[olpc-nz] Today's/Tonight's QA Phone Call Conclusions & Unofficial Minutes

[Tim McNamara]

Hi Simon -

Some quick thoughts:


On Tue, Feb 23, 2010 at 7:00 AM, Simon Schampijer <simon at laptop.org> wrote:

> * Chamindra (Sri Lanka Testing Lead) explains the great streamlining
>> power of:
>> http://blog.TestLink.org
>> Writing test cases and following them are a snap -- once someone
>> installs this PHP site?
>>
>> As you noted the new Sugar release is scheduled for the end of march [1].
> With another month of planned bug fix builds.
>
> We need to do a lot of testing *now* :) A first attempt was the testing day
> [2]. We handed out a Sugar on a Stick image that people could use for
> testing. This was not menat to work on the XO. One could either put it on a
> USB-Stick and boot from another machine or run it in simulation.
>
> To be honest, the outcome of this day was rather 'ok'. I have asked myself
> a few questions how we could improve that, and I am happy to get feedback
> from the actual people doing testing and QA.
>
> * How does people want to work together? Asynchronously? Synchronosouly
> during a meeting? (If) How often should we do meetings? Weekly?
>

Planning around an asynch model is probably the best. We can do events etc
periodically, but my hunch is that asynch will lower barriers to entry. And,
it may be easiest to have lots of little testing sessions than a smaller
number of much larger testing sessions.

One of the things that this ad-hoc QA team has been discussing is utilising
a platform designed for test suites called Testlink (http://testlink.org).
That way, project managers & test analysts can write up specific test cases
and/or migrate the test cases currently on wiki.laptop.org. Volunteers &
teams that come in simply pick the next test at the top of the list.
Ideally, this will avoid duplication and miscommunication across all testing
efforts.


> * Do people only want to test XO-images?
>

My impression is that people will test what is useful & easy. Scratching own
itch, etc. Therefore, if people are sent XOs, they will test XOs. If there
is 'central' direction, I'm sure people will be open to testing.

Despite the disjointed way things are, I personally feel that testing is an
area where OLPC, Sugarlabs & activity developers need to have a coordinated
approach. It's often difficult to divorce Activities, Sugar, XOs... I
personally would feel it would be best if there was a central place to
report test results & have developers take their leads from there. At the
moment, Sugar & OLPC have their own trackers. Will testlink make things
worse?



> From my perspective as the release manager, I of course can announce new
> images, with notes about what has been fixed, and what new features did
> land. Would there be people willing to do testing from there? Or do I have
> to run meetings etc?
>

I don't know if more meetings will be beneficial at this stage. The testing
efforts seem to be centred around small groups that are very geographically
isolated. Mailing lists are probably sufficient.
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