[All Things Quality] Annoying Office Issues

shhh!

My office shares a common wall with a small conference room.

Until recently, this wasn't a big problem, as the conference room was used only sparingly and often by me.  But lately, we've had a flurry of hiring activity that left us with lots more people, and contractors permanently occupying one of our other conference rooms.  And so there are many more meetings next door, and unfortunately, many which involve conference calls - some of which are very loud.

The worst part of it is that when these offices were constructed, they apparently neglected to insulate the walls between the offices, so I can hear pretty much everything that is said in a loud voice.

I've spoken with the people in charge of office maintenance, asking that they put up some sort of sound insulation, but they indicate that "there's nothing we can do".  Translated, that means that they don't consider it worth spending money to fix the problem.  Oh well.

Although I try not to listen, I've already overheard a few embarrassing phone calls. And the conference calls with customers can be particularly annoying.

So I printed the picture above and posted it on the conference room wall.  Perhaps that will help.


This article originally appeared in my blog: All Things Quality
My name is Joe Strazzere and I'm currently a Director of Quality Assurance.
I like to lead, to test, and occasionally to write about leading and testing.
Find me at http://strazzere.blogspot.com/.

[All Things Quality] Five Years

Today marks my five-year anniversary at my current company.

It's hard for me to believe that I've been here five years already. Yet when I look back at all we've accomplished, it sometimes seems like more:
  • When I started, there was no real Quality Assurance Team.  Whatever small bit of testing occurred was being performed by Product Management folks in their spare time.  Since then, we've created a terrific team in the US, augmented by some good contractors, and a small team in India as well.
  • Bugs were not being tracked in any central system.  There were a few emails floating around, and an occasional spreadsheet, but no place where people go go find the status of bugs.  Now, we use Bugzilla, and people have grown tired of me asking "Do we have a bug report for that?"
  • Lots of people have come and gone over the past five years.  Initially, the biggest change was the prior CTO being replaced by my boss.  Since then, many other folks have left.
  • We've changed a significant portion of the infrastructure behind most of our applications.  It's far more scalable and sustainable now.
  • We've formalized many of our development and testing processes, and created the necessary processes where none existed before.
  • We've gone from fighting fires every day, to a much more stable, dependable set of systems.  Where before many of our systems needed manual, hands-on attention every day, they now run in a much more automated fashion.
  • Our product lines have changed over time.  We have weeded out some products that were single-customer, poorly funded products.  We've created some new products, and retired others.
  • And last year, the company was purchased by a much larger corporation.  We're still adjusting to that change.

Lots of work, lots of changes, lots more to come.  All in all, a good five years.

This article originally appeared in my blog: All Things Quality
My name is Joe Strazzere and I'm currently a Director of Quality Assurance.
I like to lead, to test, and occasionally to write about leading and testing.
Find me at http://strazzere.blogspot.com/.

[All Things Quality] When You A Need Bunch Of Test Email Addresses

Sometimes, you need a bunch of email addresses for testing purposes.  Perhaps you need to test a login or registration page, or perhaps your application sends emails to many different people.

You could create many real email accounts for your tests.  But sometimes there's an easier way. Sometimes you can use a single email account instead, and just use variants of a single email address.

In many email systems, anything after the plus sign in the local part of the email address is ignored.  So, all of these are delivered to the same mailbox:
In gmail, periods within your gmail address are ignored.  So, all of these are delivered to the same mailbox:
Note that consecutive periods like foo..bar@gmail.com are fine for gmail, but are generally considered invalid and hence undeliverable by most email sending systems.

Only in gmail, both of these are delivered to the same address:
These methods will usually allow you to register many times on your system-under-test with emails that will be considered different, but will actually deliver to the same account.  And you can usually filter these incoming emails to keep them separate from your other emails if needed.

see also:



This article originally appeared in my blog: All Things Quality
My name is Joe Strazzere and I'm currently a Director of Quality Assurance.
I like to lead, to test, and occasionally to write about leading and testing.
Find me at http://strazzere.blogspot.com/.

[All Things Quality] Perhaps They Should Have Tested More - Dropbox

During a recent code push, web-based file storage firm Dropbox introduced a bug in their authentication mechanism - allowing unprotected access to accounts for four hours.

Reaction to this particular bug was widespread:

  • "allowed users to log into accounts using any password"
  • "gaping security holes"
  • "a significant embarrassment for Dropbox"
  • "Too bad I no longer trust them"
  • "Even as a free service they're not worth the trouble"

From the Dropbox web site's Help section:

How secure is Dropbox?

Your files are actually safer while stored in your Dropbox than on your computer in some cases. We use the same secure methods as banks and the military.
Dropbox takes the security of your files and of our software very seriously. We use the best tools and engineering practices available to build our software, and we have smart people making sure that Dropbox remains secure. Your files are backed-up, stored securely, and password-protected.
I'm sure they are usually password-protected.  Unless there is a bug in the authentication mechanism.  In which case they are not actually password-protected at all.

Perhaps they should have tested more.

See also:

[All Things Quality] Own a Kindle? Visit These Sites!

If you own a Kindle (or even if you just use the Kindle app on some other device), you owe it to yourself to check out the following.

The easiest way to keep track of new book offerings for your Kindle.
I subscribe to their service that emails me all the new free books as soon as they become available on Amazon

A terrific blog with news and information about the Kindle, and other e-readers.

Another good Kindle blog, particularly for those with limited computer experience.

http://www.kindleboards.com/

A very active Kindle community.

http://calibre-ebook.com/
A terrific e-book management system.  Very handy for anyone using a Kindle, or other e-reader.

http://www.klip.me/sendtokindle/
The Send to Kindle browser extension makes it easy to read web content off-line on your Kindle.


This article originally appeared in my blog: All Things Quality
My name is Joe Strazzere and I'm currently a Director of Quality Assurance.
I like to lead, to test, and occasionally to write about leading and testing.
Find me at http://strazzere.blogspot.com/.

[All Things Quality] Testing Terms Have Their Own Page


Recently, I moved my Glossary of Testing Terms to its own page:

It has pretty consistently been the most-used page on this blog, so I felt that it deserved a prominent place of its own.

If you have any terms I should add or change, or any thoughts about this Glossary, send me a note.  Thanks!


This article originally appeared in my blog: All Things Quality
My name is Joe Strazzere and I'm currently a Director of Quality Assurance.
I like to lead, to test, and occasionally to write about leading and testing.
Find me at http://strazzere.blogspot.com/.

[All Things Quality] A new Kindle Game - Thread Words


Amazon released yet another new (free) game for the Kindle - Thread Words.
Thread Words is a word search game for Kindle. 
Your goal is to find words in a 5 high grid of letters. Find words by selecting one letter from each column. On each level there are ten pairs of shapes. Make words matching each shape on the left with the same shape on the right to unlock the next level. After matching all shapes you can continue to find the rest of the words for a higher score or immediately move on to the next level. 
The game progresses through 4 levels of difficulty, with grids that increase from 4 to 7 letters across. Each word you find is worth 20 points per letter, and if you find all of the qualifying words you get an 800 point bonus! Try to beat the clock or take your time in relaxed mode. The game tracks separate high scores for each mode. 
I really enjoyed this one.  I seem to like pretty much all the Kindle games in the "word puzzle game" category. I haven't yet been able to complete the 7-letter-word level, but I'm still trying.

If I were a believer in puzzle-style interview tests, this would be one that I'd use.  Instead, it might be a good vocabulary builder, or it might just be fun.


Note: This game was free at the time I downloaded it from Amazon.  As with all free items, you must check before you download, since it may no longer be free.


This article originally appeared in my blog: All Things Quality
My name is Joe Strazzere and I'm currently a Director of Quality Assurance.
I like to lead, to test, and occasionally to write about leading and testing.
Find me at http://strazzere.blogspot.com/.

[All Things Quality] Songs about Testing, QA





I was looking for some music related to Testing or QA to use in a presentation.  The pickings are slim, but I found these.




Works on My Box
- Art Leonard
http://artleonard.com
Art Leonard is a Seattle-based Christian, radio and novelty songwriter / performer. His software engineering anthem, "Works on My Box", made a big splash at a major software development company and is now played to new employees at orientation.



Feature Creep
- Geordie Keitt
http://tester.geordiekeitt.com
http://tester.geordiekeitt.com/2009/08/cast2009-feature-creep-song-video/

I performed this a month or so ago at CAST2009 in Colorado Springs, where Becky Fiedler recorded it. The intro to this song went, “This song is written from the perspective of a piece of bloatware that used to be sleek and clean.” I did this during a Lightning Talks session, meaning I had to bring it in under 4 minutes. That’s why there’s little time for dramatic pauses…


Black Box

Cem Kaner and James Bach presented a course on Black Box Software Testing that I took circa 2003. I performed this song, Black Box, to wrap up the training.

Rapid Tester
- Geordie Keitt

I this wrote on the occasion of attending my first RST class at James Bach’s Satisfice world headquarters in Front Royal, VA. I’ve edited it slightly since then as my understanding of the material has grown, but the essence remains the same. It borrows pretty much everything from Steve Earle’s beautiful song “Someday”.


Another one that isn't really about software.  But it's a cute song, and how can you not like a song that starts off "B-b-b-bugs, bugs, bugs"?




I was particularly looking for a music video that James Whittaker and some of his students performed a while back (I think it was called "Piece of Crap" or something similar).  I tried all the searches I could think of, but no luck.  If you know where I might find it, please send me a note!

Know of any others I could add to this list?



This article originally appeared in my blog: All Things Quality
My name is Joe Strazzere and I'm currently a Director of Quality Assurance.
I like to lead, to test, and occasionally to write about leading and testing.
Find me at http://strazzere.blogspot.com/.

[All Things Quality] Amazon AdMash - Crowdsourced A/B Testing on the Kindle


Yesterday, Amazon released a new Kindle Game/Thing with Active Content called AdMash:
Step into the driver's seat and tell us which sponsored screensavers you'd like to see on Kindle with Special Offers. Anyone can vote; it's fun and easy. 
Here's how it works. AdMash will show you two different screensavers and then ask you to vote for the one you like best. Scrutinize them or go with your gut, it's up to you. Once you've made your choice, it's on to the next round. The ones that get the most votes can become Kindle Sponsored Screensavers. It's up to you and the rest of the community to pick your favorites. 
Download AdMash and start voting now. Play as often as you like and we'll keep adding new screensavers for you to vote on.
This is an interesting way to get A/B Testing done on some potential advertisements.

  • Easy? Yes, quite easy.
  • Fun? Meh, pretty boring if you ask me!
  • Play? Not really my idea of play.

Pretty clever - enlisting the hoards of Kindle users in tuning up ads - crowdsourcing.

I'm a bit surprised that Amazon isn't offering something in return for folks using this "app" and providing valuable feedback.  It wouldn't need to be much to keep people working on it - a free download, a gift coupon, etc.

Perhaps they are already getting enough responses such that rewards aren't even needed?

See:

This article originally appeared in my blog: All Things Quality
My name is Joe Strazzere and I'm currently a Director of Quality Assurance.
I like to lead, to test, and occasionally to write about leading and testing.
Find me at http://strazzere.blogspot.com/.