Hi All,
Hope you guys had wonderful X-Mas holidays :-).
As we all know all the Inventions are made by Asking more and more questions.
If Newton would have not asked ‘Why Apple fallen down from the Tree’ then we would have not have Gravity Theory.
If Archimedes would have not asked ‘Why waters spilled out of the Tub when he was bathing?’ then we would have not have Archimedes principle.
Likewise if testers asks questions on applications like Why or How? if he/She finds the answer that is not matching with what it supposed to be then IT IS A Discovery, So we are Scientists
As far as I consider testing the application is asking questions about the application that I am testing - is perfect way of finding software anomalies.
Each functional defect that we stopping by our testing is just saving the production fixes but if we stop any Business Gaps then it saves the whole Business Need. So before kick of the testing make sure we know the Business Needs.
You will get a Functional Defect - If you ask How things are working? then it will be already mentioned in all the functional specifications ! if some functionality is missed out in the developed code can be found.
You will get a Req/ Specification / Design / Defect If you ask why things are working ? then you will need to check the Business Requirements, if you feel something is wrong then you will encounter few anomalies that may be from all the specifications related to that particular work request.
In this post I wanted to explain how Important the Domain knowledge is required for a Testers.
Domains like Banking, Health Care, Manufacturing, Insurance etc., All these domains are closely related to us.
To modernize these functional areas
> Business peoples will write Specs to cater the business needs as Business Requirement Documents.
> Considering the Business Specifications Solution Designers will prepare Functional Specification Documents.
> We testers and developers will refer the above documents and Develop and Test the application.
How you can learn Business easily ?
If you are working in a Banking Domain, you got Loan functionality to be tested in your Client website, then please create a Loan application in real time with your bank or with some other bank’s on-line application ,
If you are working in a Health Care Domain, you got Inventory functionality to be tested then go to nearby Chemist (Medical Shop) pick some medicines from here and there and go for billing and check how the shop keeper handling your goods.
Like above two examples, what ever business that you are testing, please do imagine that YOU ARE ALSO GOING TO USE THIS PRODUCT. Would you accept a Defective product from your manufacturer, ‘No’ right then your testing will be perfect.
I hope all the readers know about Validation and Verification ?
Let me tell you what I think about it,
Validation means, we need to verify all the documents that related to the given functionality are acceptable and valid.
Verification means, by validated specifications, the Code is written and its verified by us.
In Data warehouse world, the Specification documents are needs to be validated, because even a simple mistake will create a huge problem @ the end.
For an Example,
In warehouse we keep amount columns are in Negative (Bank Owe’s to us) as well as in Positive numbers (We Owe to bank).
Business Need – All the transactions of the day to be extracted
For extracts If specification documents asks us to pull the records where Balance > 0 then you will get the customers who are owing money to the bank.
So even a Single Symbol matters a lot !!! Before we start the Verification we need to Validate first!!!
Lets Discover along with Finding defects
Cheers – Asik
Filed under: Data Warehouse Testing - Learners Guide Tagged: Business intelligence, Credit Card, Data definition language, Data warehouse, Database, Extract transform load, Insert, Systems development life-cycle, Varchar