Games Testers Play

re: Games Testers Play

Dave — Tue, 19 Aug 2008 21:31:16 GMT

Good stuff...

I once had a tester tell me that a Customer Name entry box threw an error when she typed 1,973 letter l's

My question was "why did you do that?" and number two: "why did you count them?", and of course I thanked her for finding the bug :)

-Dave

re: Games Testers Play

Catherine Powell — Thu, 21 Aug 2008 00:21:57 GMT

We play a game called "Watch Me Pull an Action Out of My Hat" (yes, most of us watched too much Rocky & Bullwinkle when we were younger).

You write down a lot of different actions your system can do, both user actions and other events. Then you make about 5 copies of each. Cut the whole lot up into slips, put them in a bucket, and mix.

Then pull about 10 slips at random out of the hat and do whatever it says to your system, all at once (or as near-simultaneously as your system will allow). The idea is that this will test combinations of events that we haven't considered.

For example, we are testing a storage system, one of our recent instances of this wound up with a test that included reading and writing to the system, deleting data, a node failure, adding a node, and several other things.

I should also note that despite the game name, we don't actually use a hat. It would be great if we did, though.

re: Games Testers Play

micahel — Thu, 21 Aug 2008 02:03:26 GMT

Dave: James Bach's PerlClip [http://www.satisfice.com/tools.shtml] generates counter strings of arbitrary length, which helps muchly when investigating these types of issues.

re: Games Testers Play

Shrini Kulkarni — Thu, 21 Aug 2008 02:28:35 GMT

Shoe Test .... When an application dialog is waiting for some inputs .. keep a shoe or any simlar objects and go for lunch.. Come back and see what happens.

Once I did a variation of this ... I managed to have "enter" key fixed in "pressed" position by a pen .... and left it there over night ... by morning application had crashed ..

Developer came, saw and yelled at me .. "No one ever do that ... are you crazy?

Shrini

re: Games Testers Play

Inder P Singh — Tue, 26 Aug 2008 15:41:09 GMT

A team of testers is testing a single application. They find different bugs. A team member who finds what she thinks is a spectacular (severe/ very different from others/ really impressive) bug announces it to the entire team. Other team members try to find another bug that is even more spectacular. This game accelerates the speed at which the team members work and energises them. The test team members also inspire each other to find better and more bugs in the process.

Inder P Singh