Introduction to OWASP: A Security Testing Resource

A subset of slides created in order to illustrate a ten minute tech talk given by me at Fitbit - Boston on security testing resources that the Open Web Application Security Project offers.

Lecture by Jason Huggins: Fixing HealthCare.gov, One Test at a Time

I am loving working at Fitbit - Boston! I have only been here a bit under two months, but I am already making great friends at work. I am learning not just to write Selenium / Java code, but how to be a software developer. 

I noticed on the  Sauce Labs Blog that Jason Huggins, creator of Selenium 1.0 and founder / CTO of Sauce Labs was gave a talk on his involvement on testing the HealthCare.gov website. I commandeered a conference room here at Fitbit - Boston and did a screening of the Meetup talk on YouTube. 

Git Fest: April 23, 2015 @ 6:00 pm

New England Software Engineers Meetup 
McGraw-Hill Education, 281 Summer Street, Boston MA
http://www.meetup.com/new-england-engineers/events/221699860/

"Thursday 23rd of April the first Git Fest Night will take place in Boston at the McGraw Hill Education Labs& close to South Station.

"During the event, after an introductory talk we are going to see on the stage folks talking about Git and its usage from different perspectives.

"In the introductory talk Aslihan Uzun will present a look at the unique aspects of Turkish culture and related issues in New England, and her perspective on the lives and community of people of Turkish heritage.

Security Testing Meetup: Beginners Kali Linux w/ RailsGoat

The Beginners Kali Linux w/ Railsgoat Meetup that I attended Wednesday, April 22, 2015 had one requirement: Set up Kali Linux running in a virtual machine.

After tinkering with Kali Linux on-and-off a few days before the training session, I finally was able to have a working installation up and running in a virtual machine on my MacBook Pro. It took me a while. Setting up a Linux distribution is a bit out of my comfort zone, but it was a good experience. Between listening to the instructional video one of the organizers, Apollo Clark, had created, and doing a lot of independent research, I was able to download, install, and set it up using Oracle's VirtualBox. 

Security Testing with Kali Linux: Intro and Installation

I've always been intrigued by security testing. I was part of a security testing team at my last position, tinkering with a security testing guide written by The Open Web Application Security Project (OWASP) to review our web and mobile apps, so when I came across a security testing group, I had to attend! 

The organizer of the Boston Kali Linux Users Group suggested before the Beginners Kali Linux w/ Railsgoat  event participants should have a running virtual machine with Kali Linux installed on it. To help us, the organizer Apollo Clark created a tutorial for both Mac  and Windows. It's a good thing, too. I have tinkered with Red Hat Linux, but not for many years. 

How to Switch Careers in the Software Industry

Trying to switch careers in the software industry, such as moving from software testing to something more in development? In this blog post I will be outlining how I made the transition from a position as manual QA engineer -- where, although I had a technical position, I was doing next to no actual coding -- to an automated testing position, where I am programming in Selenium and Java daily.


This transition didn't come overnight. It took years to lay the groundwork for the career shift to take place. Because this transition was so difficult for me, I wanted to share some pointers with anyone who may be in a similar situation to possibly make their career shift easier.

Make the commitment

How Selenium WebDriver uses CSS Selectors

This information is based upon Alan Richardson's class, Selenium 2 WebDriver with Java. If there is one thing that I can credit getting my current automation engineer position at Fitbit, it is this course. 

About CSS Selectors

A CSS Selector matches a set of elements. CSS stands for Cascading Style Sheets, what HTML uses to style the page layout of the web page. It is reused in Selenium to match the DOM (Document Object Model) elements.

How Fitbit - Boston sets up an automation development environment

Without actually having an automation developer position, it was very difficult for me to figure out what tools I needed to learn in order to make the switch from being a manual tester to doing automation.

Here, in this post, I'll highlight a bit of of the tools and technologies Fitbit - Boston uses for automated testing.

My new position: Sr. QA Engineer @ Fitbit Boston

I cannot believe that as of today I have been at Fitbit - Boston for a whole month! I am a Senior QA Engineer getting ramped up with Selenium WebDriver / Java development. I have taken many online Selenium classes with Java and Python. I have spent six or seven months running automation scripts at my previous position, but this is the first job in my fifteen year manual software testing career where I am getting paid to professionally program... Exactly what I have been looking for! I am really excited. It is such a great company!

Lecture: Customizing Jenkins @ SiteSpect

What happens when a favorite open-source tool is stretched beyond its limit and needs severe customization? Two automation engineers at SiteSpect, Dustin Masterson and Josh Shapiro, talked Wednesday evening at the AutoTestCentral - Boston meetup about the problems they faced --- and solution they came up with -- when forcing Jenkins to run 350+ functional test scenarios comprising over 550,000 tests.

The following is compiled from my hastily scribbled notes, and a heck of a lot of late night last minute independent research. Please let me know in the comments section what needs to be fixed. 

Learning Java

These past couple of months while I was searching for my next software testing gig, I strangely found myself with too little hands-on programming experience. Normally, my degrees and knowledge of the software development industry would be enough... but I found out when I was interviewing that no longer could I as a Software Quality Assurance Engineer get away with simply documenting test cases in MS Word or MS Excel. Executing all the test cases by hand just like the end user of our web or mobile app was not enough. Nowadays, it seems, a QA Engineer is expected to know how to write automated tests in Selenium with Java or Python.

Selenium WebDriver User Resources

There has been a sudden shift in the software testing industry. As companies are trying to make their software development life cycle run faster and faster, the lines have blurred between Software Quality Assurance and Software Development. If you are a QA Engineer, in order to speed up the regression tests -- checking that the new additions to the product didn't break the old functionality -- you now need to learn how to code. And Selenium WebDriver -- the open-source software that couples with Java, Python, or other languages to simulate a user operating a web application in a browser -- has been the tool to use.

But where can you find good, solid information on how to use Selenium WebDriver?

SeConf2014: Fish Bowl with the Selenium Committers

Did you know that by going to the Official 2014 Selenium Conference Site and selecting the Program Schedule you can pull up all the slides, handouts, and video recordings of all the talks given at the conference which was held back in September 2014 in Bangalore, India? For the next few blog posts, I will be publishing my notes on a few of these YouTube captured talks.  

SeConf2014: Q&A with Selenium Committers

The Fourth Annual Selenium Conference was held between September 4 to September 6, 2014 in Bangalore, India.

By going to the Program Schedule on their Official 2014 Selenium Conference Site you can see:

• The times each talk had been held
• Bios of each speaker
• Slides shown and handouts that were given out at the time
• Descriptions of each talk
• YouTube links of the talk given that you can watch. 

Book review: Learning Python the Hard Way

Since November 2014, I have been studying the computer programming language Python, with the free online book Learning Python the Hard Way, [link]. Written by Zed Shaw, it seems is a great way to start learning how to code or getting back into coding if it has been a while since you last programmed.

The author's premise of the book is that readers won't be able to learn how to code by just copy-and-paste the Python code from the online book into a text editor. Zed encourages, demands, wheedles, nags, and hectors his viewing audience that in order to really learn the Python language (or any programming language for that matter) they need to:

A bit about Selenium WebDriver

Software companies attempting to become more sensitive to the immediate needs of their customers now measure their software development cycle in months instead of years. The time allowed for Software Quality Assurance to perform regression testing -- testing that the new features of the web and mobile apps being built haven't broken the old functionality -- has been drastically shortened. For software testers this has caused frantic twelve hour days and weekend work in the last two weeks before the product is supposed to go out the door. Selenium WebDriver is a free open source tool that has become the new industry standard in automated testing that can try to alleviate this problem.

Shifts in Software Testing

You might not have recognized this if you have worked at the same job for the past couple of years, but the software testing industry has shifted. There is less demand for traditional QA Engineers. You may know the entire software development process, both Waterfall and Agile. You may be very skilled at working with business analysts examining the business requirements to make sure they are clear and concise. You may be quite good at coming up with great testing scenarios. But there are many new standards, practices and technologies that future employers are going to need from you, most which were unheard of just two or three years ago.

How Google Tests Software

For the past few years, I've made sure to take a few extra weeks off around the Christmas holidays to brush up on my skillset, do a bit of research on new technologies coming out, and try to get in shape -- software testing wise -- for the new year. Back in 2013 I kept hearing of one particular book that had been published the year before: How Google Tests Software.

Agile Software Development

I've been working with Agile since 2005, and I must say that I find it to be the most fun! If you love working with people as a team, really prize collaboration, and "having good team gel" is a requirement for you at any job, the Agile Software Development methodology is for you.

How Agile Started

How we create software has changed a lot in the past decade, and it started with a manifesto written back in February 2001.

The Agile Manifesto:

• "Individuals and interactions over processes and tools
• "Working software over comprehensive documentation
• "Customer collaboration over contract negotiation
• "Responding to change over following a plan

Before Waterfall

Interested in the History of Software Development Methodologies?

... Of course you are! Who wouldn't be? 

Here are a few ancestors to the waterfall method: 

Production of Large Computer Programs, 1956

Adapted from a presentation he had given at an event sponsored by the Navy Mathematical Computing Advisory Panel and the Office of Naval Research in June 1956, Herbert D. Benington talked about his experience working on the Semi-Automatic Ground Environment (SAGE) system at MIT's Lincoln Laboratory.

Waterfall + QA

Take the product owners, product managers, and business analysts who come up with business requirements for a software product that customers might need. Take a bunch of software architects who design the blueprints of the software product. Add the designers and user experience people to sketch the look-and-feel of the software product. Software developers to construct the product. Quality assurance engineers to test the product. How does the team work together to build, test, and launch the product?

That is the software development process.

What is a QA Engineer?

You may have noticed on your neighborhood software development team a few people where coding the product isn't their main role. They aren't artists, so you know they aren't web designers on the User Experience team designing the user interface. They don't usually gather the initial business requirements, so they aren't business analysts. And every other word they talk about contains the word "test": Test Matrix, browser testing, test strategies, test cases, test scripts, regression testing. They are the Software Quality Assurance Engineers.