Blog Framing the Isolation Tests and Test Investigation

The unusual behavior in the software and in it's associated systems is easy to identify at times. But the source which brought in that unusual behavior in software or in its associated system will not be straight to learn and isolate it. When this happens in a critical time of the release or after the critical release, imagining the uneasy conditions of stakeholders and user base using that software product, can be scary to business. No stakeholder wants to get here. Testing helps to isolate such behavior when it is supported.

Last night I joined my friends who have built a product in their start up and wanted the Release Candidate to get tested for their critical release. While I was testing along with the testers, I was asked, "there will be no problems with this release, Ravi?"  I can understand my friend's concern and I said, "problem will be there, let us keep the calm to receive them and fix it and I don't know what problem can come up apart from the context we have tested now and in the context we have tested as well.". We learned a problem and moved further to test for it before they wanted to push the patch which had fix for a problem -- because the zipping of the content was not happening when data is sent from server to client.

After the test sessions, I went along with team for food. I asked myself "why I should not work with the testing team here and tell what I tested?"  Most times, I work individually on tasks though I'm part of team. I keep updating the team what testing I'm doing and about the tests. This helps me to see how could I have done it better and have I missed any test that actually mattered in the context.

I started sharing with testers what I did while we had food.  During this talk, I thought let me write such tests that are about isolating the cause of the unusual behavior. By keeping the confidential information not coming in the blog post as much as possible to context, I will write such cases from now.  From the next post, such Testing stories will be labeled under 'Investigation' label of my blog.