ERP … the future

Friends, a post after long time. Here I am again sharing my experiences while working on ERP products. This post can be boring but since this is a theoretical concept so cant help in that.
ERP or Enterprise Resource Planning, as the name suggests is a software package designed and developed to plan all the resources of an enterprise effectively. These resources can be Financial Resources, Human Resources, material resources and others. A ERP package software addresses the enterprise needs of an organization by tightly integrating the various functions of an organization using a process view of the organization. The activities supported by ERP systems include all core functions of an enterprise, including financial management, human resources management, and operations. Major reasons organization going for / advantages of an ERP product are –
- Integration of interrelated information.
- Integration of end to end business processes.
- Standardize and speed up organizational processes.
- Reducing complexity.
- Centralized information source
- Security
Interestingly, above are also the points why organizations are reluctant in installing the ERP system in there facilities as because of these reasons results in decrease of departmental myopia and also the habit of putting work on others shoulders.
We will try to understand all the above points by an example. Visualize an industry process of manufacturing, storing (Inventory) and selling of an item. Now we start from back, a sales person enters a sales order in the system for item X with quantity Q then the inventory in charge should come to know that Q is committed to sales for item X. Further consider that there is minimum stock which is to be maintained for item X and if processing of this sales order decreases the inventory below the minimum stock quantity then the production in charge should be intimated to start production of item X. in turn purchase department should be intimated to purchase the required raw material. Below is a diagram depicting this flow –

Coming back to above points, ERP automates, integrates this information flow and the business process as well. It also standardizes and reduces the process complexity. Above all, all this information is stored at centralized place and is secured by user privileges.

A quick point on testing ERP software, apart form the normal functionality a tester has to test the business process and the integration of the information among the interrelated modules.

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

Appraisals

Friends,

June has started and we all are waiting for the appraisals, Our HR is busy with this too. Recently I came across one post from Parimala on her blog “Curious Tester” under the heading “Inferno around Designations”. This gives me idea of sharing my views on this all time burning topic 
Now they say to get a good hike you need to change organization some others say that to get a mere 30 % (let’s assume its industry standard) hike why should I lose my present appraisal as I can expect more higher offers after this appraisal. Don’t worry both these guys are right and I am not I am not denying any of these arguments. I just want to put my standpoint on both these arguments whether you are / you are not / you are waiting for changing the job first think of learning opportunities in the present / future company. In my opinion recognition of work is more important and when you are recognized you will definitely get a good appraisal in present organization while if your manager does not recognize your hard work and keeps on counting your mistake don’t wait for the appraisal and start looking for change since you can’t expect a good hike. All you will get is a mere hike while you can get much more when you change the job. Talking specific to TESTING, in many organizations where there is no separate test manager appraisal is done by project manager who is basically guy with development background. In such situations the appraisal depends on the feedback of other guys in team which is very harmful as the feedback would be taken from dev guys mostly. The appraisal here depends mostly on your relationship with development team and you might not get rewarded according to the efforts you did.

On the concluding note, my standpoint is when you look for change you should analyze on the learning opportunities in the present and future organizations as well. In case there is not enough learning opportunities then it’s better to look for change because professionally nothing is gained. After all software industry is a very dynamic and your learning matters a lot when counted with your experience, I have seen such examples where a person coming for a reputed company having years of experience asks how to take screen shot in case no tool like SNAGIT is available.


Wishing a very good future and appraisals to all readers !...................


Thanks & Regards,
Amit

Software Testing is not an easy job

Testing is not an easy job as people think about it. Everybody from the project manger to developers feels that software testing is a easy job in which you have to just test OR validate the software against the written set of requirements and for this ask they write the test cases for it and execute them on the product. This is totally true but this is just one side of the whole picture. Every software testers primary job is to test the software and make sure that it working as per the requirements. But here is the twist for performing this task he has to –

- Have thorough knowledge of the system under development which can be as vast as knowledge of the different modules of the system how these modules interact with each other, data flow between these modules and many more things. In contrast to this developers are confined to their individual modules, they are more concerned with the output of their module and many times it happens that they shed of their responsibilities by saying “I am sending data properly and in desired format from my screen/module (Say Module A) but if other module (Say Module B) is not fetching it then it’s not my job” . At this note, testers job is to find out this integration defect and let them know what is expected so a testers should know the functionality of module A , module B and the purpose of integrating these modules.
- Testers need to have ‘End User’ mindset to test the software. They need to think in the same way as the end users uses the software. At the same time they need to follow the documented requirements only then they will be able to deliver quality product. So they have a dual responsibility of their shoulders.
- Moreover they need to have domain knowledge of the industry which the software is catering and the knowledge of the current process practiced by the client. As for developers this is not as important.
- They need to test the software on wide range of data as against small set of data tested by developers in unit testing phase.

So please do not consider testing as easy job !.................

We the TESTERS

Today’s post is about the pains of software testing industry. In my 4.5 years of experience I have not seen a company who treats testers as a respected team members. When It comes to testing, most of the company’s pay less to the tester as compared to developers. Testers are not the respected members of project team. Developers think that it is because of them testers are getting jobs. Yes its true because these people make mistakes very often. I have faced this numerous times that developers have given days from testing schedules. Developers take their own time , eats up testers time and then mangers expect that testing should be perfect and no bugs should be missed. I don’t know how is this possible. Further when it comes to any issue reported in UAT / by client these mangers come to testers asking how this happened and the developers just shed off the responsibilities by saying ask testers. Many a times developers spend whole day on some small issues and release the builds to the testing team at EOD expecting the results by tomorrow morning.

Come on give me a break we the TESTERS are equally important to developers, we too have families to support and spend time with …………..