Unraveling the TSO500 Workflow: A Deep Dive into TSO500 Workflow Verification

As a software tester in the genomic healthcare technology field, my responsibility is to ensure the smooth functioning of the TruSight Oncology 500 (TSO500) workflow. This involves overseeing the journey of genetic data from the initial sample processing to the generation of comprehensive health reports, using pre-existing sequencing data. My goal is to clarify the process and highlight the critical steps, particularly the seamless integration of data into the Pierian system.

The Initial Phase: Accessioning and Plasma Batch Creation

The process begins with "accessioning," where each blood sample is meticulously cataloged with a unique identifier. This step is akin to assigning a library card to every book, ensuring each sample can be tracked throughout its journey. Although I work with pre-existing sequencing data, I simulate this step to maintain the integrity of the workflow. Following accessioning, we proceed to create plasma batches. While the lab's capacity allows for up to 192 samples in a single run, my testing typically involves 2 to 4 batches. This scaled-down approach enables me to concentrate on the system's efficiency and accuracy in a more controlled environment.

The Role of DRAGEN: A Black Box in the Workflow

DRAGEN (Dynamic Read Analysis for GENomics) is a key component in the analysis of genetic data, known for its speed and accuracy. However, as a software tester, I do not verify the data analysis within DRAGEN. Instead, my role is to ensure that the data reaches the Pierian system correctly. DRAGEN remains a black box to us, meaning we trust the analysis conducted by DRAGEN without direct verification.

Ensuring Data Integrity and Workflow Efficiency

My primary focus is on the following stages:

• Data Analysis: While I don't verify the data analysis within DRAGEN, I monitor the workflow to ensure that the data is being processed and sent out correctly.
• Data Transfer: A critical part of my role is to confirm the successful transfer of data from the DRAGEN platform to the Pierian Clinical Genomics Workspace, maintaining the integrity of the genetic information.
• 
  Report Generation: I evaluate the Pierian platform's ability to produce comprehensive and actionable health reports from the analyzed data.

Integrating Comprehensive Insights: Beyond TSO500

Once the Pierian report is finalized, it is sent to our order management system, where it is merged with other test reports, such as AR-v7 or DefineMBC. These additional tests provide a broader view of the patient's genomic profile, enhancing the personalized care approach.

AR-v7 is a critical test for metastatic prostate cancer, indicating resistance to specific treatments.

DefineMBC offers a comprehensive profile of metastatic breast cancer, analyzing circulating tumor cells (CTCs) and cell-free DNA (cfDNA) to detect genomic alterations that guide personalized treatment strategies.

Conclusion

My role in testing the TSO500 workflow is crucial for ensuring the workflow's accuracy and reliability. By monitoring each step and confirming seamless integration with PierianDx, we help ensure that the platform delivers clinically actionable insights essential for personalized patient care. This blog post aims to provide a clear understanding of the complex process of turning DNA data into a health report from a software tester's perspective, emphasizing the operational side of the workflow and the importance of data integrity in the overall process.

Pitch Perfect or Out of Bounds? A Gamer's Review of Cricket 22 on Switch

Hey fellow cricket enthusiasts and gamers! I've been diving into the digital pitch of Cricket 22 on my Nintendo Switch, and let me tell you, it's been quite the adventure. From the roar of the crowd to the crack of the bat, this game brings the excitement of cricket right to your fingertips. But no game is without its quirks, and I'm here to give you the scoop on what's hot and what's not in Cricket 22.

Test Environment:

• Console: Nintendo Switch
• Version: 1.0.0

Courtesy: Big Ant Studios

My Game Plan:

I mixed up my gameplay with a bit of everything – career mode, quick matches, and the thrill of online challenges. I also put on my detective hat, using some smart testing strategies to really get into the nitty-gritty of the game.

The Detective Work:

•  Boundary Value Analysis: Pushing the game to its limits, I tested everything from epic high scores to the nail-biting finishes.
• Error Guessing: I tried to outsmart the game, predicting where it might trip up, like when I sneak in a quick single or push for a risky double.
• Equivalence Partitioning: I played with all sorts of deliveries and batting shots to see if the game could handle my all-rounder skills.
• State Transition Testing: I switched things up, hopping between game modes and saving my progress to test the game's versatility.
• Exploratory Testing Charter: I zeroed in on specific features like career mode, responsiveness, and those all-important graphics.

Courtesy: Big Ant Studios

The Good, The Bad, and The Glitchy:

What I Loved:

Cricket 22 really does bring the stadium home, with a stellar lineup of teams and competitions. The controls are intuitive, making batting and bowling feel like second nature.

What Needs Work:

1. Career Mode Hurdles: Ever dreamt of leading your team to glory? Well, you might hit a snag. Sometimes your created player just doesn't make the cut for the match lineup, leaving you benched and missing out on the XP action.
2. Batsman Blues: When it comes to quick runs, every second counts. But sometimes, our virtual batsmen seem to be stuck in the mud, leading to some frustrating run-outs.
3. Visuals That Don't Bowl You Over: We all love a game that looks as good as it plays, but Cricket 22's graphics might leave you wanting more, especially when compared to other sports games out there.

The Game Changers:

1. The Infamous System Crash: Imagine this- you've just downloaded some cool extra content, and you're ready to play, but then – bam! – the game crashes, and all that new content vanishes into thin air, along with your precious game data.
2. Player Info Mix-up: You're all set to play as your favorite star, but wait a minute – the stats are all wrong! Yep, some of the player info is about as accurate as a blindfolded umpire's LBW decision.

Wrapping Up:

Cricket 22 has the makings of a great game, but it's like a promising innings cut short by a few unforced errors. The biggies? That dreaded system crash and the player info errors. But hey, nothing that can't be fixed with a bit of elbow grease from the devs.

My Two Cents:

• Let's get those system crashes sorted, pronto!
• A little fact-checking goes a long way – let's update those player stats.
• And while we're at it, a graphics polish wouldn't hurt.

So, what do you think? Have you faced similar issues, or has your experience been smooth sailing? Drop your thoughts and let's chat about all things Cricket 22. Until then, keep your eye on the ball and your gaming spirits high!

Nokia N8: Is it really accessible? Find yourself

This report might concern to some people same as it initially did to my dear friend and very good tester Santhosh Tuppad -Why am I testing and writing a report for a phone which is ousted from the market? The simple reason is that I currently own only this phone and I don’t have any other option until it stops working or I loose it somewhere or somebody gifts me a latest phone. 

I have Nokia N8 with me since last two years but it was first time when I tested it from accessibility point of view - The reason is my current interest in the area of accessibility testing.

(Image Credits: http://www.livechennai.com)

Before moving to my report, I would like to share brief history of Nokia N8: (Credits: Wikipedia)

The Nokia N8 is a touchscreen-based smartphone developed by Nokia. The Nokia N8 is the first device to run on the Symbian^3 mobile operating system and Nokia's flagship device of 2010. The N8 became the product with the most customer pre-orders in Nokia's history up to the point of its release and sales in Q4 2010 have been estimated to be almost 4 million. The N8 has a capacitive touchscreen and the first Nokia phone with multi-touch.

Believing the numbers it can be interpreted that it was one of popular phones from Nokia so this report might interest to many mobile testers and phone users.

For ease of understanding, I have divided my reports into three zones: Red, Yellow and Green. Red zone is danger zone which lists the accessibility issues of the phone. Contrary to Red zone, Green zone is the safest zone which lists the accessibility features. Yellow zone is placed somewhere mid of these two.

Red Zone

No Compatibility for Hearing Aid: One of the biggest drawbacks of Nokia N8 from accessibility  perspective that it doesn’t not provide compatibility with Hearing aids which could have helped user with Hear loss.

Voice Command: Nokia N8’s Voice Command feature seems most problematic area to me. There is no hard button for Voice Command which makes it difficult to use for visually challenged user. Placing a shortcut can’t be helpful as user can not open Voice Command by giving a voice command. Other drawbacks which I noticed are:

• The shortcut buttons are small in size which can make it difficult to use for user with partially eye sight / motor disabilities.
• It has limited functionality. You can use it for single word basic commands, don’t expect much from this.
• The other most irritating feature is that it auto closes after 5 seconds. User needs to enter commands within 5 seconds otherwise ‘Poof’. For a user who stutters (for example, stuttering which causes involuntary silent pauses or blocks) can be quite difficult to use it.

No Stylus: Nokia N8 is delivered without any stylus. A stylus can be useful for the user’s with motor disabilities and not every stylus can be used with Nokia N8 because of Capacitive Touchscreen which requires an electrical conductor such as Human body to send the signal. Such devices need special capacitive stylus to work upon.

No Screen Magnifier: A screen magnifier is a very good and one of essential tools for users with low vision but Nokia N8 is missing it. Although they  have provide Zoomer which have limited functionality  and placed in Yellow Zone.

Yellow Zone

Font Formatting: This is an area which could have been made most useful for users with low eyesight but N8 miserably fails here. N8 has feature to change the font size, which ironically, applicable on text messages only. The other text such as application labels remain same.

Also, user can use only one default font style provided in the phone. I couldn’t find any feature which changes the font style used in the phone.

Zoomer: Nokia provides Zoomer to zoom in the pictures and the text content. That’s all. You are unable to see any icon, it’s not their problem. Their is no feature of screen magnification or resizing the icons.

Screen Reader: There is no default screen reader provided in Nokia N8. Users need to install a 3^rd Party tool if they need one. Thankfully, Nokia N8 has a Message Reader which can read inbox messages for user.

Green Zone

The features listed in green zone might be common to any other smart phone but they definitely need a mention here.

Alert: N8 can alert user in many ways according to user’s preference. It has different alert options like Ringing, Vibrating, Flashing which finally adds some plus points to its credits.

Conversation: Messages are displayed in conversation form. It means a user can view complete conversion made with another user quickly without any hassle. This feature can be useful for users with bad or short term memory.

Help: This is the feature which I liked most about N8. It provides relevant help on every single screen. Help is just one tap away from the user.

Shortcut: Although, this feature doesn’t seem anything special for a smart phone but I believe it as one of the important accessible feature. It helps user to open an application quickly and avoids the longer path. Important feature for users with motor disabilities.

Consistency: The phone has consistent functionality on each screen.

Associating Caller’s Image and Tone: User can associate caller’s image and separate tone with the number which could help user to identify caller easily. The feature can be useful for short term memory and visually challenged users.

Compatible with Text Phones: N8 is compatible with the Text Phones. A text phone can help user to type and read conversation during a call, rather than using speech and hearing communication.

***************************************************************************************

Conclusion: Nokia has provided some basic accessible features in N8 which every other phone in market have. They should give more importance to accessibility and usability in their new upcoming phones if they really want to have an edge over other mobile giants such as Apple or Samsung.

Hope you find this post useful and informative. Please share your feedback in comment section.

Test Report: Tasks

Introduction:

Tasks is a simple To Do manager, using GTK+ and libecal. It eschews complicated features for a simple interface and functionality that does the right thing.

This application is provided by the Ubuntu community.

Objective: To explore the application, review it, list the features and find the issues in the application.

Assign Time: 1 Hr.

Environment: Ubuntu 8.04

This week I tested a small application called 'Tasks'. I start my testing with exploring the application to become familiar with it. The intention was to find the capabilities of the product.

Features: 

• Simple and Easy Interface make it very user friendly. Very easy to use.
• Light Weighted Product, Very low CPU usage

 

• Auto Synchronization if multiple instances are opened
• User can distribute the tasks in different categories. A category name can hold up to 65534 characters.
• Long Task Name is allowed. A Task Name can hold up to 65534 characters.
• The Task can be associated with web address/es if required.
• Tasks are listed in chronological order of Priority – High Priority task displays on top followed by normal and low priority task.

My Findings:

• User is able to uninstall the application without closing it which causes user to use the application after un-installation without any error. Here I assumed un-installation doesn't remove the database from the system. Again installing the application recovers all the task listed before un-installation. It strongen my assumption.
• Allowing the long name for tasks/categories causes the problem sometimes as it expand the dialog boxes and windows out of screen area.

•  Notes Text box is free length text area. Limited input don't cause any harm but if user enters more and more data, the application starts to display strange behavior like all characters disappears, overwriting of characters and finally application crash.

 

• No notification to separate the task on the basis of priority. All tasks looks same. Different color or image notification for each priority can increase the usability.
• The product is stand alone program. A user can use it for personal purpose only. In that case creating tasks for previous date doesn't make any sense to me.

My Review:

Tasks is a very simple and easy to use. The application is very much stable and can be used by anyone in daily life without any problem.

My Doubt: 

Why the max length of the field is set to 65534 and not 65536? Can anyone clear my doubt, please?

WT28 - Session Report

I am a big fan of weekend testing sessions. They give us sufficient feed for our brains to think. The WT community helps the testers to share/gain their knowledge. Testing an application in limited time followed by discussion with other testers really help to boost the confidence of a tester.

Although I am not a regular weekend tester but whenever I get a chance I don't skip the session.

This weekend I was able to attend the session and what a session it was. You can see here how different minds interprets the same thing differently.

Mission: There are three tasks to be completed today.
Time Duration: 1 hour.

Task 1:
Complete the game- http://www.gamesforthebrain.com/game/dragger/
Objective: Send the screenshot where the picture is built right.

Task 2:
Score 90 points in the game:
http://www.gamesforthebrain.com/game/memocoly/
Objective: Send the screenshot.
Checkpoints: URL of the game, IQ Score, "Your solution is right, congratulations! (+10 points)"

Task 3:
Score 50 points in the game:
http://www.gamesforthebrain.com/game/numberhunt/
Objective: Send the screenshot.
Checkpoints: URL of the game, IQ Score, "Your answer xx is right, congratulations! (+10 points) "

My Approach: I have gone through the requirement three times before starting the task. It is must to understand the task very well before starting. Once I understood the task, I started to work on them.

Task 1: It was a jigsaw puzzle. We had to complete an image from the pieces. Although I am not very good in solving the jigsaw puzzle but somehow the task is completed with in a short time.

Once the picture is completed, I took the screenshot as mentioned in the mission.

Task 2: It was a memory game. In this game, we had to memorize the colors and press them in order they appeared. It took me some time to understand the game. We have to score 90 points in the game. Till 40, I did not found any problem but after 40 pts. it was difficult to remember the sequence of color. I tried many times but no success. I thought to use pencil or paper to note down the sequence but I drop the idea as I think it would kill the purpose of game and mission assigned to us.

At this stage I was not sure how much time this task will take to complete, it might possible that I wouldn't be able to complete the task so I moved to task 3 to complete it first.

After completing the task 3, i concentrated on task 2 again and I was able to complete the task with sufficient time remaining in my hands.

Task 3: It was a cake walk for me. This task is about adding the moving numbers. From childhood I used to play with numbers. It was years of practice so I have completed the task in less than 40 seconds.

Although I have completed the mission within 40 minutes but major of my time was spent on memory game.It might means that I don't have good memory, I need to work on improving my memory.

Discussion: As soon as the time is finished, all the tester has stopped to work, although some of the testers were not able to complete the task. It really shows that how honest we testers are ;)

OK, so discussion was the real entertainment. While some testers completed the task by using tools like tamper add-on for mozilla (for jigsaw puzzle), pencil, paper etc (for memocoly game) and they are justifying their point of view with that it was not mentioned in mission that testers are not allowed to use the tools, My point of view was that these tasks were assigned to improve our learning skills. If we are using pencil-paper to note down the sequence of color then how it is helping us to improve the skills. A mission to complete the game has become the debating issue :) we share our views, learn from other testers across the world and then wind up the session.

Learnings:

• Have a doubt, ask questions. Ask as many as you can. This will help to clear the traps.
• Came to know about the tamper data add-on for mozilla firefox. The tamper data can be used to view and modify HTTP/HTTPS headers and post parameters.
• I need to do more practice to improvise my memory skills.

Test Report: KArm

I have been doing the testing since more than two years but I never got a chance to test and desktop application. So I thought to try my hands with desktop applications also. As this is my first chance with testing of desktop application so I would like your suggestions and comments. Your comments will surely help me to improvise.

Here, I would like to share that I usually works on Windows OS and know very little about the Ubuntu which caused me to face few hurdles during testing of the KArm. So, for the time I have limited myself to functionality testing only until I learn the Ubuntu properly.

Now, lets start the testing...

Product Info:

Name: KArm
Version: 1.6.0
Description: KArm is a time tracker for busy people who need to keep track of the amount of time they spend on various tasks.

This package is part of KDE, and a component of the KDE PIM module.
Environment: Ubuntu 8.04

Mission: To test the functionality of the KArm and find the issues in the application.

Date: 27-Feb-2010
Start Time: 11:30 AM
End Time: 01:00 PM

I started my testing with exploring the product so that I could become familiar with the features and functionality of the application. After spending little time with the product, I gain confidence about the product.

After spending 1.5 hrs with the product I found the following issues in the product.

Issues:

• User can create a subtask for a super task. If no super task is there in the tracker, the Sub Task button should remain disabled
• The default 'Detect Desktop as idle' time is set to 15 minutes but user is notify just after 1 minute.
• Unable to launch KArm Handbook
• There is a feature in Help menu called 'What's This?' On clicking this menu item, the cursor is converted in to a question mark (?). When user click this question mark on any button in the standard menu bar or column header, it display the details of that screen element. The feature doesn't display detail for 'Sub Task' button
• User should not be allowed to open the multiple instance of the product.As each instance displays the same task list so there is no use of opening multiple instance.
• Opening the multiple instances also caused the KArm to display different timings of same task.
• If multiple instances of the product is opened, it displays the error of shortage of disk space although there is sufficient disk space.

• While adding/editing a task, the user can enter absolute/relative hours. Here the hours field can accept number up to 9 digits. If user inserts a long digit, it cause the error in time calculation.
• Clock should display whenever it is started by user but the clock displays only if Session Time column is configured to display and user has started the clock.
• Product crashed twice during the testing although I couldn't find out the reason due to lack of time but I hope to find it soon.

Learnings:

Overall it was a good experience to test an application for self confidence and improvisation. Today, I came to know that I lacks in test ideas while testing desktop products. Moreover, I need to learn the Ubuntu to do well with my testing. If a tester is not able to use the environment properly, he could not perform the satisfactory testing of the product.