by Ron Wilson | Jul 22, 2014 | Software Testing
If you are looking for a new job in software testing, you need to make sure that you do your homework and spend extra time getting prepared for the interview. Most companies have a standard set of questions that they are going to ask. Here are some sample software testing interview questions that you should be prepared for:
- What do you know about our company?
- Do you have any software testing certifications?
- How many years of software testing experience do you have?
- Do you know how to perform SQL queries?
- What are your strengths and weaknesses?
- Do you have any experience with automated testing tools?
- Are you a team player?
- Are you willing to work nights and weekends?
- Can you provide me with an example of a test case?
- Have you ever created a software test plan?
- Have you used Quality Center?
- How many people were on your current team?
- Do you have experience working with offshore testers?
- How many projects did you test at a time?
- What would feedback would your boss give me about your work ethic?
This is a relatively small sample of software testing interview questions. I always do my homework ahead of time and go through a list of sample software testing interview questions so that I am prepared. It takes a little bit of time, but the rewards can lead to landing your next great job. It is a good idea to keep up with what is going on the in the software testing industry and you can easily do that by checking the internet for software testing interview questions.
If you would like more information on Agile, DevOps or Software Testing, please visit my Software Testing Blog or my Software Testing YouTube Channel.
by Ron Wilson | Jul 18, 2014 | Software Testing
As I look to stand up a testing department at my current company, one of the items that I am considering is should I have an outsourced testing department. There are a few items that are at play which are making me consider that managed testing services would be a viable option. First, my company is located in a city that does not have a whole lot of companies that heavily rely on technology. The city is a decent size with approximately 250K people but it has terrible schools and the city is relatively stagnant in terms of growth. I have been trying to directly hire people who are experienced, especially in the area of QA Directors and QA Managers but it is proving to be very difficult. It also appears that the IT sector is starting to grow, so it is becoming more difficult to find and hire top talent. I am thinking that I can initially have an outsourced testing department and get it up and running for a few years, then see if I can move the testing organization to be an internal department. This approach would allow all the processes and procedures to be established by people who are experienced with software testing. I am in the process of creating a QA RFP in order to find out if that is an option that makes sense for my company.
If you would like more information on Agile, DevOps or Software Testing, please visit my Software Testing Blog or my Software Testing YouTube Channel.
by Ron Wilson | Jul 16, 2014 | Test Environments
If you would like to find out more about the Gartner magic data quadrant you can find all the information you need right here. The Gartner Magic Quadrant for Data Masking Technology report says “Leaders demonstrate balanced progress in execution and vision. Their actions raise the competitive bar for all vendors and solutions in the market, and they tend to set the pace for the industry. A Leader’s strategy is focused on data security and compliance. Its offering addresses the needs of security specialists within the software life cycle (SLC) and data management processes. Leaders’ brands are broadly recognized in the data security space. Leaders reach beyond SDM capabilities and encompass the broader data security discipline, including data redaction capabilities, DDM, and also masking data for big data platforms, DAP and security intelligence.”
Since the Gartner Magic Data Quadrant Technology debuted in 2012, Informatica has been positioned as a leader. In this latest report, the analysts outline why you need to make data masking part of your data best practices and evaluate the industry’s best partners who can help you reach your goals. If you are considering looking at a test data management solution, you should consider one of the players on the Gartner Magic Data Quadrant.
If you would like more information on Agile, DevOps or Software Testing, please visit my Software Testing Blog or my Software Testing YouTube Channel.
by Ron Wilson | Jul 16, 2014 | Test Environments
Having test data readily available is key to successful test data management. If test data needs to be created, software delivery can be delayed and additional costs can be incurred. With test data generation, testers can create production-quality data quickly and deliver on-time, with reliable application test results.
The Informatica test data management solution enables your IT organization to create functionally intact, secure test data subsets of database applications. IT organizations supporting database applications often make multiple copies of production environments for development, testing, and training. However, as production databases grow, so do the copies, eating up costly storage space and system resources and putting companies at risk for financial penalties due to data breaches. With the Informatica solution for test data management, companies can avoid:
Excessive data management costs
Ineffective compliance with privacy regulations
Loss of reputation, customers, and revenues due to a data breach
Reduce Cost and Risk with Test Data Management
Instead of using full sets of production data, the Informatica test data management solution enables your company to:
Shorten development cycles with Informatica test data management by working with smaller sets of test data
Lower IT costs with smaller data sets that require less storage and fewer system resources by implementing test data management
Support compliance with masked data that meets the necessary quality levels for successful test data management, while ensuring data privacy
Speed deployment via test data management with prepackaged or customized subsetting and masking policies that create secure data subsets quickly, while maintaining referential integrity
Enhance Quality and Security with Test Data Management
The Informatica test data management solution creates secure test data management subsets while minimizing cost, risk, and development times. By automating the test data management subset and masking operations, the solution allows your IT team to focus on other development activities. Test data management even reduces the size of your test and development environments so you can reallocate reclaimed storage space for other uses.
Improve Productivity and Flexibility with Test Data Management
The Informatica solution for test data management can also copy data repeatedly from production to create secure, current non-production environments for test data management. Subset policies for test data management can include any combination of rules—such as age of data, department, country, data range, or value. And prepackaged test data management policies for applications such as Oracle Applications or SAP further streamline development and testing.
If you would like more information on Agile, DevOps or Software Testing, please visit my Software Testing Blog or my Software Testing YouTube Channel.
by Ron Wilson | Jul 16, 2014 | QA Glossary
I am looking to build and develop an efficient process around Test Data Management at my current company. Test Data Management is finding ways to manage, enhance and edit test data to ensure maximum test coverage and efficient testing. Test Data Management replaces the laborious and error prone methods of manual test data creation with efficient tools and practices which remove inefficiencies in the development lifecycle. Since a critical aspect of testing is test data management, it is important to come up with a solution that will help minimize the impact that test data will have on the overall process. A few key aspects of test data management is cost and compliance. It is important to reduce costs and risks. It is possible to shorten the testing cycle by working with smaller subsets of data. It also eliminates the possibility of having to investigate issues as a result of bad data. Poor data can also cause testing to be ineffective and allow errors to get into production. It also helps with the compliance aspect because you can mask certain fields in order to eliminate the risk of data getting into the wrong hands. As systems get more complex and the data is shared across systems, the end to end testing phase becomes even more critical and it is important that data be properly synced across applications. Without a solid test data management strategy, testing will have issues because of a lack of a test data management strategy.
