Blind Bard

A day @ Bhima Bhoi Blind School

Thoughts, , , , Sudeep Pattnaik
Blind Bard
Blind Singer

It was the evening of 1st July 2011,when the daily official routine was heading towards an end,I just thought of checking my GPS hoping for a message from Soumyanwesh regarding salary. I was even happier to discover the message count showing “1”. But it was not a message from Soumyanwesh,it was not a message from the Finance Department nor a message related to salary.It was a message from a Mindfirean named Asish Tripathy and was related to the “Corporate Social Responsibility” what we term as CSR in short.

Continue reading A day @ Bhima Bhoi Blind School →

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The Customer is Always Right?

Thoughts, , , , Chinmoy Panda

Is the customer always right? And if he is not, what do you do? One of our Software Development Leads faced this dilemma in almost an “Arjuna moment”..

(In the epic Mahabharata, as Arjuna stood ready for battle facing an army composed of his own family members, he wondered whether it was right for him to fight the battle at all. This dilemma froze his legendary skill and warrior will into non-action)
Situation Detail
(you can skip this section which has some technical details)

The client wants to make a mobile-compatible version of their web site. The web site is an online e-commerce site, developed using Adobe ColdFusion server technology.

Client priority is to get the mobile site out as quickly as possible. The thought process is to reuse as much as possible ColdFusion code developed for main web site, while generating a screen-compatible and down-sized mobile “face”. The strategy he suggested was to use front-end CSS scripts that would be added for mobile access only. Pages would be processed and downloaded exactly as the main web site. Then the additional CSS would also be downloaded on detection that page was being accessed from mobile. This CSS would do front-end browser-level manipulation (such as menu manipulation, image size and so on) to give an entirely different look and feel to pages, suited more to mobile screens.

While client wanted to follow this strategy, our technical and professional opinion said otherwise. Our Lead had tried to explain to client that this was a sub-optimal approach in the long run. Entire pages being downloaded and then “mobilized” using front-end CSS was essentially a trick with high bandwidth impact and soaring expense on data plans.

The real solution would be to restructure the application to move logic to sets of ColdFusion Components (CFCs) and use those from ColdFusion. ColdFusion code would be separate for mobile and normal web pages, and site redefinition should be done to evolve mobile-relevant functionality and pages. In short, a proper path to a mobile site.

Summary
You have a situation where client wants to follow technical path X, which has disadvantages. And there is a longer path Y, which is the correct technical approach. What do we do? Should we do X just because client says so? Or should we do Y because that is the “right” way to do it?

Opinion
Clients make choices based on a wider set of thoughts and priorities, some of which we may not be aware of. There may be a trade show the client wants to attend, or venture capitalist they need to meet, and they need a “quick and dirty” mobile-enabled site rather than a true solution. Maybe the client has thoughts on how a split code-base may cause maintenance and consistency issues, in spite of code restructuring for logic centralization. Maybe the client is not savvy enough to understand the technical aspects of both solutions. Maybe the client is simply not smart enough. Many possibilities exist.

Although we work in 1’s and 0’s, the real world is not binary. There is no black and no white, it is a range of greys. There is no right and no wrong, it is a range of possibilities.

A client’s choice is not necessarily wrong just because it is not the technically superior solution – there may be aspects we are not aware of. When you understand those aspects, perhaps you would make the same choice in his shoes. Perhaps the same choice is correct in his context, even if it is wrong in isolation or in our opinion. And finally, the client may make a wrong choice – after all every human (including us) is born with the right to make wrong choices.

Confusion
As self-respecting professionals, following something blindly is, to say the least, a criminal sin. Client or no client, we need to know and express our opinion based on facts and expertise. We cannot accept day as night just because client says so. Doesn’t matter if he is the client, if something is wrong it is wrong. We are professionals, not clerical staff to follow orders blindly.

However, at the same time, we do have to accept client choices. This is a simple and fundamental truth. We do not work in isolation. We work for clients. Clients pay for work with their hard-earned money, and if a client makes a choice we do not agree with or understand, we still have to follow the client decision.

So what does this mean, how can you do both?? How can we preserve our professional integrity and yet accept something that goes against our professional opinion?

The answer is simple.

Clarity
Before choices are made, our duty is to advise the client, to update him with our professional advice and informed opinion on negatives and positives of available options.

Once a choice is made, our duty is to do. Our duty is to align and focus and do as per client choice, even when we professionally disagree with that choice.

Who gets to make the choice? The client.

Why? Not because he is paying and is the client – that is an immature and misdirected thought process. But simply because the work is being done for him, and only he knows the entirety and facets of the situation and conflicting priorities, and can make the choice that is right or wrong for what he is trying to achieve.

Bottomline
The customer is NOT always right, and it is our job to express that opinion to customers openly instead of blindly accepting whatever customers say. But it is also our job to respect customer decisions once they are made.
What do you think?

(This incident and thoughts reflect some opinions, beliefs and a way of looking at things. I hope sharing these will lead to debate and discussion)

 

Author – Chinmoy Panda

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The future without “Quantum Bug”

Uncategorized, Hem Dutt

Today, even the massive amount of processing power generated by computer manufacturers has not yet been able to quench our thirst for speed and computing capacity.

Although progress in VLSI technology has reduced the size of chips immensely and thus contributed a lot in making more powerful and high speed processors, conventional technologies have their limitations. Conventional processors use transistors for computing, which cannot be made smaller after an extent because then Quantum effects will come into play leading to erroneous results.

In 1982, Nobel prize winner physicist Richard Feynman coined the idea of  a “Quantum computer“, which could use the effect of quantum mechanics to its advantage. Unlike conventional computers in which a bit can only be in 0 or 1 state, a quantum bit(qubit) can exist in both states simultaneously.

Continue reading The future without “Quantum Bug” →

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DoEvents – The good, the bad & the ugly.

Software, , HARSH WARDHAN
.NET“Applicaton.DoEvents() processes all Windows messages currently in the message queue” is how the msdn defines it. It has been a developer’s tool to organize the response of forms in .net. But it has got its own limitations attached with it.Its own good, bad and ugly attributes. So, let’s see the different faces of it.
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Google’s Tryst With History,Facebook’s Fate

Internet, , , , , Danish Ahmed

As most of you would be aware Facebook’s promised awesomeness turned out to be a one-to-one video chatting feature. Now is that really innovative ? It is something  that has already been introduced since almost a decade by companies now vanished. Of the barely surviving companies, ICQ introduced video chatting in 2007. In fact, for some inexplicable reason, I always feel ICQ was precursor of Twitter in a way. Going back to video-chatting, the much-touted Google+ Hangout feature isn’t the first group video chat either. I remember at least one service, ICU , which had similar features, then Yahoo Messenger + Public Chat + Group are so similar to the phenomenon that is now termed as Social Networking.

Continue reading Google’s Tryst With History,Facebook’s Fate →

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Google +1: Key To Social Web Or Antidote To Panda

Web 2.0, , , , , , , Danish Ahmed

 

From the looks of it, Google‘s latest foray into social web, in the form of +1 button might end up with same fate as  its predecessors. In case you are unaware,it is the button at the top with +1 caption which according to Google official blog is digital shorthand for “this is pretty cool”  is the search engine giant’s reply to Facebook “Like”. The fact that Google replies with a sentence like “this is pretty cool” to Facebook’s four letter “Like”  may give us a rare insight on the mindset prevalent within Google’s team.  The 2 character button itself  may conform to the Web 2.0 trends,the descriptive sentence makes one wonder if  they have embraced Web 2.0 with all their hearts or are just going along with the tide. This would also explain why Google continues to fail in getting a foothold in Social Web.  Anyway, I am getting ahead of myself  😛 the pertinent to ask at this point of time is whether +1 is really going to be successful or not.

Continue reading Google +1: Key To Social Web Or Antidote To Panda →

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Dot Com Bubble

Dot Com Bubble 2.0? An Analysis

Internet, Thoughts, , , , , ,

Dot CoDot Com Bubblem Bubble 2.0?

“Two days back, when I opened Twitter to check the topics that are trending, a piece of news struck me: “Deal of the day site Groupon files for IPO”. When I continued to read, I gathered the following facts: The two and a half years old e-commerce company is valued at 20 Billion Dollars. Though the revenues saw a surge, the company spends more and more to get it, the company has never seen any profits ever, its balance sheet shows a net loss of 400 Million Dollars last year and the first quarter results this year too showed a loss.”

Does anything look unusual here? I guess it does, looks like history is going to be repeated.

Continue reading Dot Com Bubble 2.0? An Analysis →

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Thoughts on mobile technologies and tele-repair

Uncategorized, , , , , Chinmoy Panda

Innovation doesn’t always mean creating new things. Using existing things in new ways is also innovation. Innovation does not have to be big-bang, it can also be soft and silent steps which make an impact. Innovative application of current, boring and existing technologies could itself make the most trivial jobs better! A small example follows.

I noticed a service-person last week working on the water filter in our office. He was speaking on the phone and explaining something animatedly to the person at other end of the connection. The water filter was open showing its innards and he was fiddling with wires of many colors. Some eavesdropping revealed that he was explaining something about the wires – presumably to a person with more expertise – their layout, condition, color and so on. There was some heat and argument as our man was getting impatient with the expert – because the expert couldn’t get the exact status as he was explaining it.

He was on a mobile, they spent 15 minutes trying to get each other to understand the physical status as it was and should be – using mobile phones. Tele-repair? Yes. Could this be improved? You bet – a picture is worth a thousand words 😉

The visual aspect was the biggest missing piece. Without getting into 3G and live-video-enabled phones, a still-photo mechanism using the ancient MMS would also do the job while being economically viable. The guy at the other end just needed to see the damn pieces once!

Ideally, I would visualize a flex-cord (one of those twisty things that retain shape after you twist them) connected camera mounted on the mobile phone, which you can twist and point at areas of interest. With a speakerphone and the camera streaming visuals of the situation, field service personnel can “show and tell”, and effectively carry out instructions relayed by the expert at the other end.

This wouldn’t be big to do nor would it cost much. However, what is also important is the linkage among these. You may have the tools individually but not the mind unless someone has told you. You may have a mobile, a camera in it, MMS capability in it or GPRS/3G email capability in it, even dedicated software and flex-cord dedicated camera hardware – but can every service mechanic put these pieces together?

So what we are looking at for field service using mobile phones as enablers is a combination of equipment (hardware/software) and training to achieve the end result. And bang! – you have the ability to distribute deep knowledge and abilities of a limited number of experts over a large number of field service personnel and customer incidents – the ability to scale up your service abilities without corresponding rise in expert manpower. And it is not restricted to something as mundane as economics – having experts help on more repair incidents thereby reducing cost-per-repair. It is simply that you can create only so many experts in so much time.

This ability to distribute expertise over distance and scale up efficiency is the premise of tele-medicine, and can be equally well translated to tele-repair. Tele-repair of high-end and delicate equipment would still justify bringing in the experts, but for equipment like household goods or white goods repair, sundry electronics repair such as on TV sets, on-site repair can be tremendously enhanced using new technology. Happier people, faster and more accurate repair activities, happier customers – it is happiness all around.

Much of above is possible with existing technologies today. Making a customized system might make it more usable and beneficial, but the core pieces already exist!

How much would it cost to set up a mobile phone with dedicated flex-cord camera and a software application that integrates streaming videos into an “environment” that is easy to use? Perhaps the next thing to chew on for our embedded and mobile-computing guys 😉

Author – Chinmoy Panda

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I AM A BUG

Software Quality, , , Shailly Tiwari

BugHello folks ! Today I am going to tell you a story of three friends …. Yes you guessed it right, one of them is me . All three of us were a gang of notorious beings – blocking a code here, hiding a window there, disabling a button for the poor user or crashing the application a few times ! But we were living happily in our world until came in the big monster ‘The Tester’. Oh what a sweet fellow to begin with. He entered out territory with a gentle smile, its only later did we realize that he captured every corner of our house. He specially looked for the crevices and deep holes. God ! …. how difficult our survival became. Every morning when he came, we tried to hide ourselves and pray for the evening to come so that he would leave for the day. But how long could we, the tiny creatures survive this big bad monster and one day the inevitable happened and our lives changed forever.

Continue reading I AM A BUG →

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Attending Asia’s Biggest Software Testing Conference

Software Quality, , ,

Software Testing ConferenceThis was really a nice opportunity for me to attend a ‘International Software Testing Conference’. As a ‘Software Tester’ this is really great forum to meet to all great software testing experts and muster knowledge and expertise from them. This is really a huge canvas to expand our network for knowledge concerns. We came across this international event, & finally two of us were selected for the conference.

We zipped our baggage and flew to Bangalore on 11th May 2011 to attend the conference on 12th and 13th May 2011. On 12th May 2011 we had reached the conference spot with vibrant curiosity which was at ‘Hotel The Chancery Pavilion, Residency Road, Bangalore, INDIA’ for the quest of knowledge.

Attending The Software Testing Conference

We completed the registration process successfully and entered the conference hall. At 9 AM the conference just started with a welcome note. After the welcome note we were given with some highlights of the events for that day.

So this way the conference just started with a huge a surprise. On 12th first event was a KEYNOTE by Rob Lambert, Software Testing Club, UK. “Narrowing the Gap between Requirements and Testing: Feedback Loops, Agile and Communication”. Rob was explaining about the Agile process, and gap between requirements and testing. In normal testing life cycle we follow certain standards about writing testcase and executing the testcases in real time. Which takes a lot of time. But Rob explained that we don’t need
to bother about writing all the test cases where we can make a checklist and only need to check them while testing in agile process. Well some debates were there on this concept but at last we were able to understand to the importance of the process which was explained by Rob. I spoke to Rob about this concept and got some concepts cleared about agile software testing and methodology in real time testing.

The second event was “Define and Build Enterprise Automation Framework”, Speaker(s): JayaKrishnan Sashikumar & Preeth K P, Infosys. In this event they explained their own enterprise automation framework. Which was a requirement in of their projects. They were just explaining the architecture and model of the framework.

“Delivering Business Value through Test Automation” Speaker: Maruthi Sivakumar, AppLabs was the third event. Where MR Marithi Sivakumar was explaining about benefits of Test Automation and how test automation can help manual testers to do their job in better way so that the repetitive task can be done within less human interaction.

After three consecutive events we had a small energy break. And after the energy break the fourth eventjust started.

The fourth event was a KEYNOTE by Julian Harty, eBay, UK. “Pushing the boundaries of User Experience Test Automation”. Julian was explaining about the user experience test automation. Now a days usability is the most important factor for all kinds of application. So Julian was explaining about the ‘User Experience’, and ‘Usability’. How to automate Usability testing while observing the user experience. I had a long discussion with Julian about the ‘User Experience’, ‘Usability’, and ‘User Interface’. In the end I got my doubts clarified by Julian.
The fifth event was “Test Automation Rule Radial Hybrid Framework” Speaker: Velu S. P, IBM. Mr Velu has created his own Framework for test automation for his current project testing. After this there was a lunch break.

The sixth event was “Accelerating Regression Test Automation using Ready-to-use Test Automation Framework” Speaker(s): Chandrashekar S, Pallavi Jain & Vidyadhara C.A, Infosys. In this event the speaker has illustrated how test automation helps in regression testing. The seventh event was “Robust Automation Framework using Database for Test Data” Speaker(s): Sriharirao
Kuchi and Merral Crasto, IBM. In this event the speakers has shown how to use database for data driven testing. Instead of using a flat file or excel sheet for data driven testing they have just explained how database can be used for this purpose and how it is helps as compared to the other file formats which is very very dynamic in nature.

After this we had a small tea break. And after the break we had a Plenary Session by Pradeep Soundararajan, Moolya Software Testing, India “Achieving Personal Excellence as a Tester”. This session was really interesting where Pradeep was explaining what should be the true nature of a software tester. How a ‘Software Tester’ should be in ideal form. How to gain knowledge in Software Testing, and how to communicate with other testers and software testing experts all around the globe. Pradeep has suggested the ideal approach for testing and test management.

“Data Driven Automation Testing of Web Application using Selenium” Speaker(s): Navaraj Javvaji, Anand Sathiyaseelan, UmaMaheswari Selvan, AVA Corp was the eighth session. In this session the speakers were explaining about the selenium tool and how to use it for data driven testing.

So in this way 12th May is over and in the end I had a talk with experts for some real time problems in my early projects.

On 13th May 2011 we have reached the conference spot in the same way. After the registration the conference just started with a welcome note. After the welcome note we are given with some highlights for the events for that day.

The first session was about KEYNOTE by Sai Chintala, Applabs, India “Effective Performance Testing”. In this session Mr Sai from Applabs has explained about the basic concepts of Performance testing and how to do effective performance testing.

“Basics on Security Threats, Challenges and Countermeasures” Speaker: Narsimha Reddy, Infosys was the second session where Mr Narsimha from Infosys has explained core concepts of security threats for any application. Where in this session the discussion was for SQL injection, XSS attacks, Script inject and so on.

In the third session we had “Perform Fuzz on Application’s Web Interface”, Speaker: Aniket Kulkarni, Symantec. Mr Aniket Kulkarni works in Symantec as application security researcher. He was explaining about fuzzing techniques to test any application for security and load testing. How to fuzz any application and crash/break the application and check the logs for the crash. So in this way one can encounter about the security holes in the application. Also Aniket has explained how to capture packets transmitted
and analyze the packets for security threats. Overall this session was really nice and helpful.

“Benefits of Automated Security and Performance Testing of SAP HCM Applications” Speaker(s): Abhinav Gupta, Chandrashekar.S, Shahbaz Ali, Sharita Priya Castelino, Infosys was the fourth session. This session was all about SAP based application.

KEYNOTE by Mahesh Saptarshi, Symantec India, “Software Security – Technical Challenges”. This session was all about software security and negative testing. How can negative testing can lead to software security threat and business risk factors.

The sixth session was on “Performance Testing: A Catalyst for Swift IT” Speaker(s): Ashish Tyagi, Siddharth Joshi, Vivek Bal, Capgemini. Mr Siddharth explained about the performance testing and its implementation in web based application.

“Issues during Performance Testing and Solutions using various Tools and Tricks” Speaker: Amitabh Kaushal, IBM was the seventh session. In this session Mr Amitabh was explaining about the various tools and their usage. Some commercial and open source performance and load testing tools.

All sessions were really informative and useful. However I came across these things which I have learned and which will really add value to my current and future testing work:

• Agile methodology
• Automation testing and creating own automation framework
• User experience Test Automation
• Regression testing using automation testing
• Data driven testing using database, excel sheet, and flat file
• Data Driven Automation Testing of Web Application using Selenium
• Effective performance testing
• Application security threats, challenges, and countermeasures
• Fuzzing technique for web based interface
• Software security testing
• Various tools and tricks for performance testing of application

Likewise attending the sessions I got the prospect to meet, share, and interact with different technology experts from different other companies. We shared our views and work procedure on software testing and methodology we follow. This conference helped me in building my network in the world of Software testing,which will help me getting support and sharing opinions with these experts on different problems from time to time that we face in our day to day work life.

This conference was really a wonderful experience for me. I got to know so many new concepts, tools, techniques, and methodologies which is really going to help me in my work. In fact I have started working in the manner as we have learned from this conference. Well in this international conference I have got the exposure to real time industry experts and their views.

I feel lucky to be a part of Mindfire Solutions, not only for allowing me such a huge opportunity to explore knowledge. This is the beginning of opportunities and there is a long way to go with Mindfire on the path of success. This is really a grand experience for learning matter.

Mindfire is our company which always promotes, enables, and supports in all the initiatives for the career growth of all its employees. I feel good when I get these kind of opportunities. Well this makes me feel special in Mindire. I am also looking forward for the opportunities like this in the future to sharpen my skills and expertise in the Software QA Testing and Quality Assurance.

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