XtremeDreamers: 200 and still counting…

I hereby share the grand success of this blog which has reached the benchmark of 200 visitors and 100 profile visits. Here are some stats for nerds who are a part of making this happen.

Visits across the year:

Visit by countries:

Visits across OS:

Visits from Browsers:

Thank you people and please do remember that in this big world of mysteries, there is a miniature, who will and always love you all.

Source: http://www.easycounter.com

Woman in my dreams

Behind every success of a man there is a woman and i am going to scribble down here about the woman of my dreams. I always loved to love but the love in me is always alone. I can pen down a lot about woman of my life but the truth behind is, though we the men say they are the weaker sex, they make our day.

Its the November rain that drives me here to write. Yeah, it can be the Guns n Roses or even Bryan Adams that make me write this but what i feel deep in my heart is all that crimson juice of my girl’s heart. I used to have an ideology that you see in a typical rugged mind “Why do I need a girl?”.Then I realized the next two paragraphs that me and my friend spoke over. Consider this to be same as a fiction like “2 States” as i believe, the ark believers will go beyond this.

It all started with this mating season. Oh Yeah! Blame the Gods and not me. Love to me is always a fantasy and according to me it is not only to the opposite sex we show off, it is the thing that we share across all fellow beings.

I am not a Buddha to preach neither have a Gandhi to follow, but still i know what life is and am sailing in the same boat as you do. Now to speak for the topic, I don't dream much, so its hard to portray that great girl in my small mind who appears in a real short time. In this so called world which may or may not end, which is small or big, which is our home or not, all I felt was this - the creation is wonderful and it makes me even think that the glorious God, as they say exists.

The truth that we discovered during our cold cosy night was neither a guy nor a girl can't live alone throughout the life. If you believe in the creator, then He must be a master mind. If you believe in science, this is called the balancing factor. All creature in this world needs a support and if it is from the opposite sex, then that satisfies all the needs of the partner. So i dreamt of this girl and hope she reads this now or whenever she fills my life. A pretty, not so pity and bold with brains that should say “I am her life” is the woman of my life. So a gazer who could help me out is always welcome and just keep in mind, there’s no life without them and hence allow ‘em to make our life beautiful.

Just to break the routine

I believe Love and Pain are the origin of great literature. Though i may have missed chances or never had any of the feel for former, the latter drove me to write this. This will not be a regular blog but this post is my first poem on "Who am I?". The question that many searched for and very few realized. I am still in the cocoon of this self driven society but still to give it a try... here it goes:

Who am I?

Born to be cool, raised as boredom;

Born with virtues, cultivated by social evils;

Born as a human, living like a peasant;

Born for a purpose, existing to solve what the riddle is;

Oh! The power above me, sans my qualms and arise me from the ashes.

Birth, due to a false feel of pleasure;

Life, on false hopes of satisfaction;

Death, a never wanted wish;

Judgment, an unsolved mystery;

Oh! The power above me, sans my qualms and arise me from the ashes.

- Please make me realize "Who am I?"

Is Testing, a boredom?

I am writing this blog because I’ve been dragged by a post in the Google testing blog that has this same topic. I believe I am the right person to write this because I currently pass through the phase what the blog discusses on with a 2+ years of budding experience in the software testing field.

June 4, 2007 – The corporate world gave me a red carpet welcome and I was honored as an IT professional by my current employer. After a week of rigorous training on process and products the firm holds, the day that decided my destiny came. I was given the choice of red and blue pill as Neo had it. I was asked to choose my path in the whole SDLC cycle by my HR, though they clearly knew, the first two phases in it required a lot of domain and technical expertise relatively. I chose the red pill – testing and am here before you writing the experiences in these two years of my choice.

Software testing is always a fantasy for me as I loved spotting faults in others works. Yes, I just loved them like a gambler in Vegas trying to hit a jackpot by counting cards! But then I realized it was not about finding faults but finding facts. Testing is something I chose for my career. Thank god! I atleast had that option open for my life. I was put into product testing when I first entered the job where I had the greatest guru of all my time to teach me what and what not in testing and sometimes in real life too. I’ve been an enthusiastic tester then, trying to figure out what is the purpose behind my choice. Almost a year passed by, on just thinking about the choice I made. I literally felt “Testing is boring”, may be this is not my cup of tea. Hence I tried learning development and satisfied my entire quest to do more and do new. But still it is testing I chose and I am not a guy who want to move away from the choice that I made though I regret for what I’ve taken.

March 6, 2008 - This is the time where I had a call for Automation testing. Automation seemed to be an oasis for me in a dry desert of repeating the same process of preparing test plans to fight with developers on Sev1 issues. All these recurring events passed through the dawns and dusks of my life and now I feel like I am reincarnated to do something that is new and something that could persuade my point of holding my choice. I was like a kid who got his first bicycle on his 7^th birthday (I think I got mine then!). I took this bicycle out, learnt cycling after so many bruises and became a master, that I drove it leaving hands one day.

During this golden period of my era in Automation testing, I was ruled by a king whom I admired a lot. He is the one who molded out a mature mind in me. “I was like a crazy dog running behind cars” then. He made me to stabilize and focus in what I need. He is the one for whom I dedicate all my articles even this one and he is the one who wanted me to write.That’s the man I just want to become and I always wanted to be with. As they say “Every dog has its day!” and as the saying goes, the dark day came. He was plugged out of the organization and now am alone in this world of miseries.This is where I got my enlightenment of my path with all his words still with me. Passing all those happenings in my corporate life for two years I realized the fact that “Testing is not truly boring!” It is the simple psychology of human to consider something boredom if it becomes a routine in his life. I just made it up to change my routine and I understood it’s not that I have to change the whole job, but it’s that I need to change the routine am in. Like a rejuvenated knight, am back on track to do this job and I still love my choice.

After all it is my call and I believe I’ll live it up to the moment to see and write “Testing – My choice and My life!!!”

S-Ox Testing unveiled!

S-Ox

I suppose this is the buzz word around us recently and everyone believe that this is the best procedure in town to implement and of course increase the productivity and reduce the cost. This article will speak on what this buzz word is all about and how does it differ from others, what we normally gaze through and work on.

S-Ox Testing:

S-Ox is a famous auditing procedure named after Sarbanes Oxley, which talks about financial controls of an organization. The S-Ox auditing procedure covers various sections and obliges the organization to follow the control measures for managing the financial aspects of the organization.

So how is it related to IT?

Though the term relies on the act of financial reporting, IT being the backbone of an Organization’s finance at present, has to be addressed with this. Under S-Ox, the audit process extends into areas that have a pervasive effect on the ability of the company to perform accounting and financial reporting. Since most business processes are supported by IT directly or indirectly, your project team will make the decision whether or not to create documentation integrated with the business processes or separate documentation for IT. Either way, IT processes that support the applications will also need to be documented. Thus S-Ox plays a role and this article will explain the implementation of S-Ox into IT.

S-Ox relies on control objectives and continuously monitors the activities that are needed in meeting the same. Hence understanding S-Ox is so simple. The motto behind S-Ox testing is that are we performing all that are needed in meeting what is required. I hope this is the motto of all testing and only the implementation varies. So how S-Ox testing is implemented?

Implementing S-Ox Testing:

S-Ox testing as any other testing process can easily be implemented and will yield you a great outcome of what is being developed. Once the documentation as stated above is done, team will have to work on “Control objectives” of the complete project. The real purpose, the basic requirement well drilled down, the objective of a product in various dimensions is called a control objective.

Now after framing a control objective, control activities are identified. Control activities are so simple, the activities that are required to address the objective and possess the risk by which the objective won’t be met. I believe the complexity of this can be reduced with this example:

Say, the control objective is “no unauthorized access”. Now the ‘control activity’ has to address what if there is a breach? What time frame would it take to identify it? This could be the risk and counter measures are to be identified. Then we go for implementing the test plan thereby knowing what the risk is and how do we address it. This will eventually increase the scope as well as coverage of testing which obviously will improvise the quality of the product and that too in low cost.

This article is referred from unrecognizable web pages at many parts which helped me out actually to understand this, which was in a typical auditor language.

XtremeDreamers: Test Automation – When and when not!!!!

“Test Automation is not our silver bullet, but it can help us solving our problems.” 

- Couldn’t recall the reference

If it isn’t a silver bullet then what is it? 

Test Automation is the key to solve our major problems related timed delivery, but that cannot replace manual testing. Manual testing is unavoidable, but should be minimized, whose part is carried over by Test Automation. Thus test automation is just a monkey wrench of your garage and it can never replace the skilled mechanic who does all your jobs. Automating the test cases nowadays is misunderstood to assumptions like

• We will be able to automate all testing! 
• Test automation will increase productivity so much that we’ll be able to do all the testing with fewer people (eliminate staff). 
• Test automation is so easy that we won’t need to do any training. 
• Automation will reduce our whole testing workload. 
• We won’t need to do any test planning. 
• That time-intensive test design effort will no longer be necessary. 

When a manager has perceptions like these, he/she is strictly warned in not planning for automating the process.

So where does test automation fits in? As I said earlier, it is just a tool in the toolbox which will assist us, but not take over the whole job a manual tester can do and that doesn’t mean we can automate all testing!

Automation is the concept which is applicable for highly redundant/recursive tasks or scenarios in a routine which may tend to cause human error, tasks that are repetitive and in need to reduce the effort and costs involved and focus on more testing than regressing things. These should be the motive behind automating things and not ROI alone.

Automation means less effort on regressing things and more effort on testing…

Process or Delivery?

Process or delivery… Which one would anyone choose between these two, considering the time factor is a shortage? This blog I write, is because I was inspired by the QA legend Shrini’s (as most of the testing geeks know) one of the post asked this to the reader. The choice I believe is the war between the development and QA team across the organizations all over the world. The real understanding of this will throw the light on the ignorance which both sides have.

 “The choice is already made. Understand the choice.” – Oracle to Neo in Matrix Returns

 The above dialogue is posted here because we are speaking about choices and that the choice is already made. Understanding the choice is the maze here. “How?” is the only question that goes though the mind of anyone who came this far. I can explain this with a simple logic. “Motive” is the keyword behind that. Motive is the one which decides destiny and destiny is made when we make a choice. So the real motive behind any development of a product is delivery. Thus process is one which adheres to the standards to bring out the delivery on time.

 Process is nothing but like a liquid or gas which takes its form according to the vessel it is kept on. This was referred to metrics by Shrini in his blog which I adopted to this. Thus process can be bent to make the right delivery and also to stress on, it can never be neglected.

 

Has the spine of India been changed?

Mahatma’s words marked “Farming is the spine of this country”. Is this really true? Does the economy of the country at present state, rely on this? When I think on these I get this feel like are we going in a right path obeying all those Mother Nature’s rules? Then I could say never, because we don’t even follow the traffic rules, then how in miracle we would follow the rules of nature?

 I could recall those dialogues from the famous movie ‘Wall – E’ “These are called plants. Vegetable plants, Pizza plants…” and goes on. Will this ever happen to us? Will our children forget what we’ve done for our survival in this so called green planet? Nowadays the country I believe run behind the mania called IT and related services and I hope the major part of our economical growth relies there. This IT Titan ‘Goliath’ took all our country’s economy on its shoulders but and for a term we all felt high and now I believe is the time of ‘David’ who could slay this Titan down. What I call as David is the economic glitch, financial crisis moreover the Obama factor that’s happening around us.

 IT - this word ruled this country for the past years. This was like a crown for the GDP growth of ours. The economic blooms, the hike in rates, the inflation for everything it was IT which was addressed and that’s the truth too. But is what we did all right? We focused largely on one sector which gave us all creamy pies and now when a financial crisis happens, the infrastructure of ours stands helpless against all evils. Why can’t we make up an infrastructure which helps us to grow far better than helping some one who lives far yet being the deciding factor for our growth?

 India the land of plateaus is rich in for resources needed for vegetation. Why can’t these technological developments bring in those ecological improvements to the country which would bring trade? My view on this is like, why a country with marvelous minds is always a slave to people who knew us 200 years before. Why can’t we bring in a change that could be a roar to this world? 

All UN Nations are really afraid of one small country called CUBA. Ever wondered a reason for that? It’s not the country powered with nuclear energy, powered with real good infrastructure but with real good people. It is the individual that needs a change to make the change really happen.

 It is the awareness for a individual about the ecological state which on failing tends to this filthy economical state of ours. So “Go Green!!! Go High!!!”

Is Quality for free?

This is a million dollar question and could be a hot debate topic among the quality analysts across the world. Is Quality for free? This question arose when the book called “Quality is free” by a renowned author “Philip B. Crosby”, a Quality guru was published in the late 80’s. So Is Quality free? When we look at it, we need to really understand the term quality. To define quality everyone had their own ways but I believe all meant to say that Quality is one term that will be addressed to a product or service which meets exactly what is needed.

The question brings out the quantitative subject in quality and thus when it is quantified it can have perceptions which may cross boundaries that differ from persons. But what does that book “Quality is free” really say? (Remember the book I addressed before starting this chaos) So if quality is for free, is the effort put in achieving the quality, a goof off? No says the author’s intentions.

From an organization’s view on quality, it is absolutely free to implement which would reduce the non conformities and increase the productivity of the product or service being developed. The cost occurred in achieving this is called the quality cost which incurs the effort put in it. This cost is added to the product/service’s cost and hence quality becomes a billable value addition to the product/service being offered. Is this global trend correct? This is what I have in my mind whenever I think on this. Is Quality mean to be a value addition for a product?

Ever wondered why a branded shirt costs more than a normal one? By taking out this example, I believe it is easy to understand the real concept behind the trend around us. As I mentioned earlier, it is the quality cost which is implied to the cost of the material purchased, as the cost involved in implementing to attain the quality is more in the case of former. Is this really true? If quality is not meant to be free then how do we measure the cost? This will be the immediate questions that pops out after all these conclusions.

The cost to attain quality is measured as a sum of the costs involved in two major roles.

• Costs of control

o Prevention costs

o Appraisal costs • Costs of failure control (Nonconformance)

o Internal failure cost

o External failure cost

The ultimate goal of quality management is 

to attain a zero defect product/service and hence they will concentrate more on the prevention and appraisal phase as the cost involved here will help in reducing the costs of failure control which plays the major piece of a pie when not managed properly. The following shows the relationship between quality vs. cost. This is the juran’s approach on cost over quality and it’ll be clearly visible through this that how cost plays the role in attaining the quality of the product. This also protrays a fact on what has been discussed so far.

As you can evidence throught this that the total cost achieved in producing a 100% compliant product is service is not so high or have a higher difference with the cost attained in producing it. Thus quality can be termed as free as it doesn't much contribute to the total cost of the product/service being offered.

"Then why does the branded shirt is costlier than the normal one?" I hope this is what that runs in one's mind while reaching the end of this now. There are various other factors that adds cost to the product. For eg: Marketing is one such kind of factor. Hence it is not the well premeditated quality that really adds up to the cost but there are various other factors that makes up the whole piece.

This is totally a perception of mine and it is not through intention, if any of the data posted here conflicts theories of legends.

References  : http://www.maxwideman.com/issacons1/iac1180/index.htm

                    God of posts: http://www.google.co.in ;)

Is it my fault to be in Bench?

I should’ve posted a different topic here today. But an incident drove me here to write this. No wonder I should be writing it here as this is for one special reason though and for a special person who will find it when he reads it. I don’t mean to say that this is a special note to a person rather this is just a scribbling from a miniature’s mind about the globally occurring trend in software industries.

We would’ve noticed people around us enjoying their time mostly, gazing all through the internet, reading the tabloids, making things which is far beyond our imaginations and some of us even would’ve experienced it. The management calls them people in bench and I believe them as people having potential to craft their own path. What is a bench really? 

“Bench, is an inventory in waiting to meet Business demand, it is part of any Organization supply chain not just limited to IT Industry (in the form of material in other industries).” 

– This is how a saga (friend) of mine expressed his view. Seems more technical uh? So lez juz come down to a layman’s definition of what a bench is. Bench is commonly referred to a group of resources whom are the backup for any organization’s needs when a series of deals is in pipeline. So what happens when the pipeline is broken? There starts the chaos. Every organization deals it in its own way and there is one common term which is referred to it called “Lay Off”. 

My intention is not to speak on “Lay off” or something related to it. The reason behind this blog is to discuss that do I really deserve it? If so why me? This I believe is the unsolved maze in everyone's mind. Let us come out of what the topic says. It is not about finding fault for one’s state but to analyze what can be done in that state. When one is at the mid of the chaos happening around, he / she should realize that it’s not him / her who is responsible for it. He / She should also understand the fact that the organization has spotted no other way to tackle the situation. 

I hope that a person in bench has a lot more capability to create than others in the routine. Every single person has their own uniqueness but many fail to express them or don’t know when and where to express them. So start expressing them in a way that it serves the organization and let us pat on their head and say we don’t deserve it. It is a boon and not a bane to be in when we really identify ourselves in it. Being dejected is not the end to all. Begin and progress the way that the management should turn back at you and say atleast a sorry for not identifying the potential that created this outbreak. 

The day our dreams will become innovations...

We all have dreams in our life. Dreams that would make the world around us change, dreams for a good cause, dreams that could help mankind or even dreams on our own future. Some may even have nightmares...;) But the reason behind this blog is to turn out the positive dreams in us to creations. Creations which will remain throughout the life of the creator and even after him. The real purpose of this blog remains in there. Creations, Innovations or whatever we call it, it would've started with a dream and this blog serves them well. 

They say "Idle man's mind is a devil's workshop". But lez all bring out the devils in us and show em that they aren't meant to be what they are. This blog is for technocrats, IT professionals, Students, or even a normal blogger who would gaze it thro'. But the real idea behind is to bring out our extreme dreams to innovations and I hope it is not "I" that I am addressing to... but it is us. We can do it if we can dream it. Soon or late we could become pioneers and the countdown for that day has started today!