There are specific testing-related measures against which a tester can be evaluated. For example, all testers must be detail oriented and possess analytical skills, independent of whether they are technical testers, subject-matter experts, security testers, performance tester or usability testers. A software tester should requires at least complete knowledge of software testing  tools, logical and analytical ability along with quality approach to the software testing processes. Tester should focus and improve all his skills on” understanding customer requirements and writing appropriately”, “comprehensive test cases”, “performing and executing test” and “preparing a detailed self-explanatory test report”. Testing complex business requirements will require extraordinary level of experience and knowledge to keep the budget and time constraint for performing testing without compromising with the coverage or quality.

Some testing tasks may require specific skills within the technical or subject-matter area. For example, a tester who is experienced, or at least familiar, with security testing techniques should be responsible for security testing. A tester who is not skilled in this area can only guess what makes an application secured. Similarly, in the case of localization testing, an English speaker can only guess regarding the correct translation of an application into another language. A more effective localization tester would be a native speaker of the language into which the application has been translated.

Individual skill and knowledge contributes in business failure and success. The individual skill and knowledge contributes in business failure and success. if a resource enhances his skill sets, albeit in a phased manner, he will be far more valuable to his company and the company will be a more potent force in the market. Not only this is relevant in a recession, but also in a booming economy where companies compete to attract and retain the best business. “Forced Multi-Skilling” by companies might lead to the employee losing interest in job and finally walking out. This apart, employees’ work-life balance may be negatively impacted due to time constraints. “Multi-skilling needs to be nurtured and ‘sold’ to employees. It should not be thrust randomly

Performance Analysis is the monitoring of existing system resource usage to respond to unusual in resource usage or failures. The scope of the analysis is typically a server or individual component at a time, and is a short term, technically oriented activity. This function supports the Capacity Planning and Service Level Management functions, as well as Performance Engineering during development. Capacity Planning is the projection of future resource requirements based on historical data and growth in system projections. Capacity plans must be concerned with responding to resource needs within budgetary constraints, Resource demand (e.g., year end, or quarterly), Peak periods (e.g., tax time), and depreciation on equipment.

Performance Analysis is the identification/observation of programs behavior using information gathered according to the program runs (i.e. it is a form of dynamic analysis).The goal of Performance Analysis is to determine which parts of a program are fully optimized for speed, memory and CPU utilization. Dynamic Code Analysis is the Analysis of computer software that is performed during execution of programs that are built from that software on real or virtual processes. Analysis that is performed during with-out executing programs is known as static analysis, as opposed to dynamic code analysis.

Data collection is the process by which data about application performance are obtained from an executing program. Data are normally collected in a file, either during or after execution, although in some situations it may be presented to the user in real time. Data transformation involves the processes for selecting, targeting, converting, and mapping data so that it may be used by multiple systems. Data Visualization is the graphical presentation of information, with the goal of providing the viewer with a qualitative understanding of the information contents.

Capacity planning:

Capacity planning is the science and art of estimating the space, computer, software, hardware and network infrastructure resources that will be needed over some future period of time. Ensure that sufficient computing resources are available so that workload can meet their service levels. Provide management with an understanding of where computing resources are being used. As with any good planning, Price results are not that much critical, but the process and the discipline giving an understanding of the problem. When conducting a capacity plan, the organization must understand the characteristics of its production systems, their future requirements and their priorities. More importantly, Capacity planning helps ensure that seasonal operational peaks which are generally critical to the business can met by the resources.

Test Driven Development (TDD) is an automation testing approach to develop high quality product with minimum or negligible quality issues.  Having this approach implemented strategically results in reliability on the product until its retirement.   Initial investment on TDD approach will reap the great results in product maintenance phase and helps to obtain return on investments (ROI) seamlessly.

You might want to ask question, how TDD is different from traditional development methodology?

Unlike traditional or standard development process, in TDD approach, the testing will start at the early stages of the product development and validates the completed activities for the desired output.  Most importantly focus on quality starts at the beginning of the product development rather than at completion.  This gives opportunity to learn lessons quickly and apply best practices in subsequent implementations with the increased productivity.

What are the real challenges with the TDD approach?

• Define work breakdown structure and work breakdown dictionary;
• Define sequence of activities and identify critical path;
• Prepare realistic schedules;
• Prepare cost estimates;
• Getting budget approval.

You might be surprised with the above non-technical list.  Since developer needs to write automation test cases for the completed activities immediately, project manager should plan these efforts meticulously without disturbing the critical path.   Project manager might want to use schedule compression techniques by resource crashing or fast tracking to meet customer deadlines.  In either case, additional budget is required to implement the TDD approach.

Really there is no technical challenge to take up the TDD approach, because several open source tools honor this approach and provides technical support through online forums and blogs.   If you think about TDD, it appears like a unit testing approach, but it’s not!    Using unit testing tool, you can test a specific part of the code segment.  But in TDD, you can perform integration testing and business analysts can verify those test cases at the same time.

FIT and FitNesse are two open source tools allow us to apply TDD principles efficiently and improve communication with customers and business analysts. Framework for Integrated Testing (FIT) is an acceptance testing framework.  FIT improves the collaboration and allow customers and business analysts to write and verify tests.

Writing FIT tests require general programming knowledge. FitNesse is a web-based server, allowing easy collaboration. Business analysts and other non–technical people do not have to set up any software in order to use FitNesse. Any browser will do just fine.

You can find more information about Fitneese at http://fitnesse.org/.

According to a survey of web application users, 86% websites are inadequate of non functional testing and also there are bugs resides in the application forever, this is been a major concern, particularly in the area of “Security and assessing peak load Performance Capacity”. The testing teams today have a much bigger challenge of anticipating the varied ways in which customers can use the systems and ensuring that the systems do behave properly when approached from a variety of ways.

There is well known interesting theory called “Rule of 8” – It specified that if the load-time of a web page exceeds eight seconds, users are unlikely to wait, or “stick around”, for its completion. So “Performance is a “must have” feature”, No matter how rich your application is functionally, if it fails to meet the performance expectations of your customer then the product will be branded a failure. Fast enough is not really enough; need to attach the security string to pull the customer confidence. Present emerging market is completely revolving with internet – Anywhere you can post your data and access your data. “How safe is the data as it navigates a complex internal and external network?” Turning all these performance and security risks into actionable results and mitigate, Testing is not solution and its not about just discovering defects, it is about de-risking delivery. It is about assessing risks as early possible in the SDLC to enable us to take appropriate actions to delivery quality on time.

Security assessment and Performance monitoring must take place throughout the entire project life cycle and need to have a new set of test process and methodology applied with right set of tools and correct blend of technical and business logic will help us to move to the next level. Web 2.0 brings in myriad ways of converting prospects to customers and providing a hassle free customer experience. SOA testing has really come up as another big thing in the world of Web 2.0. SOA will only makes sense if its tested in right way using right tools and right methodology. Today there are SOA test tools that can test the underlying interoperable components of an application without going through the front-end – not just from a functionality standpoint, but also from a Security and Performance standpoints.