Some common scene in software testing

After a long time, I am posting something. Actually in the past days I read some blog posts and was collecting ideas for my blog. So here I am sharing my views on present trends -

Scene # 1

Recently I was having a discussion with my colleague and good friend Sudarshan about the testing process followed in big companies (No need to name any one !...). Our debate turns towards the type of different types of test cases , I said the possible types can be Unit test cases (prepared & Used by developers), functional , integration, system / system integration , regression and UI. To my surprise he added some more terms which I never heard and one of the interesting term was GROOMED test cases. He explained me that groomed test cases are the test cases which contains everything defined in proper way objective, steps, test data, expected results to name a few. I was amazed after hearing this new type and thought that what I studied is wrong OR what ? . As per my opinion a test case should contain all these necessary elements and only after that it can be called as a test case so where this groomed term came in ??

I could imagine a interviewer working in big company who would have asked this question to a 3-4 years experienced candidate and giving feedback that he is lacking basics terms. Is this a basic / industry standard jargon.


In a recent blog post from one of the very senior member in testing community I read his predictions about the future of software testing industry. I appreciate his to the point predictions that testing process will become more complex and companies will demand more and more from testers. He also said that in order to stay in race testers need to distinguish themselves from the crowd. I agree to all this totally. What I want to add is testers should concentrate on gaining expertise in the respective technologies / domains they are working in also need to focus on the industry process which is catered by the software systems. But I do have some doubts coming in following scenes –

Scene # 2

Testers are expected to know maximum technologies UNIX , SQL …….. do companies utilize these skills properly. Recently one of my fiend joined a company as a Test Automation Engineer (Obviously he was interviewed with series of automation tools questions) but the work he was put on is a big question mark. He was put on manual testing / reporting and his manger told him to understand the product well for next few months. Result he is frustrated and now thinking to switch again in just 6 months.

Scene # 3

Almost in every interview testers are expected to know SQL , some questions related to this are put on. The most important in JOINS. They are being asked to write some queries on this. But tell me seriously in reality how many testers really writes such queries while testing the product/application. Consider a scenario where a tester has started working on a project containing 100’s of tables which even the developers don’t know then would you like a tester to write JOIN queries… in reality developers use to provide the queries to the testers initially and it depends on the testers perspective to learn the process OR not. It hardly matters in reality. And again many people are rejected in the interviews on the basis of these questions.

Scene # 4

This is really very amusing , I am into manual testing and in my CV/Resume I have mentioned this very clearly in the header line itself. Although I have very little knowledge about automation tools but no where I have mentioned QTP(in the projects as well). Now in the interview , the interviewer asks me # 1 Do you have knowledge of automation tools , # 2 have you worked on QTP/Any automation tool in any of your project. Now # 1 is OK but what about # 2 , has he gone through my profile OR he is taking interview just for the sake of taking and would find one reason to reject me. Also how did the recruiter shortlisted my profile

Anyways, there are many more !..................


Happy testing friends