Latha's-QualityDiode : Speaking my mind!!

Crazy Weather

2007-10-25T16:26:00.001-04:00

Well, weather now a days are crazy.
In a day you tend to see all 3 seasons of the year!

That's where weather channels, news play a significant
role. Especially in countries like US, where weather changes
are variant by hour to hour. Its good to keep track.

I still remember, when I first landed in US, I's amazed to
see that they have a separate channel for weather talking
about just the weather 24/7. I wondered what do they have
to talk about so much just on weather. Who would want to
sit in front of the TV 24/7 watch nothing but weather?

Its only one incident and I realized the significance of weather
information. How vital they are to stay tuned to.

It was just another day @ job, I's sitting inside my cozy cubicle
and engrossed in my work. As the evening approached, as usual
office started becoming emptier and emptier because people
were heading home. That day to my surprise office become very
lonely sooner than usual around mid-noon and even my neighbor
cubicle was void. Normally she is an early bird and would leave
early. However, I left the office at the normal time and found even
public transport (trains) to be hardly crowded which started scaring
me as it was not something normal on a weekday. I casually initiated
dialogue with person who was next to me in the train and understood
that its weather prediction which has resulted in crowd flow.

Well, I get down thinking people are crazy how they behave to such every
minute weather updations. In no time, I realized that I was the victim of
harsh weather (they had predicted about thunderstorm/rains/heavy wind/
tornado in some parts of the city). I was stuck at the station place in bad
weather without shelter, without a bus/phone/electricity/soul. Our area
was hit so badly that every road/route were blocked and electric poles/trees
were up-rooted and whole place was a total mess.

After being stranded at the station open waiting hall for about 5 hours, I
reached home in the midnight around 12 am. That's when I realized
how important it is to listen to weather news. When they say something
they mean and after all its for our own benefit.

Its terrific how they predict weather on hour to hour basis and trust me
it exactly works that way. Like the other day when I's in Denver, they'd
predicted snow start/end as 7:03 am/11:57 am. I wondered if that's too
much to talk about hours/minutes? But guess what: It exactly started and
ended at the forecast time. Amazing technology!!

So, lets make our lives better, lets take the advantage of what technology
has got for us to offer. I suggest, that there is no harm in sparing couple
of minutes to know how your day would look like and better be prepared
for any known nature extremes and plan accordingly.

My comeback after a year break!

2007-07-21T17:23:00.001-04:00

Its really exciting to me to be back on my blogging track nearly after

year and a half break.

In this 1.5 year, I see remarkable changes in Quality field in general

and overall. Quality has taken a new ride in the market. Its got all

the attention and maturity. During this past 1.5 years, I learned many

things, added many skills to my database, and what I observed out

of my own experience is that

1) I should not have got stuck to the same industry for greater length

unless I was very aware of the current IT trend wrt to QA skill demands
2) I learned that I should not be very narrow minded and specific about

the domain and kind of job which I want to do, once I am active in

expoloring career opportunities.
3) You should have really really very broad view of the entire QA tools

available in the current market and be open to experiment on new things.
4) Its going to be tough life, if you've tagged yourself to "a" particular

role such as just black-box or front-end or general QA or just coding QE

Some of the testing tools which are booming in the current product/

developmental/application/services IT industry are:

* Mostly, open source tools such as JSunit, htmlunit, Selenium, are fast

catching up because of its cost-effective approach and the flexibility to

deal with various new technologies such as AJAX, JS etc.

* First and a still front runner is Mercury/Rational Tools which is

widely accepted.

* Second most is home grown automation methodologies and infracture.

This is more customized because, most of the licensed or open source

tools that are currently available in today's market are very specific in

automating only "a" particular task while organizations or each team's

automation requirement might be oriented in covering a subset of tasks

which would obviously require the QA to come up with or write own

code/script to encapsulate the tasks intended for Automation.

* One has to know some scripting language compulsorily such as

Perl/Python or shell of which Python and shell script are count a lot

and is a big plus to your resume.

So on an ending I would suggest its very important for a QA to be

unbinded any particular role, to know as much tools and automation terms

as possible relating to the industry that they would like to pursue their

career. Be open minded in experimenting new technology and new domain.

Be front runner with on what the current IT market is running.

Make it as an continuous process improvement towards your

tools/scripting/QA knowledge base.

Any additional effort towards certifications such as CSQA/ SQA /

CSQE/ SQE from various and international institutions helps keep

you updated with QA/QE flow. Important part is to re-visit the

portions on a regular basis or regular brush up on the theortical rules.

It comes in handy at times and most of the time during our daily

day-to-day activities where we could adopt theories or experiment them.

Good luck and Happy testing!

I, Me, Myself!

2006-01-20T04:14:00.000-05:00

Big social, lazy and go-getter. Hadnt thought of venturing into the Blog writing for quite sometime until 'Muthu' really pushed me hard (Well, Muthu is my new peer who is quite comfortable with aggressive approach and yet unbiased).

I plan on putting (rather sharing would more be suitable) Software Quality, my experience and where IT running behind; and its diversity as a career to explore. May be there onwards I start my journey to blogging.

I would like to keep it simple to start with!
"Software Testing doesnt happen just like that, it requires *Thinking*"
-By Jurian