Context of the knowledge?

Yes. All knowledge has its context. Unless you know the context, you may not understand the point.“

While reading one of the latest sensations from “Amish Tripathi”, I have encountered a couple of statements that struck me hard. Below are the highlighted extracts from his sayings and my testing implications toward those.

“Any philosophy, no matter how perfect, works only for a finite period. That is the law of nature and cannot be avoided.”

The famous people know this one long ago, but most of the testing organizations still fail to understand this .The philosophy what these testing organizations are following now is no more “PERFECT”, or not even near to perfection.  The time has come to refine the craft and the testing guru’s like “James Bach” are doing that. Wake Up; it’s time to unlearn few things and learn the new that suits the “Context”.

“There are two situations in which ‘change’ can lead to chaos. First, when people face a change by others, situations that they cannot understand.”

‘Yes, change forced by others is difficult to accept.’ But try to think and analyze the context on how relevant are the ideas you are following.

“Second, when change happens too fast, they resist it.”

Yes, agreed. But this happens only when you realize that all the industry is moving towards new ways of testing and you want to suddenly bring in the complete change. At least start learning the new philosophy in the testing craft and use it when the situation demands.

Tool : CorkScrew

In one of the test assignment it is required for me to connect to machines that are on external network outside the firewall. The firewall settings are not allowing me to do ssh to the external machines . 

Here is the solution for you , if you in this situation. Please do ask your authorities if your are allowed to connect to the machines in the manner . 

There is a tool named "CorkScrew" which you can use , this will 'tunnel SSH over an HTTP-Proxy Server'.

The detailed explanation on how to build and execute can be found in the following link. 

http://www.mtu.net/~engstrom/ssh-proxy.php

Testing by Denmark Police !!

Due to the long-weekend during Easter time I had planned to go to Amsterdam, Netherlands with my friend in his car. The route which we choose while coming back is Netherlands --> Germany --> Denmark --> Sweden . 

On the return trip when we entered from Germany to Denmark , police stopped us in Denmark border and asked our identity. The problem started when we answered that we are coming from Amsterdam !! 

For those who or not aware , "Drugs" in Amsterdam are legal . But its illegal in Denmark .

Now the mission is ready for the police officer

Mission #  To search us and see if he can find some drugs. ( If he finds something then he may get a promotion ;) .. Just kidding )

I was very keen to see how he can accomplish his mission. This is how he unfolded the machine .

He asked us to drive into a big room along with the car.I guess this room is fixed with some sensors to find if we are carrying any guns.Then asked only one person to get down from the car and started asking questions.During this time the other police officer was observing me from a distance to see if behave in a different way or try to hide something .

This triggered a new test idea in me . Say if we are testing two modules which are closely associated, while testing one module rigorous we can ask the fellow tester to look at the other module how it is behaving . 

Wow we can learn testing from cops as well :-) .

Back to mission , he started asking questions to my friend on different things so that he can get some clue .

Questions:

1. To show the passport and residence card ?
2. Since when he is staying in this country and from which country he came ?
3. To which company we working for ?
4. What is the purpose of the visit and since how long he will be staying here ?

He is trying to get more and more information to understand the situation find any clues for further investigation.

Now he asked my friend to empty all his pockets and keep the things on the table for checking. Asked him to remove the jacket and searched it completely .Then asked him to sit in a room and closed the door . 

Now its my turn to get down from the car and the whole procedure is repeated !! 

One thing of interest here is , we both are not put into the same room . We are placed in two different rooms from where we cant talk to each other. 

This is triggering a new test idea in me again , Say if you think that the two inter-related modules are tested rigorous hold on for a minute before you test the communication between these two modules.  If you find a bug in the other related module module ( I mean if he finds the drugs in the car ) , then he can investigate that bug  to see if it has any relationship with two tested modules above. 

During this time the police office searched the whole car manually . I guess he is not satisfied with that , now he wants some tool which can help him to find the bugs ( I mean drugs ). They called the police dog and put that smart dog into the car and directed it to smell all the places in the car.

Now he approached to the end of the mission and didn't find any drugs . Police officer asked us to take all our belongings and go on our way and wished us Happy Journey too :) .

But what I learnt from all this is below . He applied all these testing skills

1. His mission was very clear .
2. Unfolded the mission and clearly segregated it into smaller segments.
3. Questioning , to gain more understanding on the situation and find any clue for further investigation.
4. Carefully covered one by one aspect rather than making all at once and get confused on the coverage .
5. Manually searched almost all possible aspects .
6. Used an appropriate tools for this situation like , sensor fitted room and the 'dog' that can aid him in his   search .

Last but not the least , finally he took the photocopy of our identities before they let us go !!