Bug Tracking Tools

I've experienced with quite a few Open Source tools for tracking purposes such as Eventum, Mantis and Bugzilla. All these tools is useful on it's own way, depending on what features you are looking at. I've summarize below on the features for each tools.

1.  Eventum

Eventum is a user-friendly and flexible issue tracking system that can be used by a support department to track incoming technical support requests, or by a software development team to quickly organize tasks and bugs. Eventum is used by the MySQL AB Technical Support team, and has allowed us to dramatically improve our response times.

2. Mantis
Mantis is an easily deployable, web based bugtracker to aid product bug tracking. It requires PHP, MySQL and a web server.

3. Bugzilla
Bugzilla is a "Defect Tracking System" or "Bug-Tracking System". Defect Tracking Systems allow individual or groups of developers to keep track of outstanding bugs in their product effectively.

New chapter in 2010

I started new year with new company, new position and new responsibilities...

 Now I am a Software QA Manager for a Swedish-based company where the R&D department is only 2 years and I'm the first Software QA. My first task is to get at least 1 Software Tester to handle on the existing project so that I can focus on the other important things.

How to be Creative in software testing?

As a professional QA, one must have a creative mind when testing any softwares. Being creative is achieved through experiences and the appetite to explore more.
For a starting point, QA need to implant in their mind that the software they are tested must be Configurable, Flexible and Maintainable in a long run.

Web Application Security: The Beginner Story

With zero knowledge in Web Application Security, I have no choice but to choose Security as my Research Study. The starting point is very difficult and challenging. There are my terms I need to understand and know how it is work. Apart from the technical terms, I now can proudly say that I know the type of attacks & web vulnerability.
Cross-site scripting, SQL Injection, Denial of Service and Access Control Management are some of the well-known security attacks.
A "white-hat hacker" is normally called as Penetration Tester, in which they trying to attack the websites in order to assess it's security level.
To be continue...

BIG Deployment to LIVE!

Finally, the current Change Request is deployed to LIVE! What a relieve.
Well, we have done the testing by phases and in different servers, i.e UAT, Training and Live servers. The type and quantity of testings is huge and repetitive just to ensure everything is working fine and as specified, without affecting the existing system behaviour.

The things I've learned from this Change Request:
1. Testing by phases and at different servers is highly helpful for both QA and Developers.
Reason: Practise makes perfect

2. Need better Clarification and Understanding about the Change Request within the current system.
Reason: Lots of hiccups are due to the lack of understanding in
=> the existing system behaviour
=> the Specifications & Requirements in the Change Request
=> the system design

3. As for the QA, apart from what stated in #2, we also need to prepare the Test Design. The Test Design can only be 100% achieve if have better understanding of the above #2 criterias.

4. Finally, I strongly disagree with the use of Test Cases when performing the testing. Test Cases is very time consuming and ineffective. I prefer to have a good Test Design, then from there prepare the Test List in simple way using simple method like table, matrix and forms.
Reason: Faster, Simple, Easy & Usable - Everything in one place (Specs, Criterias & Test Results)

All in all, testing is about one's passion. It's not everyday job for everybody. As it is a highly repetitive job, ones must have patient as well as highly imaginative in testing the same features but from different angles.