In this edition, you will find a host of information on news and technology updates, up-coming trainings and webinars. 2 of the areas which have been focused on in this issue are- Test Automation and Agile Testing. The use and ben-efits of Automation have been observed for quite some time now. But, IT organizations still see a growing need for Test Automation- especially the use of Open source tools of which Selenium is one of the most popular. Agile development methodologies are being increasingly adopted by Soft-ware teams. What is the changing role of the tester, how do testing teams need to grow and adapt- is the theme of another article in this edition.

1. Issue: Oct 2013
Marlab’s
I N S I D E T H I S
I S S U E :
Software Testing
- A Paradigm
Shift into Agile
2
Marlabs Testing
Updates
4
Quality News &
Views
5
Test Automation
with Selenium
7
Welcome to the 2nd Edition of Test Digest. In this edition,
you will find a host of information on news and technology updates, up-
coming trainings and webinars. 2 of the areas which have been focused
on in this issue are- Test Automation and Agile Testing. The use and ben-
efits of Automation have been observed for quite some time now. But, IT
organizations still see a growing need for Test Automation- especially the
use of Open source tools of which Selenium is one of the most popular.
Agile development methodologies are being increasingly adopted by Soft-
ware teams. What is the changing role of the tester, how do testing teams
need to grow and adapt- is the theme of another article in this edition.
Happy Reading! .
From the Editor...

2. T E S T D I G E S T P A G E 2
Software Testing :
A Paradigm Shift into Agile ...
Today’s tester’s role is more versatile and calls on a wide range of skills, a
lot is being talked about the paradigm shift in the role of software testers, given the rising
trend of agile development process. Agile processes have not eliminated the need for soft-
ware testing, rather they have provided an impetus for testers to look at and adopt new,
better ways of testing. And when the development approach changes, it becomes pertinent
for testing to embrace the new approach and adapt to it. Agile testing is the answer to agile
development methodology.
It involves the key principles of the Agile Manifesto, including working
software, flexibility, collaboration and interaction. It also involves continuous evaluation of
the soft-ware through the use of Continuous Integration (CI) to perform automated re-
gression checks for frequently checked-in code.
what we do to test software is briefly captured below:
 Specify the feature “that should be” with the Stakeholders, BA & Programmers prior to
development commencing – Requirements & Acceptance Criteria
 Define how the feature should be developed with the Programmers – break the feature
down into discrete, testable tasks & determine the order in which code for the tasks
will be (frequently) committed
 Define the suite of automated checks required to help prove that the feature meets the
stakeholders requirements with the Programmers
 Define the level at which the automated checks should run with the Programmers –
unit, integration, container or browser
Narendra Saxena
Agile Development
methodology provides
opportunity to assess
the direction of a
project throughout
the development
lifecycle

3. Agile processes
harness change
for
the customer's
competitive
advantage
 Prepare exploratory test charters & sessions based on the previously defined tasks
 Programmers & Testers work in close coordination to fix bugs
Agile testing involves testing as early as possible in the software development life cycle. It
requires high level of customer involvement and testing of code as soon as it becomes avail-
able. The code should be stable enough to take it for system testing. Extensive regression
testing should be done to make sure that the bugs are fixed and tested. Communication
between the teams is crucial to the success of agile testing.
T E S T D I G E S T P A G E 3
continuation of ‘A Paradigm Shift into Agile’ ...
On 12th September, 2013, more than 1000 software and product practitioners from over 130 differ-
ent organizations gathered for one of IBM's biggest software conclaves – The IBM Technical Sum-
mit. Young and experienced professionals attended this action packed event to gain perspective on
the futures of technology, from some of the industry's leading experts .
Below were some of the sessions:
 Enabling Multichannel Testing using Rational Test Workbench
 Optimize Testing with virtualized services using IBM Rational Test Virtualization
 Test Data Management in the era of lightning fast computing
Leveraging Rational and Cloud Technology to integrate Dev, Test and Production Environ-
ments
 Leveraging IBM JazzHub for Development & testing on the Cloud
 Securing Applications on the Cloud
 Fast track your Agile Project Teams using IBM Rational Team Concert
from Narendra Saxena

4. T E S T D I G E S T P A G E 4
Trainings Performance Testing using VSTS - by Ramesh Viswanathan
A series of Training sessions were conducted to enable few team members
in the basics as well as advanced topics of Performance testing using VSTS
Publications “Mobile Application testing : Strategy & Automation"
by Ravindra Pilli, is published in in ToolsJournal.com
The article talks about the strategy to address the challenges of Device, plat-
form & Application diversity and how Automation can be leveraged for Mobile
testing

5. T E S T D I G E S T P A G E 5
3 Unveiling the newest Mobile Test Automation Strategy By : Hexaware and Experitest
The webinar will focus on the parameters for selecting the most apt test automation solution for your organization. We
will also introduce one of the best test automation frameworks, SeeTest (by ExperiTest) that fulfills major criteria for a
robust and scalable test automation model. The webinar will highlight the capabilities of the tool for introducing test
implementation efficiencies while maximizing RoI for Mobile Testing projects.
On: Wednesday, Oct 9, 2013 1:00 PM - 2:00 PM EDT
@: https://www2.gotomeeting.com/register/280501650
1 Agile manifesto as it is” - for Successful Transformation to Agility By : Phalguna Kumar, Agile / Scrum Transformation Coach &
Trainer
Agile project management & agile practices are prominent in mainstream processes now for software development. Top Manage-
ment, Leadership, and project teams at various roles have to support the Agile teams in order for the business to reap the best
possible benefits of Agile. They need to understand the Agile values & principles in true sense to maximize the benefits and in
building a strong Agile enterprise.
@ : http://www.techgig.com/expert-speak/Agile-manifesto-
as-it-is-for-Successful-Transformation-to-Agility-420
Upcoming Webinars
1 Next Generation Ethical Hacking - Live Demo By : V. P. Prabhakaran, Info Security consultant
This session would be completely practical, will train about, How Online bank portals and other sites are vulnerable. This session
can be attended by any profile from Beginner to top niche IT professionals. Objective of this Webinar to train individual that how
to make your data secure on Web and networks. this would help how systems and networks are compromised, the counter
measures, secure accounts, Privacy. This session is complete Hands on and practical.
On: Friday, Oct 04, 2013 3:00 PM IST
@: http://www.techgig.com/expert-speak/Next-Generation-
Ethical-Hacking-Live-Demo-406
4 Application Release Automation: Continuous delivery through DevOps By: Amit Vaid, Advisory Engineer- Test Automation, IBM
Rational Software
Harness the power of Continuous Delivery to increase delivery speed, quality & stability via frequent, automated releases. DevOps
is an approach to IT focused on fostering cooperation and collaboration from developers through operations and production
support. Testers, release managers, and change management teams are included. Through joint efforts, DevOps seeks an IT team
that is more responsive to the business, and more efficient while still delivering high quality product in compliance with regula-
tions and separation of duties concerns
On: Oct 10, 2013 3:00 PM IST
@: http://www.techgig.com/expert-speak/Application-
Release-Automation-Continuous-delivery-through-DevOps-
2 Test Automation workshop using Rational Functional Tester By: Nitin Sharma, Advisory Software Engineer, IBM
Harness the power of Continuous Delivery to increase delivery speed, quality & stability via frequent, automated releases. DevOps
is an approach to IT focused on fostering cooperation and collaboration from developers through operations and production
support. Testers, release managers, and change management teams are included. Through joint efforts, DevOps seeks an IT team
that is more responsive to the business, and more efficient while still delivering high quality product in compliance with regula-
tions and separation of duties concerns
On: Wednesday, Oct 23, 2013 3:00 PM IST
@: http://www.techgig.com/expert-speak/Test-Automation-
workshop-using-Rational-Functional-Tester-412
Pre-recorded Webinars
2 Mobile Test Automation, Right Before your Eyes By: Kote Bipilli
This session helps you realize the power of mobile test automation right in front of your eyes. Come Join Cigniiti’s Mobile Test
Automation experts share with you. This session helps you identify factors to consider for selecting the right mobile test automa-
tion tool, Preforming ROI analysis for mobile test automation efforts, Developing test automation scripts on mobile native apps,
pitfalls and best practices in mobile test automation, developing scripts that are mobile device family agnostic. A hands-on exciting
session power packed with instant mobile test automation is an assured take way.
@: http://www.techgig.com/expert-speak/Mobile-Test-
Automation-Right-Before-your-Eyes-382
2 Crowd Testing By: Rupesh Garg, Senior Manager, Wipro
Key discussion points: Crowd Sourcing – Define Evolution of Crowd Sourcing What motivates the crowd? Crowd Sourcing
Examples Crowd Testing - A process view Crowd testing - companies landscape
@: http://www.techgig.com/expert-speak/Software-Testing-
Series-Session-29-Crowd-Testing-401

6. continuation of
Feeds
1. Options for Efficient Mobile Testing By: John Kane, Sr. Program Manger
This articles talks about better options for efficient mobile testing by focusing on test
design, analyzing test requirements and optimizing the approach to testing, it’s possi-
@: http://www.logigear.com/magazine/
issue/options-for-efficient-mobile-testing/
2. Most collaboration applications will be equally available across multiple devices by
2016: Gartner
By 2016, according to Gartner, most collaboration applications will be equally available
on desktops, mobile phones, tablets and browsers
@: http://www.techgig.com/knowledge/
Most-collaboration-applications-will-be-
equally-available-across-multiple-devices-by
-2016-Gartner-3652
Tag the Magz
1. Automated Testing Handbook By: Linda G. Hayes
This books is all about ‘How to Automate Software Testing ‘ @: http://www.softwaretestpro.com/
ItemAssets/4772/
2. Agile Test Automation By: James Bach
This paper describes an agile approach to test automation for medium to large soft-
ware projects
@: http://www.satisfice.com/articles/
agileauto-paper.pdf
3. Guerilla Usability Testing By: Andy Budd
Few insights on Guerilla Usability Testing @: http://www.slideshare.net/andybudd/
guerilla-usability-testing

7. “Testing is an infinite
process of comparing
the invisible to the
ambiguous in order
to avoid the
unthinkable
happening to the
anonymous.”
-- James Bach
Open source automation is one of the key areas in software testing,
which has wide scope for implementation in any web based project. When the functional,
regression & browser compatibility testing has to be executed for each build release in a
project, a lot of work is involved for the manual tester. Accuracy in test execution cannot
be always expected from manual testing, because of the overload of work on the manual
tester. Automation of such projects is the best solution. Selenium is one such Open Source
tool for web test automation.
Selenium Open Source tool is in demand in the market for automation
testing of web applications. Even though it is an open source tool, Selenium has the ability
to compete with features provided by commercial tools in the market. This makes seleni-
um very popular.
The flexibility of Programming & Implementation makes the difference in
achieving successful web application automation. For the successful automation of web appli-
cation in Selenium, knowledge of JavaScript is important, since Selenium IDE & Selenium RC
are built on JavaScript language. Development knowledge of any one the programming lan-
guages – Java, C#, Ruby, Python, Perl & PHP is a must for Selenium automation.
T E S T D I G E S T
Test Automation with Selenium - An Overview
P A G E 7
Vijay

8. T E P A
continuation of ‘Test Automation with Selenium’..
Selenium can be integrated with many Open Source tools, such as Jenkins for Continuous Integration
Server, TestLink for Test Management, Jira for Defect tracking, JMeter for Load & Performance testing, etc. In many cases
integration of Open Source tools is required to utilize unique features provided and finding end-to-end solution to test
process. This enables Open Source tools to compete with licensed commercial tools in the market. To achieve Open
Source Automation & Integration of Open Source tools, Development skills are a must for Test Engineers.
What are the skills required to be an effective Automation Engineer using Selenium?
OOP Concepts: Object Oriented Programming concepts such as data abstraction, encapsulation, polymorphism and in-
heritance are required for building the automation framework. Developing the Generic functions for the automation
framework, writing our own wrapper functions for Results & Reports, Concepts of Local, global Variables, static and Non-
Static Variables, Static and Non-Static Functions, Object and Object References, Call by reference and Value, Constructs
are required for developing the data driven & parameterization in automation for framework.
Programming knowledge: Concept of data types, strings, logical, conditional & loop statements, arrays, functions, func-
tions parameters, function returns type are required for the implementation of test scripts. Designing the test case &
defining the results requires programming knowledge.
Web Components Concepts: Basic HTML tags for web page design & knowledge of tag attributes is required. Identifying
objects of HTML page using Xpath, CSS, Knowledge of JavaScript & DOM (Document Object Module) makes it easy in han-
dling automation of web components.
Advance Programming Concepts: Packages, Access Modifiers, Exception Handling, logs & file handling of programming to
build a strong automation framework & to generate test execution reports for analysis.
Framework for Automation: TestNG, JUnit, NUnit framework that make Automation more powerful and easier to use,
such as annotations to run your tests in arbitrarily. Master any one of these frameworks to build a good automation solu-
tion.
IDE tool: Integrated Development Environment knowledge and usage of the tool in different perspectives for develop-
ment & debugging is required for implementing the automation framework & for test scripts creation. Eclipse is one of
the best IDE available for this purpose.
Open Source automation testing has wide scope in testing. Testers can make their future career path in
Open Source Automation testing, provided they achieve the prior skills of development, which is required for the Auto-
mation Testing.