OuttaBox Tester – Course Outline and Content Description 2014

1 | P a g e

Workshop Introduction:

Why OuttaBox?

When we were discussing the ideas about launching OuttaBox Tester© workshop and how we can

design and create a Software Testing Class which is not only informative but also comes out with a result

oriented approach.

We don’t want to bore you to the bones with long lectures and bulleted points and then make you write

them down one after another like you did in the school. We also, don’t want to waste your precious two

days out of a weekend and make you tired and all washed up. In fact, we will make those 2 days (around

18) hours in total, into a grand slam, roller coaster ride with learning and re-learning all around the

contours. Yes, there will be a base presentation, which will take you through the training, but that is

actually the real game board on which you will play along with your co-participants and sometimes

yourselves.

When: 18th and 19th October, 2014 (9am – 6pm)

Where: Lab 3, CSIT Department, NED University

Day 1 is all about being that tester and how testing is done; You will have rigorous exercises, puzzles

and questions to let your brains work out the problems; You will also come across in finding out the real

talent in yourself; We shall address you and your testing abilities in terms of:

a. Concept Cleansing: We will make sure; right from the start that we let you bring

yourself out (and your mind) into clear waters. We will cleanse your concepts and definitions

regarding - Testing, Testers, Quality, Quality Assurance and those mingled up concepts regarding

the Software testing life cycle and the Testing types.

OuttaBox Tester – Course Outline and Content Description 2014

2 | P a g e

b. Your Identity as a tester: Mark our words, we will make sure that by the end of that

session you will be totally aware of your abilities and skills as a tester, and what can make you

stand out. For Team Leaders, this will provide them the right Key Point Indicators for the

identification of the right resources for the right testing jobs.

c. Documentation and Reporting: Indeed a very important area and for some of us

it is a very tedious aspect of Software Testing, yet it needs to be done, otherwise it is like leaving

a dance right in the middle and making fun of yourself. Do not worry, we will teach you using

simple exercises about UML and Test Cases. We will provide you with physical objects which you

can feel in your hands and then describe about them as your test items.

d. Bug hunting: Oh yeah, if you are a tester and does not know how to hunt those bugs, man

you are so much in the wrong place at the wrong time! Lectures? No! Exercises? Yes! This will

also mark the end of the day 1, and you will come out as a confident tester who knows how to

hunt bugs! You will be given a system and then just like doing a test drive; you will hunt down

those potentially important bugs and apply your skills to find all of them! It will be a time bound

OuttaBox Tester – Course Outline and Content Description 2014

3 | P a g e

situation, so brace yourself with some tight pressure at the end of the day 1 – don’t say that we

did not warn you!

Day 2 will be all about becoming that all in one Testing Guru. So, if you are a team lead, or an

enthusiastic professional, this day will bring about the best in you as the Test strategist, an effective

team member, a test manager and above all an Exploratory Tester!

a. The ultimate Exploration: We will give you the in-depth look into the art of

exploratory testing. But then let’s not turn that into a boring lecture shall we? Fasten your

seatbelts as right from the start you will be on your feet, doing exercises to develop test

strategies and the right coverage.

b. Heuristics and Oracles: Exploration is independent, but it is not done blindly. The key

to the right exploration comes with the use of Oracles and Heuristics. We will let you develop

your own heuristics and let you use them on the given test system. Addressing areas like

“Project Environment” or the People focused Quality Criteria or distributing the product into the

right elements for the coverage, we will teach you all with focused workshops on live systems.

c. Automated Checking and how it helps in Testing: We will let you know

the importance of Automated Checking, and how it helps out a tester. We will provide you the

concepts of different roles in this process and let you know how new definitions of Testing and

Checking have taken over the current scene in Testing.

This workshop addresses the concepts and frameworks of context driven software testing as taught by

James Bach, Michael Bolton and Cem Kaner. It will have references from the training material used in

Rapid Software Testing Class and from various conferences and articles written around the year. In so

many words we eliminate the issue of out-dated or expired information, and let you learn what is

actually on fire in the Testing Field and at the On-Line community scene.

OuttaBox Tester – Course Outline and Content Description 2014

4 | P a g e

Recommended Text(s):

1. Lessons Learned in Software Testing: A Context-Driven Approach by Cem Kaner, James

Bach, Bret Pettichord - John Wiley & Sons, 02-Aug-201

2. Explore It: Reduce Risk and Increase Confidence with Exploratory Testing By Elisabeth

Hendrickson - O'Reilly Vlg. GmbH & Company, 2013 3. Testing Computer Software by Cem Kaner, Jack L. Falk, Hung Quoc Nguyen - International

Thompson Computer Press, 1993

Course Outcomes:

Knowledge

a. Software Testing as a Career

b. Software Testing Life Cycle

c. Context Driven Software Testing

d. Human Skills required for Testing

e. Exploratory Testing dynamics and

f. Designing and Implementing Test Strategy

g. Use and Application of Heuristics and Oracles

h. System and Human aspects of Quality and how testing does it?

i. Automated Checking and New concepts regarding testing and checking

Abilities

Student will be able to:

a. Find Bugs with the right coverage regardless of the requirements or functional specifications.

b. Write Documentation as outputs, such as Bug reports

c. Generate Test Plans

d. Generate Test Cases and Use Cases

e. Create Mind Maps

f. Investigate Bugs and Describe them for the developers and Customers

g. Can Analyze Requirements and generate Traceability Matrix

h. Define the Test and Project Environments

i. Shall distribute product in to elements to define the coverage and find important bugs

j. Execute Tests as per the defined Quality Criteria

k. Create their own Heuristics and learn how to use oracles to identify bugs

l. Can generate effective test automation strategy

OuttaBox Tester – Course Outline and Content Description 2014

5 | P a g e

m. Can execute test automation to the right coverage of the test product

Values

a. Effectiveness to Software Testing, Analysis, Investigation, Observations, Recording, Describing,

Quality Consciousness, Human Communication and Leading.

b. Career Enhancement; as there is a good need of the software testing professionals on all level of

experience.

Course Outline

Being Tester

Being Testers started out as an independent session regarding an informal introduction to Software

Testing. Back then, it was a 20 minutes speech with 15 slides, now it is a full grown workshop of 2 hours

with 100 slides.

The session contains a section wise walk-through about Software Testing, the role of the testers,

software testing as a Human Skill, Types of testing, and a few minor testing and psychological exercises.

Here are the contents:

a. Preamble

b. The Assumptions

c. The Gap

d. Software Testing as a Career

e. Software Testing Life Cycle

f. Defining Software Testing

g. Defining Software Testers

h. Traits of being a Software Tester

OuttaBox Tester – Course Outline and Content Description 2014

6 | P a g e

i. Software Testing Types

j. Communication Exercise

k. Psychological Exercises – (Regarding Observation, In-Attentional blindness and Descriptions)

Boundary Testing Workshop

Once the introduction is done, and participants are aware of their place and definition as the Software

Testers, the next phase takes them in the practical execution of software testing. This session covers two

main aspects:

1. The Bug Hunting

2. The Boundary Testing

We start from the definition of Bugs and how testers are referred as the Bug Magnets. We also provide

lot of examples of commonly found bugs in the day to day activities and how bugs can de-value the

system and can make unthinkable happened to the human lives.

This part of training is based on the James Bach’s session at Test Bash 2013 about Galumphing.

Following are its main contents:

a. Defining Boundary Value Testing

b. Ashby’s law of requisite variety

c. Component testing

d. Pattern investigation

e. Mind Mapping

f. Investigation

OuttaBox Tester – Course Outline and Content Description 2014

7 | P a g e

a. Test Casing: We use a simple Triangle Exercise for creating the viable test cases to define right coverage. The

candidates are given a time of 30 minutes to create as many as test cases to test the small

program related to Triangle types.

b. State Transitioning: To understand the importance of UML, the participants will be handed over simple day to day

use items that they can feel with their hands and then create State transitions diagrams related

to those objects.

c. Testing Exercise– Day 1

a. Workroom Production Machines 15 minute Workroom Productions Machines (a Group Exercise with 15 minute play

time) at the end of exercise the group leader will give a 5 minute presentation of what

they discovered about that machine, it’s bugs and how does it work.

b. TV Vol Control: TV Vol control (Duration 3 hours) this exercise is created by Krist Jan Uba, and is about a

small application which is controlled by using a smart phone. The purpose of this

application is to control the TV Volume and Mobile device volume in contrast to each

other, while user uses both of them simultaneously. It is a classic exercise related to

Boundary Testing and Bug Investigation. The Exercise comes with a detailed bug report

and mind mapping requirements.

OuttaBox Tester – Course Outline and Content Description 2014

8 | P a g e

This would mark the end of day 1

The Grand Exploration:

The Day 2 will start off from “all about Exploratory Testing “and its whereabouts. The session will

describe in detail about the essence of Exploratory Testing:

a. What it should be in terms of principles stated by Michael Bolton in his 4 blogs about “What

Exploratory Testing is not”

b. and, then we jump to “Heuristics Test Strategy Model

The main aim is to create that awareness, let the professionals know about their standing in this

scenario and then move them all to the exercises.

OuttaBox Tester – Course Outline and Content Description 2014

9 | P a g e

Heuristics Test Strategy Model

We call this the “Grand Exploration Section”.

The Heuristics Test Strategy Model is the base foundation of not only Exploratory Testing but a ground

reality for Context Driven Testing.

It has four main parts known as:

a. Project Environment

b. Product Elements

c. Quality Criteria

d. Testing Techniques

Heuristics generated in each of these sections covers not only the testing product but overall project

environment as well. For a team lead this is a very effective tool and for a tester, it is a map which

covers the risks.

a. Project Environment:

Mission

Information

Developers Relations

Test Team

Equipments and Tools

Schedules

Test Items

Deliverables

b. Product Elements:

Structure

OuttaBox Tester – Course Outline and Content Description 2014

10 | P a g e

Functions

Data

Interfaces

Platform

Time

c. Quality Criteria Capability

Reliability

Usability

Charisma

Security

Scalability

Performance

Installability

Compatibility

Supportability

Testability

Maintainability

Portability

Localizability

d. FEW – HICCUPPS

Familiarity

Explainability

World

History

Image

Comparable Products

Claims

User Expectations

Product Itself

Purpose

Statutes

e. Testing Techniques Functional Testing

Domain Testing

Stress Testing

Flow Testing

Scenario Testing

Claims Testing

User Testing

Risk Testing

Automated Testing (now

Checking)

Testing Exercise– Day 2

Product Element Distribution of a Game:

A detailed 1 and Half Hour Exercise using the Product Elements Heuristics, where the

participants will install, play and then test a 3D game, while applying the SFDiPOT heuristics to

define the test coverage.

Automated checking:

This is an extract from a very long debate amongst the testing gurus on Twitter and blogs, where James

Bach, Michael Bolton and Ian McCowatt then compiled the findings and answer the question which

bothers most of the testers to their very core – The Automated Checking!

The blog is called “Testing and Checking Refined” – and it is an answer to the questions raised in finding

the rights and wrongs about software testing, checking and the use of tools for testing.

OuttaBox Tester – Course Outline and Content Description 2014

11 | P a g e

We also believe that we are actually overshadowing the talents by making tools and automation coming

in as first and testing itself as second, while recruiting Software Testers.

The session is about 1 hour in duration and covers aspects such as:

a. Sapience and its importance in testing

b. Excellence in work and how tools and human can bring it

c. Continuous development and delivery

d. Pressure on testers created by tools

e. Checking and Testing Definitions with proper explanations

f. Clearing the mind about testing and checking and how testers think

g. Points of understandings for testers

How to Register?

a. Register at our website (http://outtabox.co/event/outtabox-tester-oct14/)

b. You will receive a booking confirmation through email.

c. We also offer an overall discount of 15% in the fee for Early Bird and Group Participations (3

participants). The Early bird applies for the registrations before 30th of September 2014.

d. Please submit a cheque/cash/bank transfer of 15,000 PKR on the following account details and

send us an email with transaction details.

Bank: Bank Al Habib

Branch: Tariq Road, Karachi

Account Title: Faiza Yousuf

Account Number: 10540081003117018

IBAN: PK30BAHL1054008100311701

Swift Code: BAHLPKKA

e. See us at the venue on 18th and 19th October 9am sharp!

For more details, email us at info@outtabox.co or call us at +92-303-913-7811.

Happy Testing!

P.S. The course fee includes the cost of lunches, high teas, course material (Printed and CDs), etc.