Software QA/Testing Technical FAQs

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Need some QA advice:
* Improve Management Commitment to Quality Assurance
* Improve the Internalization Quality Assurance as a process

The first part of the battle is already won: product quality is suffering due to financial and business drivers outside of your control. In other words, there is awareness (or there is a means of obtaining) awareness that although products are shipping, quality is suffering and if this is allowed to continue, your product will be bogged down in patches, bad customer experience and perception. Ultimately your product will fail. This is a very powerful argument with which to convince your management that the situation cannot be allowed to continue. The expression "once you have them by the balls, their hearts and minds will follow" is particularly true here.
So step 1: recognize there is a problem and highlight the consequences. Awareness is key!
Step 2: Define your role and get clarity about your objectives and understand the expectations your managers have of your department.
QA is not just testing. Testing is not just QA. Are you expected to test, or are you expected to manage quality? Depending on the answer you can focus on the areas that the business places as top priority and fill the areas where you are lacking expertise.
Example 1: they want you to be a Quality Assurance manager. Now we're in the realms of ISO, CMM etc. Coding standards, documentation standards, process flows, organisational structure, communication standards, release management procedures, process improvement and maintenance, change management procedures, review cycle management, requirement mangement lifecycles etc. In other words, you are responsible for the process that assure quality. How that is monitored and controlled is quality control.
Example 2: they want you to test the software. Now we're talking Test methodologies, test plans, test team organisation and so on.
By clarifying your role you not only get an idea of your areas of responsiblitiy, you are also empowered to bring about change, to introduce quality and turn the ship around! Make sure you have the means to carry out your job (budget, resources, a senior management sponsor to help you through the hard time). If you dont, then you will fight a losing battle.
Step 3: Now that you know your role; evangelise! Let everyone know what you are going to do and what the end-results are going to be. Include everyone (yes, quality is everyones business) and be aware that change meets with resistance. Check out the paterson-connor change lifecycle model for an example and structure of your change activities and the problems you will face.
Step 4: Depending on your role, implement your procedures. The business will decide what is more important. If it wants to ship product, focus on the release management/service delivery/service management to make sure that customers get their products quickly and get the support they need. If they want quality, focus more on standards and development/qa lifecycles.

I don't have a lot of money. How can I become a good tester?
If you don't have a lot of money, but want to become a good tester, the cheapest or free education is sometimes provided on the job, by an employer, while you're getting paid to do a job that requires the use of WinRunner and many other software testing tools.

What's fuzz testing ?

Fuzz testing is a software testing technique. The basic idea is to attach the inputs of a program to a source of random data. If the program fails (for example, by crashing, or by failing built-in code assertions), then there are defects to correct.
The great advantage of fuzz testing is that the test design is extremely simple, and free of preconceptions about system behavior

Which of these tools should I learn?
Learn ALL you can! Learn all the tools that you are able to master! Ideally, this will include some of the most popular software tools, i.e. LabView, LoadRunner, Rational Tools, WinRunner, SilkTest etc.

What's differentiate Test_Plan and Test_Strategy

Test plan is developed by test lead with the help of other team members. Test plan contains objective, test strategy, test scope, resources, schedule, deliverables and risks and dependancies. Test strategy is part of the test plan. Based on the application type test strategy will be derived. It specifies what type of tests are required and how the testers are going to be tested on the application.

What are some of the software configuration management tools?
Software configuration management tools include Rational ClearCase, DOORS, PVCS, CVS; and there are many others.
Rational ClearCase is a popular software tool for revision control of source code. Made by Rational Software.
DOORS, or "Dynamic Object Oriented Requirements System", is a requirements version control software tool.
CVS, or "Concurrent Version System", is another popular, open source version control tool. It keeps track of changes in documents associated with software projects. It enables several, often distant, developers to work together on the same source code.
PVCS is a document version control tool, a competitor of SCCS. SCCS is an original UNIX program, based on "diff". Diff is a UNIX command that compares contents of two files.

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