federico sit down to talk about some interesting bugs and lessons learned that our team has run across while testing ASP.NET. This is a different type of show that we are experimenting where the bugs take center stage.

News

• Silverlight 3 is released
  

Bugs Showcase

• Sensitive data stored in ViewState.
• How a test abstraction hide a security vulnerability bug.
• How testing with slow connection revealed Ajax bugs.
• Tale of a breaking change: How a bug that is shipped can be used as a feature by customers.
• How we found some accessibility bugs by "being the customer".

In this episode Matthew and Federico sit down with Lakshmi Padala from the SQL Reporting Services team to talk about how they tested the asp.net chart control and what some of the teams processes are. Join them as they learn about what its like to be a SDET in another business group at Microsoft.

• News: The AJAX Control Toolkit has started using the Lightweight Test Automation framework for functional testing.
• Introduction to Lakshmi and her choice of QA over DEV.
• Overview of what the Chart Control is and what it does.
• How did the cross team collaboration work with the ASP.NET team?
• Overview of the how the chart control was tested. 
  • API level testing
  • Run time testing
  • Design time testing
• How do you test a product that only produces an image? How does image comparison work?
• Scope of the chart team’s test bed. (number, speed, and type of tests)
• Successful Model Based Test (MBT) implementation in the Reporting Services team
  • Advantages to MBT
  • Disadvantage to MBT
  • Work a rounds to be successful
• Challenges using design time abstractions to test.
• What is the life cycle of a feature/product in the Reporting Services team?
• Trust level security concerns when testing the chart control.
• Lakshmi’s favorite part about working at Microsoft.

Links:

• Download the Chart Control
• Scott Gutherie’s Blog post
• Delian’s Blog (Developer on Chart Control)
• Chart Control Forum 

In this episode Matthew and Federico sit down to talk about test maintainability and several factors to keep in mind that can decrease the reaction time once a test fails.

• The 3 dimensions of maintainability
  • Regressions (test fails due to a product bug). How easy can I identify the cause of failure?
  • Product Changes. How easy can I update tests due to new behavior?
  • Reusability. How easy can I use a test written in the past to test a new feature?
• Some of the factors to keep in mind:
  • Unique failure.
  • Good logging.
  • Reproducibility/Robustness.
  • Atomic tests.
  • Result history.
  • Test recorders.
  • Abstractions vs. low level implementations.
  • Prediction.
  • Framework flexibility and extensibility.