I enjoy challenges whether work-related or personal that either expands my abilities, skills, or provides inspiration for change. For example, at work we had a weekly walking challenge where the number of steps increased each week which motivated me to increase the time I walk every day in order to make my weekly goals. This was a great way to start the summer and get ready for hiking. Our trip to New Hampshire inspired me to want to hike more challenging mountains which requires me to take my physical fitness to a different level.  At work I am inspired by deadlines that allows a team to work together to produce a product that is beneficial to our client. Deadlines sometime require a level of innovation such as addressing risk differently or approaching testing strategies from different angles.  Those are the projects I really enjoy. I am also inspired by the younger testing generation for their testing passion and for addressing problems differently such as using mindmaps and expanding skills and contacts through weekend testing.  

How has social media changed your life?

I love social media because it connects you with people around the world and allows me to understand how testers are approaching similar problems. You are no longer constraint to conversations based upon a local networking group that you may or may not have time to attend meetings. Even though I do believe in local networking groups and face-to-face communication, I find great value in social media and have a different strategy for the different types. I am a big fan of twitter and my own testing world has expanded. I have learned about mindmaps, weekend testing, and free e-magazines such as Testing Circus and Tea Time for Testers. I have tweeted many questions and found testers that are willing to share suggestions, articles, or blogs. This has allowed me to quickly gather information I need to make a decision based upon how other companies address the problem or with additional research material. I am on twitter several times a day. LinkedIn is a great centralized location to maintain connections with business professionals and I use it once or twice a week. I do not spend too much time with their discussion groups because so far I can locate the information more quickly through twitter; though you can get more in-depth discussion using LinkedIn. I also use Google+ and have connected with a lot of testers. I enjoy learning more about their hobbies and interests because I believe it is important we do not just become information exchangers, because the person on the other end is a real human being with feelings and emotions. 

Do you bog? Your blog and twitter link if you would like to share with the readers?

At this time, I do not have a blog. Instead, I have been contributing articles based upon my experience to Testing Circus: testingcircus.com.  I can be reached at Linkedin: http://www.linkedin.com/in/bernicenielruhland ,Twitter:  http://twitter.com/#!/bruhland2000, and I am on Google+.

One of my favorite books is Crucial Conversations: Tools for Talking when Stakes are High by Patterson, Grenny, McMillan, and Switzler. This book has helped me better prepare and react to difficult situations. As testers, we provide information on what we are seeing during testing to help other people such as Product Managers make better decisions. I highly recommend this book for all testers since building relationships and the ability to provide feedback that people may not want to hear is important. For example, every tester has found critical bugs close to shipping a product. A tester should not make the decision to delay shipment, but provides important information to those who make the decision. This may become a difficult conversation with questions asked of the tester such as “why wasn’t this problem found earlier” and other questions that might make the tester defensive. Learning how to handle this type of conversation is just one example of how this book will help you approach conversations differently.

Who is your hero?

I really do not have a hero; but there are people I admire for what they accomplished. In particular, I enjoy learning about women who were pioneers in their field and overcame gender or racial barriers. Currently, I am reading the book “Women on High: Pioneers of Mountaineering” by Rebecca A. Brown which is about women who were the original mountain climbers back from the Victorian times when women were considered frail and in need of male protection. These women were pretty amazing considering the clothing of their time and the lack of modern technology that we have today for hiking and climbing!

What do you do when you are not working?

Music has always been an important part of my life. In particular, I listen to independent music because the groups have artistic freedom to create their music instead of following corporate direction and rules. Physical fitness is important to both my husband and to me. We enjoy an active lifestyle that includes working-out, hiking, and disc golf. Recently, we took a trip to New Hampshire to explore some of the hiking trails.  We enjoyed the beauty of the mountains and the more challenging hikes that included steep climbs and rocky terrain. We will be going back to explore more of their trails! I also love to cook and I am always looking for new, health-conscious recipes that provide the energy for our active lifestyle. When I have the time I enjoy getting lost in a good book; my favorite authors are Maeve Binchy, Jane Austen, and Jan Karon.

What is a skill or strength that sets you apart from others?

By nature I am a tester and a planner. This is not a job for me, but is a part of who I am. As a planner, I am able to react quickly to changing testing situations such as reduced timelines and the identification of new problems. I do not follow a heavy-weighted test plan; instead I believe in a living document or process where your planning changes based upon what is learned during testing. I can work through and implement new testing strategies and testing direction based upon changing situations and at times that needs to be done rather quickly!

I do not believe it is; because data is data. Whether I am in the pharmaceutical or financial industry our clients are using the application or reporting system to make a decision and they expect the results to be correct. The terminology may be different but I am testing from an input, processing, and output perspective.

Personal growth and continuous learning – how important in this in our times?

I am a strong believer in continual learning and taking personal accountability for expanding your own knowledge and skills. This has always been my opinion but I believe it is even more important today with social medial, on-line education, webinars, weekend testing, and a wealth of blogs and articles. Given there are so many sources of learning, there really is something for everyone! I believe there is a lot of competition for jobs especially when you consider some companies allow telecommuting or outsource to other companies. Employers are looking to see how you are improving your skills and how you will contribute to their team.  I often am asked if testers should seek certification. When asked this question, I respond with more questions. I would like to know what the tester hopes to achieve through certification; what are their goals; is certification the only way to achieve their goals; and what are they doing now to achieve those goals?

Quality – what is your definition or understanding?

I believe quality is driven by the client and what is important to them. From a testing perspective, we know it is impossible to test every scenario and to deliver a bug free product. However, the more knowledge I have on how the client uses our product and what is important to them plus understanding coding risks from a development perspective, allows a testing team to better target their testing to improve the quality based upon what is important to the client and known risks.

From a product standpoint, I believe quality is a collective effort in that everyone has a role from the sales people on what and when they promise a feature; the quality of the requirements; the development and testing groups understanding and translation of the requirements; and through implementation and customer support.  I believe the different departments working together can deliver a better product if information and risk is relayed and discussed. We all have an important role and I believe a Testing Department should not be in charge of quality.

To know more about her read on.

Can you tell us a little bit about your current role?

I am a hands-on Software Testing Manager for a privately-owned software development company. We have a web-based business intelligence tool that provides on-demand data management and performance analytics to the pharmaceutical industry. We also provide custom software development services. I manage product and technical software testers and I oversee testing cycles in terms of timelines and risk. I am hands-on in that I perform testing, write testing strategies, and testing outlines. I look for ways to improve testing in a fast-paced environment to identify risks earlier to better target testing based upon our customers’ needs.

What is your typical day at work like?

My days are extremely busy and go by quickly. We need to support our client needs in terms of new development for our main product and custom development while meeting their shorter term needs. This can require me to address multiple areas in a given day while working with testers and developers on reproducing problems to understand them better and determine the best testing approach. Throughout the day, I interact with the Product Manager on where we are at with testing, any problems we encountered, and when we may be ready to move to production. I do not make the decision on moving to production; but I do provide testing progress and potential risks.  I start work around 8ish; around noon I take an hour lunch which is usually a working lunch or I am on twitter. I leave around 5 to 6 pm depending upon where we are at with a deliverable.

Richard Feynman. If you’re a tester, I can’t recommend his writings enough. Although he was a physicist, I think he embodies the aspects of great testing. He was constantly learning, questioning, and experimenting. The man learned how to crack safes in his spare time. As a tester, how can you not love a person like that?

What do you do when you are not working?

My work live and personal life blur so much sometimes that it’s hard to tell one from the other. Blogging, writing, and social media take up a reasonable chunk of my non-work time, but I do have some favorite non-work activities. I’ve played soccer my entire life (and remarkably, I think my skill level is decreasing). I’ve played on the same team for the last ten years or so, and we play about 40 matches a year (of which I make it to 25 or so). Once upon a time, I was a musician – I still play once in a while, but rarely outside of my house these days. For me, playing music is a good way to disconnect from the real world and relax. I also have a family who I like to hang out with. We took a few camping trips this summer and spent quite a few afternoons swimming at the local pool.

What is a skill or strength that sets you apart from others?

Learning new concepts quickly is my strength. I’ve always been the one to take on projects that didn’t seem solvable, or to agree to deadlines that didn’t seem possible given my experience. I’m either stupid or lucky (or both) to take on projects like these, but somehow I (almost) always manage to figure things out. If I ever figure out how I figure stuff out, I’ll write a book about it.

What (or who) inspires you?

These days, I think as much about leading great teams as I do about testing. Being able to innovate and lead change are big parts of my role (and, IMO, the future of testing), so I’m inspired by people who have great things to say in those areas. People like Gary Hamel, Dan Pink, Chip & Dan Heath, and Steven Denning have a big influence on how I approach testing and test leadership.

How has social media changed your life?

I think changing my life is a bit extreme, but it’s definitely part of my life. I don’t really use facebook or any other personal social media, but I started blogging about six years ago, and joined twitter in 2009. Twitter is great for interacting with testers around the world, and I really enjoy meeting people at conferences who I’ve only “met” on twitter before. I guess you could say that blogging changed my life – or at least had an impact. I began to blog in order to become a better writer. Eventually, I ended up writing a book, so there’s probably some correlation there.

Do you blog? Your blog and twitter link if you would like to share with the readers?

My blog is at http://angryweasel.com/blog, and you can follow me on twitter at @alanpage.

I like talking with testers – there’s something to learn from just about everyone, so the biggest benefit I get from presentations and conferences is the learning experience. When I first began to really study testing (5+ years after I began testing), I realized that testing was one of those fields where the more that you learn, the more you realize how much more there is to know – so discovering new ideas and learning has been hugely important to me ever since. Along the same lines, there are a lot of other testers out there who may not know how much they don’t know – the books I’ve contributed to and the articles I’ve written are driven by an interest in sharing my own experiences in the hope that others can learn from them and be encouraged to expand their testing knowledge.

Personal growth and continuous learning – how important is this in our times?

I think you got a large part of my opinion on the importance of learning to me in my last answer. I’ve had a fairly successful career in testing, and I give 90% of the credit for that success to my ability (or luck) in being able to learn new ideas, tools, concepts, and technologies quickly. I think the ability to learn quickly comes from having an open mind and a (pardon the cliché) a thirst for knowledge. I think it’s critical for any professional tester to have a constant desire to learn.

Quality – what is your definition or understanding?

If you were to ask ten people this question, you’d probably get eleven answers. The Weinberg definition (quality is value to some person) is both accurate and vague – which is maybe what you need in a quality definition. I’m a big fan of Pirsig (Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance), and prefer to view quality as something that is undefinable and that quality comes from caring.

Name your favorite work related book?

It’s probably Code Complete by Steve McConnell. I read the first edition at least half a dozen times and the second edition a few more. I learn something new every time I read it, and it consistently reminds me how quality (and care) is necessary at every stage of software development.

To know him more read on.

Can you tell us a little bit about your current role at Microsoft? What do you do at MS?

I’m a tester on the Lync team, and spend the bulk of my time working with the testers on the team to improve our testing efforts. This includes coaching and mentoring with team members, developing our testing strategy, and identifying areas for improvement and implementing solutions as appropriate. I also chair a few internal test communities for senior testers – I think there’s value both in showing a strong internal career path for testers, and in finding ways for experienced testers to connect and share their challenges (and solutions) with each other. I think testing at Microsoft can be improved through increased collaboration, so I try to enable collaboration and connections as much as I have time for. I wrote a blog post about what I do a few months ago if you’d like a longer answer.

What is your typical day at work like?

One thing I love about my job is that there isn’t a typical day – but I’ll see if I can share a reasonably typical day. I usually take a few minutes at the beginning of the day to catch up on email and rss feeds. I like to take a look at those things early just in case I get busy and don’t bother to look at them later. Next, I take a minute or two to figure out what my day looks like and what I’ll be doing. Over the last several years, I’ve developed a sort of personal time management system which is sort of a hybrid of a to-do list and personal kan-ban. For brevity, let’s just say that I have a long list of things I need to do (my personal backlog), and that I take a few minutes every morning to prioritize the list and ensure that I work on the right items in the right order. I attend a few meetings daily, but I try to be efficient on how I spend my time and keep my meeting load to the bare essentials. In the evening, I may do some more work, write blog posts, or share a bit on twitter.

There is no standard definition of quality. Quality is always relative, context and situation sensitive. However as days are passing by it is moving from product centric to user centric. So, meaning and requirements of quality shall be defined at the beginning of a specific project. This shall be done by studying requirements and by involving and brainstorming with all relevant stake holders.  However, many times stake holders are having conflicting meaning of quality in a project under consideration. At that time delivering quality becomes more a balancing act rather an act of achieving perfection.

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Name your favorite work related book?

I have not found any complete book on software testing. I liked the book “The Design of Business- Why Design Thinking is the Next Competitive Advantage” authored by Roger Martin.

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Who is your hero?

I always considered Mahatma Gandhi as my hero because he dedicated his entire life for ‘non-violence and truth’. In fact, he proved to the world that non-violence is the greatest weapon!

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What do you do when you are not working?

I am a habituated reader. I spend my time with family. I deliver talks for students.  I enjoy cooking. Also, I do meditation.

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What is a skill or strength that sets you apart from others?

Thinking big, taking challenges, focus, passion, spirituality, experimentation, and continuous learning are my strengths.

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What (or who) inspires you?

Nature which works with efficiency and effectiveness with zero waste generation always is an inspiration for me.

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How has social media changed your life?

It helped to share what I have; learn from others; reach more number of people; and also, I could connect  back with my friends with whom I almost lost touch. All these have changed me a lot. Thye are helping me to grow in a quickest possible way by bringing required knowledge and connections.

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Do you blog? Your blog and twitter link if you would like to share with the readers?

Yes. I started quire recently.

My Twitter link is http://twitter.com/arun_khannur

My LinkedIn: http://in.linkedin.com/in/khannur

My Blog: http://testexclusive.blogspot.com

I can see growing acceptance of software testing as a creative and lucrative career.

Software testing was earlier focusing on functionality and as days are passing by we are seeing increasing focus on non-functional testing. Performance, security, interoperability, internationalisation, localisation, usability, compliance related testing are getting prominence.

Various testing approaches have evolved that include requirement based testing, risk based testing, exploratory testing, agile testing, model based testing, buddy testing etc

From business perspective, independent software testing and third party testing are now quite common which were not in place earlier. Software testing has evolved as a service. These software testing services are carried out in various ways, namely, virtual testing, near shore testing, outcome based testing, third party independent testing and so on.

 Software test automation is quite common. Various tools are available in the market which would help to carry our testing on code, functionality, performance, security , and so on.

Professional certifications for software testers, software test managers, automation and so on are available in the market which was not the case few years back.

However, software testing is yet to receive more attention. Test process improvement (TPI) and test maturity models are yet to catch up. Academia has not yet considered software testing as a subject of value. Software test related standards are still at a very primitive stage. Software test competence is a major area of concern. All these challenges are looking for solutions.

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Personal growth and continuous learning – how important is this in our times?

In knowledge era, knowledge is power. Have and have not is decided by who is having knowledge and who is not having knowledge.  Hence continuous learning and personal growth is essential for our existence and identity.

Personal growth and continuous learning is important to get wisdom in our areas of interest. Reading, sharing, experimentation always make us to learn something new. If we want to move up in career, we have to move from practitioner to professional to domain expert to consultant. All this requires interest and aspiration to learn and grow. We have to choose an area, focus on it, be after it passionately, and grow rich in practice and experience. Authenticity comes with learning and experience.

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Arunkumar Khannur is an Internationally reputed Software Testing Guru, India’s Noted Software Testing Authority, and Author of best-selling book “Software Testing-Techniques and Applications”. He is regarded as one of the industry’s foremost authorities on Software Testing. He contributes as an Advisor, Author, Speaker and Senior Faculty. Mr. Khannur’s IT career spans 23+ years during which he held various IT roles in Wipro, Logica, Planetasia, and QAI. He has M.Sc in Physics & M.Tech in Computer Science to his credit.

To know more about him read on.

Can you tell us a little bit about your current role?

I am leading ISQT Process and Consulting Services Pvt Ltd, Bangalore, India (www.isqtinternational.com) as Chairman and CEO. As a company, we are focused on Software Testing related Training and Advisory Services. At personal capacity, I enjoy providing advisory services and conducting training. 

I am the founder of STEP-AUTO Software Testing related events (www.stepauto.com).

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How has writing books, articles, doing presentations and participating in conferences helped you? What motivates you to share your lessons learned with others?

Writing books and articles are my sincere effort to put on record all my ideas, experiences, and  learnings in an organized way so that others can  use and build upon. While doing so personally I become more perfect and also, authentic.   

I authored “Software Testing- Techniques and Applications” book to explain testing techniques and their applications in a systematic way with the help of relevant examples and illustrations.

Participating and organizing conferences helps me in sharing knowledge and building networks. It also allows me to understand current trends and possible futuristic evolution of the subject and market.

Sharing lessons I learnt is always an exciting experience since I get contentment of contributing my share in the growth of software testing as a field and also, in the growth of individuals.