Software Testing Blog

Why Do Projects Fail?

2010-02-23T09:54:00.005+05:30

This is probably the most commonly asked question & the most difficult to answer. The reasons could be many. But by doing a self analysis we can reach at a point where we can say "Okay. This is where we missed!!"

Assumptions!
The biggest reason for failures is the lack of understanding. Sometimes we are not able to make out what the client is expecting out of the project. So rather than asking the client for clarifications, we assume things on our own. This is the first step towards self destruction!

NEVER assume things on your own. Even if you have a slightest bit of doubt in your mind, ASK. This is the first thing that is taught in Software Testing. Be ready with questions. The most difficult but the most fruitful question is WHY? Why this way, not that way? Why only this? The answer to this "WHY" will clear your doubts. The day you start questioning, you will get the answers to your questions. If a software tester is not asking questions he (& the project he is working on) is doomed!

Communicate!
Always keep your client in loop. If the client needs your views/suggestions/feedback/answer on any point, reply them with utmost transparency. Never say something just because it makes the client happy. Be genuine.
Give them your views & possible workarounds if any. This makes the client feel that you are involved & you are making a difference.

Learn to say NO!
Many times I have seen senior management saying "Yes" to clients for some tasks that are not feasible. Simply because they are clients and if we say no to them it questions our capability! If something is not feasible, inform the client about it with ways to resolve it.

I will quote an example here. This happened in my previous organization. We got a project to develop a website for a famous football club. Being a generic website for the fans & that too of a football club, the website was supposed to display images of the players, award ceremonies, trophies, parties etc etc.

The problem was that the images supplied were low resolution images of unequal sizes. When they were first displayed on the website the result was obvious. Some of them got stretched while others squished. The first & obvious reaction of the client was that the images are not clear. So, as usual our management said it will be done. The designers were put into action & they did best what they could do. But the issue still remained. This game of "Do this" & "Done That" went on for some time. When the issue was brought into my notice I explained the management that if the client needs better images on website, tell them to provide us better high resolution images. We can't turn donkeys into horses. When the client was told that the issue was with the images they have provided, they agreed to provide us with better pictures. They specifically hired a professional photographer & provided us with the high resolution images that could be used on the website. The result was great & the client happy!

So, learn to say no & provide the best possible workarounds because testing is not only about finding flaws but also looking for solutions!

Test more, learn more!

Take things seriously !! (A Real Story)

2008-01-28T10:49:00.000+05:30

This is a real incident guys. It teaches us not to ignore even the silliest and weird looking problems. Enjoy reading !

A complaint received by the Pontiac Division of General Motors:

"This is the second time I have written you, and I don't blame you for not answering me, because I kind of sounded crazy, but it is a fact that we have a tradition in our family of ice cream for dessert after dinner each night. But the kind of ice cream varies so, every night, after we've eaten, the whole family votes on which kind of ice cream we should have and I drive down to the store to get it.

"It's also a fact that I recently purchased a new Pontiac and since then my trips to the store have created a problem. You see, every time I buy vanilla ice cream, when I start back from the store my car won't start. If I get any other kind of ice cream, the car starts just fine.

"I want you to know I'm serious about this question, no matter how silly it sounds: 'What is there about a Pontiac that makes it not start when I get vanilla ice cream, and easy to start whenever I get any other kind?'"

The Pontiac President was understandably skeptical about the letter, but sent an engineer to check it out anyway. The latter was surprised to be greeted by a successful, obviously well-educated man in a fine neighborhood. He had arranged to meet the man just after dinner time so the two hopped into the car and drove to the ice cream store. It was vanilla ice cream that night and, sure enough, after they came back to the car, it wouldn't start.

The engineer returned for three more nights. The first night, the man got chocolate. The car started. The second night, he got strawberry. The car started. The third night he ordered vanilla.

The car failed to start.

Now the engineer, being a logical man, refused to believe that this man's car was allergic to vanilla ice cream. He arranged, therefore, to continue his visits for as long as it took to solve the problem. And toward this end he began to take notes: he jotted down all sorts of data, time of day, type of gas used, time to drive back and forth, etc.

In a short time, he had a clue: the man took less time to buy vanilla than any other flavor. Why? The answer was in the layout of the store. Vanilla, being the most popular flavor, was in a separate case at the front of the store for quick pickup. All the other flavors were kept in the back of the store at a different counter where it took considerably longer to find the flavor and get checked out.

Now the question for the engineer was why the car wouldn't start when it took less time. Once time became the problem -- not the vanilla ice cream -- the engineer quickly came up with the answer: vapor lock. It was happening every night, but the extra time taken to get the other flavors allowed the engine to cool down sufficiently to start. When the man got vanilla, the engine was still too hot for the vapor lock to dissipate.

Moral of the story: Even insane-looking problems are sometimes real.

Joke Compilations (c)1998; Permission granted to forward, or post on other lists; if this notice is fully included, thanks! Please credit: "From the FUNNY-BONE - Funnyguy@spunge.org" if you pass on anything from the list.

The First "Computer Bug"

2008-01-24T11:09:00.000+05:30

While Grace Hopper was working on a Mark II Computer at Harvard University, her associates discovered a moth stuck in a relay and thereby impeding operation, whereupon she remarked that they were "debugging" the system. Though the term computer bug cannot be definitively attributed to Admiral Hopper, she did bring the term into popularity. The remains of the moth can be found in the group's log book at the Smithsonian Institution's National Museum of American History in Washington, D.C

Moth found trapped between points at Relay # 70, Panel F, of the Mark II Aiken Relay Calculator while it was being tested at Harvard University, 9 September 1947. The operators affixed the moth to the computer log, with the entry: "First actual case of bug being found". They put out the word that they had "debugged" the machine, thus introducing the term "debugging a computer program". In 1988, the log, with the moth still taped by the entry, was in the Naval Surface Warfare Center Computer Museum at Dahlgren, Virginia.

Make Your Website User Friendly

2007-12-26T11:44:00.000+05:30

a) Navigation Related Usability Tips:

1. Use consistent intuitive navigation. Users are impatient. They hate having to learn new site navigation. Make your navigation obvious and consistent throughout your site.
2. Consistent navigation and search feature present on each page are among the most important usability tools we can offer to a website visitor.
Putting together navigation and search results can be even more powerful -- it provides context and eliminates guesswork.
If you have a site search you might want to consider putting together search results and navigation (i.e. bread crumbs or cookie crumbs, depending on your culinary preference). If impossible to add the crumbs navigation to each link in the search results, consider adding the URL. Provided your site's information architecture is decent, seeing what directory the page belongs to, might provide an additional clue as to whether the result is indeed relevant.
3. Don't disable the "Back" button. 4. Cookie crumbs are good to help visitors know what page/section of your site they are on. You know, the trail that looks like this:
You are currently browsing this page: Home > Our Services > SEO Services > Pricing
5. Home page link: Always have a consistent link to the home page of your site in the same location on every page (I do two: one at the top and one at the bottom). (Similar to consistent nav, but if you have a new small window you're opening, you may want a lighter design, but you should still have a link home, because you never know how someone will get to the site.)
6. Back up fancy navigation such as java applet, flash DHTML & javascript with appropriate text links & sitemap
7. Build a Site Map
Yes, people do use them! The bigger your site, the more you need one.
8. Remember that the homepage is not the only entry page to the site and make it clear to users which page they've landed on and where it exists in relation to the architecture of the site.
9. Redundancy in Navigation. Navigation is fundamental to website development so redundancy assures users will find what they are looking for. Some may be attracted to images, some may wish a descriptive text link and some may wish to see an embedded link which assures them that what they are clicking is what they want. It never hurts to make it easy for the user to find their way around even if that means pointing them directly to what you think they may want.

b) Tips on Improving Readability :

1. Proofread!!! Nothing says "amateur" like grammatical/spelling errors. Have someone else read over your work to catch things you might have missed.
2. Beware of Background Images. Background images are dramatic and eye-catching but unless you really know what you are doing, stick to a plain background, especially behind text.
3. Arrange elements on a page carefully. Remember that people (who read using the roman alphabet) read from left to right.
Typically you will want to place your most important elements in the upper left side of the page. The further right and down you go, the less emphasis in placed on an element. Fine for graphics, bad for links and text.
This can be overcome with overemphasis (oversize, bright colors, anything that draws the eye) but as a general rule, put things that are most important first.
Too many sites put their secondary navigation (about us, contact, jobs) in their most important real-estate. People will look for that information- you want to direct their attention to products, services, or information that serves the site's goals.
4. Use resizable fonts - using controls to change the size on the page, or through the browser's controls.
5. Use a san serif font for when people are viewing body text on a monitor, and a serif font for when they get a printable version of the page.
6. If you decide to ignore the advice on using resizable fonts and use pixels to define the sizes of your text, use points for your printable version.
7. Make sure that you name similar alternative system fonts for different operating systems.
8. A screen full of side-to-side text is difficult to read. Shortening the width of text upon a screen can make it easier to read.
9. Don't mix serif and san serif fonts in body text
10. Use mixed case, especially in body text. Avoid the use of all caps there.
11. Use bold for emphasis -- but not too much. If everything is important enough to be bolded, then nothing is.
12. Use italics for emphasis.
13. Use colored text for emphasis.
14. Don't use underlines. (except on links)
15. Avoid full justification. Left justification, with different stopping points on the right make text easier to read.
16. Text should be easy to scan, and adjusting line-height may help.
17. Make sure that there is enough contrast between text and background. Dark text with a light background works very well.
18. Use whitespace on a page in margins, to keep text from getting too close to edges and borders.
19. Using short paragraphs, bulleted lists, and headings and subheadings can make a page much easier to read than a presentation of the material in a large block of text.
20. Spacing out Content
No, I don't mean spaced-out content.
Have you ever seen a large post that was all written as one paragraph? Did you want to read it or did you feel like you really had to focus to understand it?
Putting spaces between paragraphs draws the eye down the page and encourages the reader to continue. A good balance between text and whitespace is important, especially with large amounts of text.

c) Usability Tips on Using Search:

1. Ensure that every page has a search box, and place it at the top of the page. Make it obvious it is a search box, and try to use the word 'search' or 'go' for the button (I prefer search as it tends to be more intuitive for the user).
2. Make sure the search box is long enough so that the user can see the search terms they are entering into the box.
3. Capture the visitors search queries to a log file, then study. We had a site search and studied the logs...for a while. We later decided it was more work than it was worth. We're now switching gears and spending our time and efforts on making our site user-friendly.

d) Usability Tips on HTML Coding:

1.A good rule of thumb is to always use HTML tags in the manner that they were intended. That alone can help with usability and also from having to worry about getting banned or penalized by the search engines.
2. Validation: run code through a validator; even if you're not going to create perfectly valid code, it will help you catch errors that could cause problems
3. Use HTML Tags properly. I want to add something about the use of H Tags beyond SEO - in particular, accessibility. Many screen readers rely on H Tags to interpret the structure of web pages. Even if web pages have a structure, without proper header tags, screen readers can't find it. So it is important to use H Tags - for your visitors.
4. When setting up "Print this page" pages, put them in a separate directory so that you can exclude the robots from spidering them. "Print this" pages can be viewed as duplicate content.
5. Use alt and title attributes to properly describe images, links, etc.
6.Use proper document structure. Use heading tags for logical topic headings so that users can easily scan the page, and don't format them so much that they no longer look like headings.

e) Tips for More Usable Forms:

1. Always put the Submit Form button on the left and on the Clear Form button on the right. Never, ever put the Submit Form button on the right and the Clear form button on the left.
I don't know how many times I have filled out a form, went to click the Submit button, ON THE LEFT, and it's been the clear button instead and I've cleared out all my form fill-ins instead of submitting the form.
2. Forms Should Retain Data Make sure your forms have cookies or whatever it is you need to do to keep your data intact if you have to click away for a minute while you're filling it out.
Usability for Design and Layout
1. Keep everything close. No matter how complex your directory structure may be, there's no reason any page should be more than three clicks away from the home page.
2. Catch your errors. We all make mistakes. Create a custom 404 error page that includes your main navigation elements to help users find their way back to your site.
2a. Make a custom 404 Not Found Page
Large sites in particular, have a need for this. In the life of a website, some pages will disappear, be moved, etc. And in case visitors drop by a page of yours that was somehow removed, or they typed in the filename wrong (this happens frequently and often takes visitors a while to figure out what the problem was), a custom 404 page will give them an indication of where else they may find the page they were looking for - might present a search option, or give links to the most popular parts of the site - or even a link to the site map.
Custom 404 Not Found pages are not an excuse to put everything and the kitchen sink on to one page though! They should be short and to the point, directing the visitor to possibilities with a quick-loading, helpful bit of information right when visitors need it.
This is a particularly useful idea for sites that are commercial and/or "professional". It really doesn't look professional when your web hosting company's 404 Not Found page pops up in the middle of a user's experience with your site! Ick!
3. Don't mess with Scroll Bars!
Yes, you can make a scroll bar blend in with the rest of your page beautifully. So much so, that people don't see it. First preference- leave it alone. If you MUST change the scroll bar, give it some contrast so that it doesn't disappear.
4.Make content printable. People often print things once they find something interesting.
5.Plan before you Build
Many usability issues can be cut off at the beginning by planning for the future. A good architecture will take future plans/expansion into account before ever looking at design. You must have a good foundation before you start painting the walls and picking out carpet...
6. Keep a consistent look and feel throughout, don't confuse users with a lot of wacky pages that look completely different.
7. Scrolling: keep it one-directional and preferably vertical.
8. Keep the page simple. Direct the readers eyes to the important parts of the page. Overloading the page headlines and links in confuses people.
9. Be careful with animations & marquees. They distract a reader from reading your content.
10. Make links obvious. Don't use the same font settings and color to make links visible only on a mouse-over.

f) Usability Tips on Using Color:

1. Be careful of low contrast color schemes
You can't go wrong with black on white. Sometimes, you just need more drama but remember to use a light font on a dark background or a dark font on a light background. Browsers are different, monitors are different, you never exactly know how the colors will render.
2. Use colors carefully - especially the color red. Red is an eye magnet for a lot of people.
3. Never use black color for error or warning messages. Error messages are supposed to stand out indication and error. and if the font color used is same as the whole site then the message blends with the site is not prominent.
Similarly use red color for error or warning messages only. Using red color for displaying instructions, search results etc is a BIG NO.
Red color is associated with danger or errors and hence should not be used as instructions or simple messages.

g) E-commerce Usability Tips:

1. Have whomever takes the customer inquiry telephone calls in a business write down detailed information about anything someone calls up and starts the conversation with "I was looking at your web site and had a question...". If they have a question, either content needs to be updated or the way things link together are not following the buyer's thought process.
2. Definitely have the person on the phone ask a question or two about the site while they are at it. It's as good as talking about the weather (or better) as a conversation opener. It may not be as good as conducting ongoing weekly usability testing, but it can help to get regular input from customers. By all means, count your self fortunate to be in a situation where you can get customer responses about a site. If you get a lot of those questions, consider conducting some usability testing.
3. Don't force people to "Buy Now" before revealing the price. Why hide the price?
4. Don't get too "interesting" with the shopping cart program - after I give my credit card number over to a website I do not want to see "something interesting and cool". I want to see my purchase processed in a "normal" and secure way. You can vary it a bit and make it look nice, but people usually don't like "cute" when it comes to their finances being handled by strangers.
5. Remember your international users!
When asking for address remember that it is not always in the same format as you may be used to: states are pretty unique to the US (town or county otherwise), country (list all or allow customer to enter), Zip (postal) code (don't force 5 characters). Phone numbers, if you do international business, should have the country code listed as well!
And especially, on an ecommerce site, let your users know your international shipping limitations or requirements before the sale!
6.Use a site map for Products. For an e-commerce site it can be especially helpful to show all of the product categories and associated details on a central page.
7. Another usability best practice would be to define the purpose of your website. I see so many sites that are nothing more than a blob of information that someone slapped on the Internet. Site owners seem to pray that you'll figure out where to go and what to do next.
Define a few goal/target pages...and then help the visitors get to those pages.
If an e-commerce site's goal is to sell products, make the target page the "Thank you for purchasing our product". I think a mistake that is often made is defining the "Buy now" page as the goal/target. This would be incorrect, because if your form or applications are difficult to use (or broke) - you may be losing customers at the form - and never know it. But, if you define the target page as the "Thank you" page, you can measure true success.

h) Tips on Usability Testing:

1.Test for different screen resolutions and browsers. Not everyone is viewing the web at 1280 x 800 or whatever on IE.
2. Test for text only browsers. Paranoids and dial-ups on slow connections often browse with images, flash, javascript, etc. turned off.
3. Check for cross browser compatibility and accessibility via text browsers or voice to text software.

4. TEST!
Test? Who tests? EVERYONE SHOULD! It's not hard or expensive. Find 3-10 people in your target audience and ask them to go through the site and tell you what they think. Observe only- don't explain why you did what. Compare notes between subjects to see where difficulties lie. If they never found your newsletter signup or get confused when they go to buy, you've got an improvement plan.

i) Usability Tips for Graphics and Flash:

1. Images: use at their actual dimensions.
2. Take the time to put larger images into a navigable page on the site instead of just pointing links into your images directory.
3. Optimize images for fast download without losing quality
4. Take care when using flash to give those that cannot or will not download a plug in an alternative.
5. Flash skip buttons: do not put them inside the flash movie. If someone doesn't have flash, that skip button is useless.
6. Add an exit option to flash splash movies/animations. Not everyone likes flash.
7.NO Flash splash!

j) Advice on Frames:

1. If using frames make sure that pages indexed in the search engines are navigable.
2. Don't use frames unnecessarily.
General Good Usability Practice
1. Don't have any dead end pages, regardless of how good your page navigation structure is. Give the user a suggestion and hyperlink of where else may interest them on the site. This applies equally to info sites as well as e-commerce set ups.
2. Give users warnings. Opening new windows or PDFs: warn users.
3.Provide FAQs. Having the most frequently requested information (make sure to research your log files) in a FAQ list could benefit any user, whether experienced or not. Having the list of the FAQs on the top of the page with jump links to the answers would enable the visitor to see most of the FAQs without scrolling.
3. Small pop up windows: don't turn off resizing and scrollbars: one or the other is workable, but preferably just keep resizing available.
4. Make Contact info easy to find. It should be at the bottom of every page (obviously subjective, but almost always a good idea); at the very least a contact link.
5.Keep overall page size down in consideration of those on dial up.
6.Don't frighten people with the inappropriate use of elements such as unsolicited sound files. (Make it opt in!)
7.Contact pages should give clear contact details, not just a form to fill out that gives no info on who & where you are.
8. Be careful of the use of pop up windows, don't try to control the users browser or create multiple open windows.
9. Keep Humans in the test loop. There simply needs to be a human element in there to determine what works best for a given site's potential audience. Not all of these suggestions will work for every site. It takes a knowledgeable person to know which will work best, and it also takes a very patient person to negotiate effectively with an oftentimes quite sensitive web designer, to get those changes implemented.
10. Redundancy is a GOOD thing!
Obviously, there's a point at which one can go too far with that (let's not be silly about this. ) but generally, having several ways to get to the same point - for example: text links on the bottom of the page, graphic links on the side of the page with appropriate alt-text, a search function in a highly visible and easily spotted location, an easily accessible site map, spotlights that explain what links are about in the text of the page, etc. - will make sure that your visitors get where they want to be, in the quickest amount of time for them. And that means more "business" - whether that's subscribers, happy folks who find the information resources they're after quickly, or people who buy the product the site has to offer - for the owner of the web site.
11. There's a lot to be said for creating pdf versions and html versions of documents, so that people have a choice. Printable versions of html pages can turn out pretty good if you either have alternative printable versions or use cascading style sheets to make nice looking printed versions.
12. Create literature as PDF docs so if someone has to show a superior in the organization something to move a purchasing decision forward, they can present something better looking that a printed out browser window. You only get one chance to make a first impression!
13. A better solution to the "print this" page is to use CSS. By using media-specific styles to specify different background/text colors, typefaces/sizes, etc. for printers versus browsers, you can have the exact same (X)HTML page serve as both your display and your "printer friendly" page. No duplicate content, no separate "printer friendly" pages, no subdirectories to exclude.

Get Motivated From Failures

2007-12-21T09:07:00.000+05:30

Today when I look back, I see a lot of ups and downs in my life. I enjoyed every bit of my life, whether it was a failure or a success. I was rejected in various competitions at various levels but always kept trying. Always thinking, God must have thought something better than this for me. You learn more from your failures(mistakes) than from your successes.

It is not Software that always fails. People also fail in life. But what separates Great people is that they rise even after falling numerous times. Below is a list of legendary people, who have learnt from their failures and have become legends. Just read on and get motivated !

1) Bill Gates, founder and chairman of Microsoft, has literally changed the work culture of the world in the 21st century, by simplifying the way computer is being used. He happens to be the world’s richest man for the last one decade. However, in the 70’s before starting out, he was a Harvard University dropout. The most ironic part is that, he started a software company (that was soon to become Microsoft) by purchasing the software technology from “someone” for only $US50 back then.

2) Abraham Lincoln, received no more than 5 years of formal education throughout his lifetime. When he grew up, he joined politics and had 12 major failures before he was elected the 16th President of the United States of America.

3) Isaac Newton was the greatest English mathematician of his generation. His work on optics and gravitation made him one of the greatest scientists the world has even known. Many thought that Isaac was born a genius, but he wasn’t! When he was young, he did very poorly in grade school, so poor that his teachers became clueless in improving his grades.

4) Ludwig van Beethoven, a German composer of classical music, is widely regarded as one of history’s supreme composers. His reputation has inspired - and in many cases intimidated - composers, musicians, and audiences who were to come after him. Before the start of his career, Beethoven’s music teacher once said of him “as a composer, he is hopeless”. And during his career, he lost his hearing yet he managed to produce great music - a deaf man composing music, ironic isn’t!

5) Thomas Edison who developed many devices which greatly influenced life in the 20th century. Edison is considered one of the most prolific inventors in history, holding 1,093 U.S patents to his name. When he was a boy his teacher told him he was too stupid to learn anything. When he set out on his own, he tried more than 9,000 experiments before he created the first successful light bulb.

6) The Woolworth Company was a retail company that was one of the original five-and-ten-cent stores. The first Woolworth’s store was founded in 1878 by Frank Winfield Woolworth and soon grew to become one of the largest retail chains in the world in the 20th century. Before starting his own business, Woolworth got a job in a dry goods store when he was 21. But his employer would not let him serve any customer because he concluded that Frank “didn’t have enough common sense to serve the customers”.

7) By acclamation, Michael Jordon is the greatest basketball player of all time. A phenomenalathlete with a unique combination of grace, speed, power, artistry, improvisational ability and an unquenchable competitive desire. Jordan single-handedly redefined the NBA superstar. Before joining NBA, Jordan was just an ordinary person, so ordinary that was cut from high school basketball team because of his “lack of skill”.

8) Walter Disney was American film producer, director, screenwriter, voice actor, and animator. One of the most well-known motion picture producers in the world, Disney founded a production company. The corporation, now known as The Walt Disney company, makes average revenue of US $30 billion annually. Disney started his own business from his home garage and his very first cartoon production went bankrupt. During his first press conference, a newspaper editor ridiculed Walt Disney because he had no good ideas in film production.

9) Winston Churchill failed the 6th grade. However, that never stopped him to work harder! He strived and eventually became the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom during the Second World War. Churchill is generally regarded as one of the most important leaders in Britain and world history. In a poll conducted by the BBC in 2002 to identify the “100 Greatest Britons”, participants voted Churchill as the most important of all.

10) Steven Spielberg is an American film director. He has won 3 Academy Awards an ranks among the most successful filmmakers in history. Most of all, Steven was recognized as the financially most successful motion picture director of all time. During his childhood, Spielberg dropped out of junior high school. He was persuaded to come back and was placed in a learning-disabled class. He only lasted a month and then dropped out of school forever.

11) Albert Einstein was a theoretical physicist widely regarded as the most important scientist of the 20th century. He was awarded the 1921 Nobel Prize for Physics for his explanation of the photoelectric effect in 1905 and “for his services to Theoretical Physics”. However, when Einstein was young, his parents thought he was mentally retarded. His grades in school were so poor that a teacher asked him to quit, saying, “Einstein, you will never amount to anything!”

12) In 1947, one year into her contract, Marilyn Monroe was dropped by 20th Century-Fox because her producer thought she was unattractive and cannot act. That didn’t deter her at all! She kept on going and eventually she was recognized by the public as the 20th century’s most famous movie star, sex symbol and pop icon.

13) John Grisham’s first novel was rejected by sixteen agents and twelve publishing houses. He went on writing and writing until he became best known as a novelist and author for his works of modern legal drama. The media has coined him as one of the best novel authors even alive in the 21st century.

14) Henry Ford’s first two automobile companies failed. That did not stop him from incorporating Ford Motor Company and being the first to apply assembly line manufacturing to the production of affordable automobiles in the world. He not only revolutionized industrial production in the United States and Europe, but also had such influence over the 20th century economy and society. His combination of mass production, high wages and low prices to consumers has initiated a management school known as “Fordism”. He became one of the three most famous and richest men in the world during his time.

15) Soichiro Honda was turned down by Toyota Motor Corporation during a job interview as “engineer” after World War Two. He continued to be jobless until his neighbors starting buying his “home-made scooters”. Subsequently, he set out on his own to start his own company. Honda. Today, the Company has grown to become the world’s largest motorcycle manufacturer and one of the most profitable automakers - beating giant automaker such as GM and Chrysler. With a global network of 437 subsidiaries, Honda develops, manufactures, and markets a wide variety of products ranging from small general-purpose engines and scooters to specialty sports cars.

16) Akio Morita, founder of giant electric household products, Sony Corporation, first product was an electric rice cooker, only sold 100 cookers (because it burned rice rather than cooking). Today, Sony is generating US$66 billion in revenue and ranked as the world’s 6th largest electronic and electrical company.

History's Most (In)Famous Software Failures

2007-11-26T11:59:00.000+05:30

1. July 28, 1962 - Mariner I space probe

A bug in the flight software for the Mariner 1 causes the rocket to divert from its intended path on launch. Mission control destroys the rocket over the Atlantic Ocean. The investigation into the accident discovers that a formula written on paper in pencil was improperly transcribed into computer code, causing the computer to miscalculate the rocket's trajectory.

2. 1982 - Soviet gas pipeline.
Operatives working for the Central Intelligence Agency allegedly (.pdf) plant a bug in a Canadian computer system purchased to control the trans-Siberian gas pipeline. The Soviets had obtained the system as part of a wide-ranging effort to covertly purchase or steal sensitive U.S. technology. The CIA reportedly found out about the program and decided to make it backfire with equipment that would pass Soviet inspection and then fail once in operation. The resulting event is reportedly the largest non-nuclear explosion in the planet's history.

3. Therac-25 (1985-1987)
Six people were overexposed during radiation treatments for cancer by Canada's Therac-25 radiation therapy machine. Three of these patients were believed to have died from the overdoses. The root cause was a lack of quality assurance, which lead to an over-complex, inadequately tested, under-documented system developed, and subsequently to the failure to take adequate corrective action. (Pooley & Stevens, 1999)

4. 1988 - Buffer overflow in Berkeley Unix finger daemon
The first internet worm (the so-called Morris Worm) infects between 2,000 and 6,000 computers in less than a day by taking advantage of a buffer overflow. The specific code is a function in the standard input/output library routine called gets() designed to get a line of text over the network. Unfortunately, gets() has no provision to limit its input, and an overly large input allows the worm to take over any machine to which it can connect.
Programmers respond by attempting to stamp out the gets() function in working code, but they refuse to remove it from the C programming language's standard input/output library, where it remains to this day.

5. 1988-1996 - Kerberos Random Number Generator
The authors of the Kerberos security system neglect to properly "seed" the program's random number generator with a truly random seed. As a result, for eight years it is possible to trivially break into any computer that relies on Kerberos for authentication. It is unknown if this bug was ever actually exploited.

6. January 15, 1990 - AT&T Network Outage
A bug in a new release of the software that controls AT&T's #4ESS long distance switches causes these mammoth computers to crash when they receive a specific message from one of their neighboring machines -- a message that the neighbors send out when they recover from a crash.
One day a switch in New York crashes and reboots, causing its neighboring switches to crash, then their neighbors' neighbors, and so on. Soon, 114 switches are crashing and rebooting every six seconds, leaving an estimated 60 thousand people without long distance service for nine hours. The fix: engineers load the previous software release.

7. 1993 - Intel Pentium floating point divide
A silicon error causes Intel's highly promoted Pentium chip to make mistakes when dividing floating-point numbers that occur within a specific range. For example, dividing 4195835.0/3145727.0 yields 1.33374 instead of 1.33382, an error of 0.006 percent. Although the bug affects few users, it becomes a public relations nightmare. With an estimated 3 million to 5 million defective chips in circulation, at first Intel only offers to replace Pentium chips for consumers who can prove that they need high accuracy; eventually the company relents and agrees to replace the chips for anyone who complains. The bug ultimately costs Intel $475 million.

8. London Ambulance System (1992)
A succession of software engineering failures, especially in project management, caused 2 failures of London's (England) Ambulance dispatch system. The repair cost was estimated at £9m, but it is believed that people died who would not have died if ambulances had reached them as promptly as they would have done without the failures.

9. Denver baggage handling system
The Denver airport baggage handling system was so complex (involving 300 computers) that the development overrun prevented the airport from opening on time. Fixing the incredibly buggy system required an additional 50% of the original budget - nearly $200m.

10. Taurus (1993)
Taurus, the planned automated transaction settlement system for the London Stock Exchange was canceled after 5 years of failed development. Losses are estimated at £75m for the project and £450m to customers. (Pooley & Stevens, 1999)

11. 1995/1996 -- The Ping of Death
A lack of sanity checks and error handling in the IP fragmentation reassembly code makes it possible to crash a wide variety of operating systems by sending a malformed "ping" packet from anywhere on the internet. Most obviously affected are computers running Windows, which lock up and display the so-called "blue screen of death" when they receive these packets. But the attack also affects many Macintosh and Unix systems as well.

12. Ariane 5 (1996)
The Ariane 5 rocket exploded on its maiden flight in June [4], 1996 because the navigation package was inherited from the Ariane 4 without proper testing.

The new rocket flew faster, resulting in larger values of some variables in the navigation software. Shortly after launch, an attempt to convert a 64-bit floating-point number into a 16-bit integer generated an overflow. The error was caught, but the code that caught it elected to shut down the subsystem. The rocket veered off course and exploded. It was unfortunate that the code that failed generated inertial reference information useful only before lift-off; had it been turned off at the moment of launch, there would have been no trouble. (Kernighan, 1999)

13. E-mail buffer overflow (1998)
Several E-mail systems suffer from a "buffer overflow error", when extremely long e-mail addresses are received. The internal buffers receiving the addresses do not check for length and allow their buffers to overflow causing the applications to crash. Hostile hackers use this fault to trick the computer into running a malicious program in its place.

14. USS Yorktown (1998)
A crew member of the guided-missile cruiser USS Yorktown mistakenly entered a zero for a data value, which resulted in a division by zero). The error cascaded and eventually shut down the ship's propulsion system. The ship was dead in the water for several hours because a program didn't check for valid input. (reported in Scientific American, November 1998)

15. Mars Climate Orbiter (September 23rd, 1999)

The 125 million dollar Mars Climate Orbiter is assumed lost by officials at NASA. The failure responsible for loss of the orbiter is attributed to a failure of NASA’s system engineer process. The process did not specify the system of measurement to be used on the project. As a result, one of the development teams used Imperial measurement while the other used the metric system of measurement. When parameters from one module were passed to another during orbit navigation correct, no conversion was performed, resulting in the loss of the craft. http://mars.jpl.nasa.gov/msp98/orbiter/

16. November 2000 - National Cancer Institute, Panama City
In a series of accidents, therapy planning software created by Multidata Systems International, a U.S. firm, miscalculates the proper dosage of radiation for patients undergoing radiation therapy.
Multidata's software allows a radiation therapist to draw on a computer screen the placement of metal shields called "blocks" designed to protect healthy tissue from the radiation. But the software will only allow technicians to use four shielding blocks, and the Panamanian doctors wish to use five.
The doctors discover that they can trick the software by drawing all five blocks as a single large block with a hole in the middle. What the doctors don't realize is that the Multidata software gives different answers in this configuration depending on how the hole is drawn: draw it in one direction and the correct dose is calculated, draw in another direction and the software recommends twice the necessary exposure.
At least eight patients die, while another 20 receive overdoses likely to cause significant health problems. The physicians, who were legally required to double-check the computer's calculations by hand, are indicted for murder.

Software Testing Types

2007-11-22T15:32:00.000+05:30

These are some of the common testing types:

1. Acceptance testing - Normally this type of testing is done to verify if system meets the customer specified requirements. User or customer do this testing to determine whether to accept application.

2. Alpha testing - In house virtual user environment can be created for this type of testing. Testing is done at the end of development. Still minor design changes may be made as a result of such testing.

3. Beta testing - Testing typically done by end-users or others. Final testing before releasing application for commercial purpose.

4. Black box testing - Internal system design is not considered in this type of testing. Tests are based on requirements and functionality.

5. Comparison testing - Comparison of product strengths and weaknesses with previous versions or other similar products.

6. Compatibility testing - Testing how well software performs in a particular hardware/software/operating system/network environment and different combination s of above.

7. End-to-end testing - Similar to system testing, involves testing of a complete application environment in a situation that mimics real-world use, such as interacting with a database, using network communications, or interacting with other hardware, applications, or systems if appropriate.

8. Functional testing - This type of testing ignores the internal parts and focus on the output is as per requirement or not. Black-box type testing geared to functional requirements of an application.

9. Incremental integration testing - Bottom up approach for testing i.e continuous testing of an application as new functionality is added; Application functionality and modules should be independent enough to test separately. Done by programmers or by testers.

10. Install/uninstall testing - Tested for full, partial, or upgrade install/uninstall processes on different operating systems under different hardware, software environment.

11. Integration testing - Testing of integrated modules to verify combined functionality after integration. Modules are typically code modules, individual applications, client and server applications on a network, etc. This type of testing is especially relevant to client/server and distributed systems.

12. Load testing - Its a performance testing to check system behavior under load. Testing an application under heavy loads, such as testing of a web site under a range of loads to determine at what point the system’s response time degrades or fails.

13. Performance testing - Term often used interchangeably with ’stress’ and ‘load’ testing. To check whether system meets performance requirements. Used different performance and load tools to do this.

14. Recovery testing - Testing how well a system recovers from crashes, hardware failures, or other catastrophic problems.

15. Regression testing - Testing the application as a whole for the modification in any module or functionality. Difficult to cover all the system in regression testing so typically automation tools are used for these testing types.

16. Sanity testing - Testing to determine if a new software version is performing well enough to accept it for a major testing effort. If application is crashing for initial use then system is not stable enough for further testing and build or application is assigned to fix.

17. Security testing - Can system be penetrated by any hacking way. Testing how well the system protects against unauthorized internal or external access. Checked if system, database is safe from external attacks.

18. Stress testing - System is stressed beyond its specifications to check how and when it fails. Performed under heavy load like putting large number beyond storage capacity, complex database queries, continuous input to system or database load.

19. System testing - Entire system is tested as per the requirements. Black-box type testing that is based on overall requirements specifications, covers all combined parts of a system.

20. Unit testing - Testing of individual software components or modules. Typically done by the programmer and not by testers, as it requires detailed knowledge of the internal program design and code. may require developing test driver modules or test harnesses.

21. Usability testing - User-friendliness check. Application flow is tested, Can new user understand the application easily, Proper help documented whenever user stuck at any point. Basically system navigation is checked in this testing.

22. White box testing - This testing is based on knowledge of the internal logic of an application’s code. Also known as Glass box Testing. Internal software and code working should be known for this type of testing. Tests are based on coverage of code statements, branches, paths, conditions.

The correct SDLC

2007-11-01T06:54:00.000+05:30

Software Development Life Cycle
1. Programmer produces code he believes is bug-free.
2. Product is tested. 20 bugs are found.
3. Programmer fixes 10 of the bugs and explains to the testing department that the
other 10 aren't really bugs.
4. Testing department finds that five of the fixes didn't work and discovers 15 new
bugs.
5. Repeat three times steps 3 and 4.
6. Due to marketing pressure and an extremely premature product announcement based
on overly-optimistic programming schedule, the product is released.
7. Users find 137 new bugs.
8. Original programmer, having cashed his royalty check, is nowhere to be found.
9. Newly-assembled programming team fixes almost all of the 137 bugs, but introduce
456 new ones.
10. Original programmer sends underpaid testing department a postcard from Fiji.
Entire testing department quits.
11. Company is bought in a hostile takeover by competitor using profits from their
latest release, which had 783 bugs.
12. New CEO is brought in by board of directors. He hires a programmer to redo
program from scratch.
13. New Programmer produces code he believes is bug-free.

Software Testing Jokes

2007-11-01T06:40:00.000+05:30

1) Two software testers at a dinner:-)

Two software testers went into a diner and ordered two drinks. Then they produced sandwiches from their briefcases and started to eat. The owner became quite concerned and marched over and told them, "You can't eat your own sandwiches in here!" The testers looked at each other, shrugged their shoulders and then exchanged sandwiches.

2) Measuring flag pole:-)

A group of managers were given the assignment to measure the height of a flagpole. So they go out to the flagpole with ladders and tape measures, and they're falling off the ladders, dropping the tape measures - the whole thing is just a mess. A tester comes along and sees what they're trying to do, walks over, pulls the flagpole out of the ground, lays it flat, measures it from end to end, gives the measurement to one of the managers and walks away. After the tester has gone, one manager turns to another and laughs. "Isn't that just like a tester, we're looking for the height and he gives us the length."

Dead Links Checker

2007-10-31T13:30:00.000+05:30

Below are my favorite URLs for sniffing out dead links in webpages:

1) http://www.dead-links.com/
2) http://www.smackdebt.com/seo/free-link-checker/

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