KUALA LUMPUR - 10 - 12 JULY 2012

COVER STORY

The stage is set for the annual Software Testing Conference (SOFTEC) 2012 to take place next month. Fourteen international speakers have con�rmed participation in the 5th edition of the national-level conference intended to be platform for sharing of knowledge and experi-ence between leading international software testing experts, seasoned practitioners as well as thought-leaders and Malaysian software profes-sionals and other industry stakeholders.

To be held at Istana Hotel in Kuala Lumpur from July 10 to 12, SOFTEC 2012 has adopted the theme of The Art of Testing, as the conference puts greater emphasis on the less technical but equally important skills resquired in professional testing practices.

Speakers at SOFTEC 2012 will be imparting knowledge and share their experience keynotes presentations as well as hold tutorial and workshop sessions over the three days. Being leading authority in their �elds of practices, they make invaluable resource for delegates to enhance their knowledge.

Having such a big number of experts under one roof indeed makes SOFTEC2012 an ideal platform for software professionals and business manag-ers to keep abreast with the latest developments and trends in the industry and gain better under-standing on the importance and relevance of software testing to their organisations.

The collective knowledge and wisdom that shall be available at SOFTEC 2012 will be simply too good an opportunity to miss. The conference also provide ample opportunity for business network-ing among delegates.

Since its introduction in 2008, SOFTEC has grown from strength to strength, with increasing support from domestic and regional delegates, through the support of the Asian Software Testing Alliance (ASTA).

Learn the Art of Testing at SOFTEC 2012

n Pilot Universities CTFL Exams - Page 7 n MSTH Recruitment Drive - Page 2 n Q-Lab Accredited TMMi Level 3 - Page 8

2012/ VOL 02 COMPLIMENTARY FROM MSTB KKDN:PP17313/04/2013(032182)

Geo� ThompsonExperimentus

Yasuharu NishiUniversity of Electro

-Communications, Tokyo

SOFTEC 2012Speaker line-up

T-Systems Test Factory Bruhn-Pedersen Consulting

Software Test Consultant

Mind Your Sport

2BUGFREE / 2012 / VOL 02

Q-INDUSTRY

The Q-Industry team hit the road to seek out suitable candidates to take up positions in the Q-Lab. Firts stop was Kota Kinabalu following by Kuching before returning to Kuala Lumpur. Penang was the next destination for the recruitment drive. Due to continuing calls from candidates in Kuala Lumpur, the second drive rwas held in the Capital.

In total, some 150 candidates of varying academic backgrounds and work experiences came for the interviews. The there were two levels of interviews conducted on-site while for senior positions, third level interviews were being arranged.

The recruitment drive is expected to resume in about two months time, with Kuantan and Johor Baru being the destinations.

Intellectual discourse: The C-Level meeting in progress in Kuching, Sarawak on April

MSTB on Recruitment and Awareness CampaignWhile in Kota Kinabalu and Kuching, the team also took the oppor-tunities to spread word on the progress the Malaysia Software Testing Hub (MSTH) and the various programmes and actvities inititiated thus far.

MSTB Director Amiruddin Jaafar Sidek led Q-Talk session in Kota Kinabalu while Q-Lab Senior Manager Azis Bon helmed the session in Kuching.

An Industry Dialogue was also held in Kuching, with participation from representatives from the academic, industry and Sarawak state government. The dialogue delved into various issue relevant to the development of the software testing industry in the Sarawak region.

Industry update: Participants of the Q-Tlak in the Kota Kinabalu being briefed on the progress of MSTH initiative by En Amruddin (inset)

Full concerntration: Candidates taking teh aptitude test during the Kuala Lumpur recruitment drive in May, 2012

6BUGFREE / 2012 / VOL 02

MSTB Joins Review on ISO’s Software Testing Standards

delegation, led by MSTB President Mastura Abu Samah participated in the ISO/IEC 29119 SC 7 Plenary Meeting, which took place from May 21 – 25, 2012 in Jeju, Korea.

Other members of the delegation were Senior Manager Abd Azis Bon, Technical Test Analysts Herman Md Tahir and Muhammad Azam Alias At the meeting, delegates reviewed and deliberated on four parts of ISO/IEC 29119

MSTB continued its active participation in the development of the development of the ISO/IEC 29119 – the new standards for software testing. This is in line with the recent change in Malaysia's membership status from 'O' (Observer) to 'P' (Participative) in the Standard Committee 7 (SC7) which presides over the development of the standards. MSTB is the appointed representative of the Malaysia in SC7.

In the latest development, a four-member

reviewed based on the earlier reviews done by the individual countries (including Malaysia). The working drafts were amended accordingly and they are expected to be converted into �nal drafts for reviews in the next interim and plenary meetings.

The next Interim meeting to be held in Wellington, New Zealand in February, 2013 while the Plenary meeting will take place in Buenos Aires, Argentina in May 2013.

Development of the MSTB Software Product Certi�cation scheme has progressed into the �nal phases and is expected to go into trials in the 3rd quarter on this year. Under the trial phase, the product certi�cation team will carry out certi�cation testing on actual software products.

Certi�cations under the trial phase will adhere to all the required processes, except that they will be without immediate accreditation.

Data collated from the trials will be the basis in accreditation assessment for MSTB as the certifying body (CB) by Standards Malaysia. The Q-Lab, meanwhile, would need to be accredited as the certi�cation laboratory under the scheme.

If all goes well, the scheme would be ready for launch by early 2013.

Based on international standards, the Software Product Certi�cation scheme was initiated under the Malaysia Software Testing Hub (MSTH) initiative, the Software Product Certi�cation scheme is foreseen to give a boost to Malaysia's software industry, particularly to companies keen to export

Trial Phase for Software Certi�cation Scheme

The WG26 team: Delegates in the Working group 26, which met to deliberate on the four parts of ISO/IEC 29119 Standards, shares some light moments to pose for the camera

their software and/or software-enabled products.

The certi�cation, which is based on internationally-recognised standards, is

expected to boost customers’ con�dence on the quality of made-in-Malaysia software products and consequently, help improve marketability of the products, both domestically and internationally.

Team e�orts: Participants deliberating a point during a facilitated workshop session aimed at re�ning various components of the Software product Certi�cation scheme

0

5

10

15

20

25

30

35

UMP UTM UTeM UNIKL UNITEN

16

29

2225

7

4

2

8 4

1

No of unsuccessful candidates

No of successful candidates

Academic Outreach

The MSTH Academic Outreach’s Pilot programme with local universities continues to show good results in terms of the passing rates for students who sat for CTFL certi�ca-tion examination. To date, 118 students from �ve of the seven Pilot universities have taken the CTFL examination, with an average passing rate is 84 per cent.

This is infact higher that the national passing rate of 79 per cent recorded for CTFL exami-nation under the more generic Q-Capability Development (Q-CAP) programme, which focuses on certi�cation among working professional in the Public and Private sectors. The global avearge passing rate for CTFL is 60 per cent.

Under the Pilot programme, participating universities have introduced a software testing subject as part of their existing software engineering courses. The subject is based on International Software Testing Quali�cations Board (ISTQB) CTFL syllabus and lecturers are provided with lecture materials developed by the German Testing Board (GTB).

The materials are being used in over 40 universities across Germany under GTB’s supervision.

7BUGFREE / 2012 / VOL 02

Pilot Universities Shine in CTFL Exams

The German Testing Board (GTB), the international collaborator in the MSTH Academic Outreach Pilot programme, will be coming in down to Malaysia for a series of Adjunct Lectures at the Pilot universities this October.

For the visit, GTB has committed a party of �ve, including lead academic Professor Ina Schiefer-decker , to deliver the lectures at the Pilot university. This shall mark another form of contribution by the GTB, which has also provided its CTFL lecture materi-als for use by local universities participating in the Academic Outreach Pilot programme.

In conjunction with the visit, a half-day seminar has also been planned with students and lecturers from all universities in the Klang Valley as the target audience. The seminar is expected to delve into the subject of quality excellence.

Planning for the GTB visit was one of the items discussed at the 4th check-point meeting with the Pilot universities held on May 4, 2012.

At the meeting, UMP, UTM and UTeM presented their feedbacks and (early) lessons learnt based on thier experience and observation in running the CTFL-based software testing lectures.

Lecture Visits by GTB Academia Team

The seven universities participating in the Pilot programme are Universiti Malaysia Pahang (UMP), Universiti Teknologi Malay-sia (UTM), Universiti Malaysia Sarawak (UNIMAS), Universiti Tenaga Nasional

(UNITEN), Universiti Sains Malaysia (USM), Universiti Teknikal Malaysia Melaka (UTeM), Universiti Teknologi Malaysia (UTM) and Universiti Kuala Lumpur (UNIKL).

Enhancing competency: Students from UMP getting set for CTFL exam under the Pilot programme

Common interests: Academic Outreach’s checkpoint meeting in progress

Academic Outreach CTFL Exam Statistics

PRESIDENT’S NOTE

AROUND THE GLOBE

Being a technical discipline, it is given that sound technical skills are a pre-requisite for software testing practitioners. Yet, one needs to know when, where and how to put these skills to work to get the desired results. With exposure and experience, one would be able to get the result, with �nesse.

Of course, I am talking about the ‘art’ in software testing. These are the less de�nite elements in the practice. The soft skills, if you like. As in other technical �elds, one needs to have a balance of both the technical prowess and exceptional soft skills to achieve excellence. It is for this reason that we have chosen ‘The Art of Testing’ as the theme for forthcoming SOFTEC 2012.

There will be a greater emphasis on this not so obvious aspect of the discipline, with the hope that delegates will gain better understanding on the �ner points of testing practices, particu-larly in areas such as testing techniques, e�ective application of the techniques and other soft skills that contribute towards successful testing projects and practices.

It is no secret that this year’s theme for SOFTEC was inspired by Sun Tzu’s The Art of War. If I may pick up a (translated) quote from book: “Strategy without tactics is the slowest route to victory. Tactics without strategy is the noise before defeat” ~ this aptly describes the di�erence that the ‘art’ can makewhen applied in tandem

with the ‘science of software testing.

SOFTEC 2012 will also see the introduction of a colloquium track which will see nine postgraduate research papers on subjects related Software Quality Assurance (SQA) be presented to a review panel compris-ing lecturers from local universities and SOFTEC 2012 speakers.

This marks the �rst time that the local universities participating in the SOFTEC event. I see this as a signi�-cant move towards encourage networking between the academic and the industry. This is indeed one of the positive o�shoots from our continuous interaction with Pilot universities under the Academic Outreach programme.

This is certainly in line with the objective of promoting industry-academia collaboration, particularly in the area of applied research and development undertakings. I hope their participation in SOFTEC will continue and lead to bigger things.

See you at SOFTEC 2012! J

Shooting for Testing Excellence

3BUGFREE / 2012 / VOL 02

Bugged Listing of Facebook Shares

The Nasdaq stock exchange in New York was to o�er cash and rebates totalling $40m (£26m) to compensate clients a�ected by the problems with Facebook's �rst day of share trading in May, 2012

Guardian reported (on June 6, 2012) that Nasdaq would be paying USD14 million its a�ected member �rms and the balance would be credited to members to reduce their trading costs, with all bene�ts expected to be awarded within six months.

In a earlier report by Bloomberg (May 22, 2012), Nasdaq's CEO had blamed "poor design" ” in the software it uses for driving auctions in initial public o�erings for blunder where. shares of Facebook Inc were hit by delays and

mishandled orders on its �rst day of trading.

Public O�er That Was Not

Stock Exchange owner BATS Global Markets was forced to cancelled its own public share auction in March and the company blamed a serious failure in its Initial Public O�ering (IPO) software for the quandary.

Computerworld reported that the glitch at the electronic stock exchange prevented BATS from selling its shares on its own stock exchange, resulting in the cancellation of the IPO.

The glitch also a�ected the listing of Apple shares, which brie�y plummeted by nearly 10 percent.

The problems with the IPO software lasted for several hours overall. While the initial auction of BATS shares worked, the exchange was not then able to allow continuous trading.

BATS insisted that the stock exchange had put the system through "rigorous

Bugs Mean Business (Loss)testing", including several months of internal tests followed by weeks of running it with market participants.

Bug’s Special: Free Smartphone

In what can be regarded as an Anti Climax to a much awaited product launch, Nokia (presumably together with its partners Microsoft and AT&T) ended up ‘giving’ away Lumina 900 Windows-based smart phone for free - thanks to a bug in the software that in�icts serious memory management issue to the phone, resulting in loss of data connectivity. Tha fault was reported to have been discovered two days after the Phone was launched in the US in April, 2012.

While the sofwtare was to be updated, consumers were allowed swap out their Lumia 900. Additionally, anyone who had bought a Lumia 900, or was consid-ering buying one between the launch and April 21, would get a USD100 credited to their AT&T accounts – the same amount of the phone itself, thus making the Nokia Lumia 900 free for those customers.

Like the infamous Murphy's Law, software glitches also seems to have a similar habit of striking during the most critical time or when everything seem to be working perfectly ... right up to the fateful moment .

A couple of such cases were reported over the last few months around the world, causing corporate embarrassment as well as �nancial damages. Here are brief takes on some of the recent cases:

4BUGFREE / 2012 / VOL 02

5BUGFREE / 2011 / VOL 02MSTH Album January - May 2012

Certi�cations

Q-Talk

Academic Outreach Q-Portal Membership Drive

C-Level Meeting Recruitment Drives

Q-Lab Visits

2BUGFREE / 2012 / VOL 02

Q-INDUSTRY

The Q-Industry team hit the road to seek out suitable candidates to take up positions in the Q-Lab. Firts stop was Kota Kinabalu following by Kuching before returning to Kuala Lumpur. Penang was the next destination for the recruitment drive. Due to continuing calls from candidates in Kuala Lumpur, the second drive rwas held in the Capital.

In total, some 150 candidates of varying academic backgrounds and work experiences came for the interviews. The there were two levels of interviews conducted on-site while for senior positions, third level interviews were being arranged.

The recruitment drive is expected to resume in about two months time, with Kuantan and Johor Baru being the destinations.

Intellectual discourse: The C-Level meeting in progress in Kuching, Sarawak on April

MSTB on Recruitment and Awareness CampaignWhile in Kota Kinabalu and Kuching, the team also took the oppor-tunities to spread word on the progress the Malaysia Software Testing Hub (MSTH) and the various programmes and actvities inititiated thus far.

MSTB Director Amiruddin Jaafar Sidek led Q-Talk session in Kota Kinabalu while Q-Lab Senior Manager Azis Bon helmed the session in Kuching.

An Industry Dialogue was also held in Kuching, with participation from representatives from the academic, industry and Sarawak state government. The dialogue delved into various issue relevant to the development of the software testing industry in the Sarawak region.

Industry update: Participants of the Q-Tlak in the Kota Kinabalu being briefed on the progress of MSTH initiative by En Amruddin (inset)

Full concerntration: Candidates taking teh aptitude test during the Kuala Lumpur recruitment drive in May, 2012

6BUGFREE / 2012 / VOL 02

MSTB Joins Review on ISO’s Software Testing Standards

delegation, led by MSTB President Mastura Abu Samah participated in the ISO/IEC 29119 SC 7 Plenary Meeting, which took place from May 21 – 25, 2012 in Jeju, Korea.

Other members of the delegation were Senior Manager Abd Azis Bon, Technical Test Analysts Herman Md Tahir and Muhammad Azam Alias At the meeting, delegates reviewed and deliberated on four parts of ISO/IEC 29119

MSTB continued its active participation in the development of the development of the ISO/IEC 29119 – the new standards for software testing. This is in line with the recent change in Malaysia's membership status from 'O' (Observer) to 'P' (Participative) in the Standard Committee 7 (SC7) which presides over the development of the standards. MSTB is the appointed representative of the Malaysia in SC7.

In the latest development, a four-member

reviewed based on the earlier reviews done by the individual countries (including Malaysia). The working drafts were amended accordingly and they are expected to be converted into �nal drafts for reviews in the next interim and plenary meetings.

The next Interim meeting to be held in Wellington, New Zealand in February, 2013 while the Plenary meeting will take place in Buenos Aires, Argentina in May 2013.

Development of the MSTB Software Product Certi�cation scheme has progressed into the �nal phases and is expected to go into trials in the 3rd quarter on this year. Under the trial phase, the product certi�cation team will carry out certi�cation testing on actual software products.

Certi�cations under the trial phase will adhere to all the required processes, except that they will be without immediate accreditation.

Data collated from the trials will be the basis in accreditation assessment for MSTB as the certifying body (CB) by Standards Malaysia. The Q-Lab, meanwhile, would need to be accredited as the certi�cation laboratory under the scheme.

If all goes well, the scheme would be ready for launch by early 2013.

Based on international standards, the Software Product Certi�cation scheme was initiated under the Malaysia Software Testing Hub (MSTH) initiative, the Software Product Certi�cation scheme is foreseen to give a boost to Malaysia's software industry, particularly to companies keen to export

Trial Phase for Software Certi�cation Scheme

The WG26 team: Delegates in the Working group 26, which met to deliberate on the four parts of ISO/IEC 29119 Standards, shares some light moments to pose for the camera

their software and/or software-enabled products.

The certi�cation, which is based on internationally-recognised standards, is

expected to boost customers’ con�dence on the quality of made-in-Malaysia software products and consequently, help improve marketability of the products, both domestically and internationally.

Team e�orts: Participants deliberating a point during a facilitated workshop session aimed at re�ning various components of the Software product Certi�cation scheme

0

5

10

15

20

25

30

35

UMP UTM UTeM UNIKL UNITEN

16

29

2225

7

4

2

8 4

1

No of unsuccessful candidates

No of successful candidates

Academic Outreach

The MSTH Academic Outreach’s Pilot programme with local universities continues to show good results in terms of the passing rates for students who sat for CTFL certi�ca-tion examination. To date, 118 students from �ve of the seven Pilot universities have taken the CTFL examination, with an average passing rate is 84 per cent.

This is infact higher that the national passing rate of 79 per cent recorded for CTFL exami-nation under the more generic Q-Capability Development (Q-CAP) programme, which focuses on certi�cation among working professional in the Public and Private sectors. The global avearge passing rate for CTFL is 60 per cent.

Under the Pilot programme, participating universities have introduced a software testing subject as part of their existing software engineering courses. The subject is based on International Software Testing Quali�cations Board (ISTQB) CTFL syllabus and lecturers are provided with lecture materials developed by the German Testing Board (GTB).

The materials are being used in over 40 universities across Germany under GTB’s supervision.

7BUGFREE / 2012 / VOL 02

Pilot Universities Shine in CTFL Exams

The German Testing Board (GTB), the international collaborator in the MSTH Academic Outreach Pilot programme, will be coming in down to Malaysia for a series of Adjunct Lectures at the Pilot universities this October.

For the visit, GTB has committed a party of �ve, including lead academic Professor Ina Schiefer-decker , to deliver the lectures at the Pilot university. This shall mark another form of contribution by the GTB, which has also provided its CTFL lecture materi-als for use by local universities participating in the Academic Outreach Pilot programme.

In conjunction with the visit, a half-day seminar has also been planned with students and lecturers from all universities in the Klang Valley as the target audience. The seminar is expected to delve into the subject of quality excellence.

Planning for the GTB visit was one of the items discussed at the 4th check-point meeting with the Pilot universities held on May 4, 2012.

At the meeting, UMP, UTM and UTeM presented their feedbacks and (early) lessons learnt based on thier experience and observation in running the CTFL-based software testing lectures.

Lecture Visits by GTB Academia Team

The seven universities participating in the Pilot programme are Universiti Malaysia Pahang (UMP), Universiti Teknologi Malay-sia (UTM), Universiti Malaysia Sarawak (UNIMAS), Universiti Tenaga Nasional

(UNITEN), Universiti Sains Malaysia (USM), Universiti Teknikal Malaysia Melaka (UTeM), Universiti Teknologi Malaysia (UTM) and Universiti Kuala Lumpur (UNIKL).

Enhancing competency: Students from UMP getting set for CTFL exam under the Pilot programme

Common interests: Academic Outreach’s checkpoint meeting in progress

Academic Outreach CTFL Exam Statistics

PRESIDENT’S NOTE

AROUND THE GLOBE

Being a technical discipline, it is given that sound technical skills are a pre-requisite for software testing practitioners. Yet, one needs to know when, where and how to put these skills to work to get the desired results. With exposure and experience, one would be able to get the result, with �nesse.

Of course, I am talking about the ‘art’ in software testing. These are the less de�nite elements in the practice. The soft skills, if you like. As in other technical �elds, one needs to have a balance of both the technical prowess and exceptional soft skills to achieve excellence. It is for this reason that we have chosen ‘The Art of Testing’ as the theme for forthcoming SOFTEC 2012.

There will be a greater emphasis on this not so obvious aspect of the discipline, with the hope that delegates will gain better understanding on the �ner points of testing practices, particu-larly in areas such as testing techniques, e�ective application of the techniques and other soft skills that contribute towards successful testing projects and practices.

It is no secret that this year’s theme for SOFTEC was inspired by Sun Tzu’s The Art of War. If I may pick up a (translated) quote from book: “Strategy without tactics is the slowest route to victory. Tactics without strategy is the noise before defeat” ~ this aptly describes the di�erence that the ‘art’ can makewhen applied in tandem

with the ‘science of software testing.

SOFTEC 2012 will also see the introduction of a colloquium track which will see nine postgraduate research papers on subjects related Software Quality Assurance (SQA) be presented to a review panel compris-ing lecturers from local universities and SOFTEC 2012 speakers.

This marks the �rst time that the local universities participating in the SOFTEC event. I see this as a signi�-cant move towards encourage networking between the academic and the industry. This is indeed one of the positive o�shoots from our continuous interaction with Pilot universities under the Academic Outreach programme.

This is certainly in line with the objective of promoting industry-academia collaboration, particularly in the area of applied research and development undertakings. I hope their participation in SOFTEC will continue and lead to bigger things.

See you at SOFTEC 2012! J

Shooting for Testing Excellence

3BUGFREE / 2012 / VOL 02

Bugged Listing of Facebook Shares

The Nasdaq stock exchange in New York was to o�er cash and rebates totalling $40m (£26m) to compensate clients a�ected by the problems with Facebook's �rst day of share trading in May, 2012

Guardian reported (on June 6, 2012) that Nasdaq would be paying USD14 million its a�ected member �rms and the balance would be credited to members to reduce their trading costs, with all bene�ts expected to be awarded within six months.

In a earlier report by Bloomberg (May 22, 2012), Nasdaq's CEO had blamed "poor design" ” in the software it uses for driving auctions in initial public o�erings for blunder where. shares of Facebook Inc were hit by delays and

mishandled orders on its �rst day of trading.

Public O�er That Was Not

Stock Exchange owner BATS Global Markets was forced to cancelled its own public share auction in March and the company blamed a serious failure in its Initial Public O�ering (IPO) software for the quandary.

Computerworld reported that the glitch at the electronic stock exchange prevented BATS from selling its shares on its own stock exchange, resulting in the cancellation of the IPO.

The glitch also a�ected the listing of Apple shares, which brie�y plummeted by nearly 10 percent.

The problems with the IPO software lasted for several hours overall. While the initial auction of BATS shares worked, the exchange was not then able to allow continuous trading.

BATS insisted that the stock exchange had put the system through "rigorous

Bugs Mean Business (Loss)testing", including several months of internal tests followed by weeks of running it with market participants.

Bug’s Special: Free Smartphone

In what can be regarded as an Anti Climax to a much awaited product launch, Nokia (presumably together with its partners Microsoft and AT&T) ended up ‘giving’ away Lumina 900 Windows-based smart phone for free - thanks to a bug in the software that in�icts serious memory management issue to the phone, resulting in loss of data connectivity. Tha fault was reported to have been discovered two days after the Phone was launched in the US in April, 2012.

While the sofwtare was to be updated, consumers were allowed swap out their Lumia 900. Additionally, anyone who had bought a Lumia 900, or was consid-ering buying one between the launch and April 21, would get a USD100 credited to their AT&T accounts – the same amount of the phone itself, thus making the Nokia Lumia 900 free for those customers.

Like the infamous Murphy's Law, software glitches also seems to have a similar habit of striking during the most critical time or when everything seem to be working perfectly ... right up to the fateful moment .

A couple of such cases were reported over the last few months around the world, causing corporate embarrassment as well as �nancial damages. Here are brief takes on some of the recent cases:

8BUGFREE / 2012 / VOL 02

Editor-in-Chief: Mastura Abu SamahTechnical Advisor: Amiruddin Jaafar SidekEditor: A. Shukor RahmanCreative Director: Badrulhisyam Abu BakarEditorial Contact: bugfree@mstb.org

Malaysian Software Testing Board (MSTB) (822609-W)A member of International Software Testing Qualifications Board (ISTQB)Lot G-2, Jalan Kenari 12B,Bandar Puchong Jaya,47100 Puchong,Selangor Darul EhsanTel: +603-80763579 Fax: +603-80750334

EDITORIAL BOARD

Q-Laboratory

EDITORIAL BOARD

The Q-Laboratory moved up the scale on the maturity of is de�ned processes as the facility obtained the Test Maturity Model Integra-tion (TMMi) Level 3 accreditation last April, putting it on the same rank as only a handful of testing facilities around the globe that have achieved similar accreditation.

The TMMi Level 3 accreditation essentially certi�es international standards conformance of Q-Lab’s capability in both testing and quality-related processes. The achievement certainly gives the lab a major boost in its stride towards earning a global recognition as a top-tier testing facility.

The Level 3 accreditation for the Q-Lab came about �ve months after its obtained Level 2 accreditation, earlier that expected. The assessment for accreditation of the Q-Lab was carried out by Experi-mentus Ltd, a United Kingdom-based acrredited TMMi assessor. The same company aso did the Level 2 assessment.

Over the months of April and May, the teams at the Q-Lab have had their hands full and the they helmed multiple workshop/ tutorial sessions for groups coming from, UNITEN, UNIKL, UTeM, UM and INTAN. The sessions were held to help the groups prepare for their professional certi�cation examinations.

The Q-Lab also welcomed business visitors in the form of Joota, Dong Energy and ACN Systems Solution. Representatives from the companies were visiting the lab to explore business propositions as well as get see for themselves various testing tools and other facilities available at the Q-Lab.

Visitors at Q-Lab

PRINTER: BAKTI TULIN SDN. BHD. (Reg: 475327-T) NO.29A, 31, 41 & 43, JALAN BRUNEI BARAT, OFF JALAN PUDU, 55100 KUALA LUMPUR. TEL : 603-2148 2557

Review session in progress: TMMi Level 3 accreditation ensures greater consitency of quality and performance across the organisation

“I believe that we have been able to get to Level 3 in a fairly short time because the Q-Lab has been putting emphasis on establishing industry’s Best Practices for testing and quality processes based on international standards, right from the start.

“Our team’s prior experience in implementing the Capability Maturity Model Integration (CMMi) practices, on which TMMi is based on, was also a contributing factor to this signi�cant achieve-ment,” said Q-Lab Director Amiruddin Jaafar Sidek.

As de�ned under TMMi Framework, organisations at level 3 under-stand the importance of reviews in quality control; a formal review programme is and reviews take place across the lifecycle. Test professionals are involved in reviews of requirements speci�cations. The scope of the standards, process descriptions, and procedures are tailored from the organisation’s set of standard processes to suit a particular project or organisational unit, thus, ensuring greater consistency of quality and performance across the organisations.

Being on par with, if not better than, the world’s best testing facilities, is one of the key aspirations outlined in the Malaysia Software Testing Hub (MSTH) initiative, which aims to transform Malaysia into a preferred global destination for outsourced software testing services, focusing on high-end and strategic testing projects.

From the onset, the Q-Lab was designed to cater for high-end testing jobs both domestically and internationally, with capacity to run multiple testing projects parallelly.

The Q-Lab is also intended to set the benchmark for testing capabil-ity for Malaysian organisations keen on venturing into provision of testing services.

Since o�cially opening its door in 2010, the facility has been receiv-ing streams of domestic and internationall visitors comprising potential customers from the private and public sectors, as well as academic institutions.

Getting practical: Participants from INTAN (picture on the left) giving full attention at thier workshop session while visitors from Dong Energy (picture on the right) get briefed in Q-Lab matters during their facility tour

Q-Lab Moves Up to TMMi Level 3