While surfing the DELL laptops website today came through the statement (refer the image): Media cards are inserted and removed 2000 times to ensure they work for you all the time.
On looking at the above image the key term which stroked my mind was Reliability. Usually reliability is defined as the ability of a system or component or device to perform its required functions under stated conditions for a specified period of time
In one of my earlier projects I and my team were about to qualify a few USB ports present in mid-sized digital video recorder hardware. When we started testing we were not sure how to test or confirm the reliability of those two devices since there were no explicit requirements stated and the one liner requirement was USB port should be working fine for the end user. But while qualifying we have tested the USB ports by inserting USB sticks and checking whether the sticks are identified by the hardware and the reliability of this behavior was tested by us by continuously doing this test for 30 times since exhaustive testing like qualifying this behavior for more than 1000 or 10000 times and that too by manually is practically impossible and tedious. But we have not failed to mention these 30 successful attempts with the results in the test report to keep the stakeholders well aware of this.
But, as a tester, the answers to be still looked for the following questions
1. Whether the card was inserted 2000 times for testing? What about other physical sample of cards?
2. Whether the same card was inserted 2000 times continuously? What was the frequency? Every 5 minues/30 minutes/1 hour?
3. Whether the card of one particular capacity (1 GB/2 GB/etc) was inserted and tested? What about other capacity cards? Whether those cards also tested 2000 times?
4. Whether the card of one particular manufacturer (Transcend/xxxx Company) was tested? What about the cards from other manufacturers?
5. Whether all different types like SD/MicroSD/miniSD/MMC and any other available standard cards tested?
If we try to find out answers to all the above questions by doing testing of all the above points, we are sure we need to spend lot of effort and time which adds to a huge cost. But without having the results of all above tests none can claim the reader is 100% reliable.
So then how to believe the reliability of a device/gadget? This question cannot get answer easily since even no normal human being knows how many more days in general he can live further in this world and reliability is one such thing according to me.
On looking at the above image the key term which stroked my mind was Reliability. Usually reliability is defined as the ability of a system or component or device to perform its required functions under stated conditions for a specified period of time
In one of my earlier projects I and my team were about to qualify a few USB ports present in mid-sized digital video recorder hardware. When we started testing we were not sure how to test or confirm the reliability of those two devices since there were no explicit requirements stated and the one liner requirement was USB port should be working fine for the end user. But while qualifying we have tested the USB ports by inserting USB sticks and checking whether the sticks are identified by the hardware and the reliability of this behavior was tested by us by continuously doing this test for 30 times since exhaustive testing like qualifying this behavior for more than 1000 or 10000 times and that too by manually is practically impossible and tedious. But we have not failed to mention these 30 successful attempts with the results in the test report to keep the stakeholders well aware of this.
But, as a tester, the answers to be still looked for the following questions
1. Whether the card was inserted 2000 times for testing? What about other physical sample of cards?
2. Whether the same card was inserted 2000 times continuously? What was the frequency? Every 5 minues/30 minutes/1 hour?
3. Whether the card of one particular capacity (1 GB/2 GB/etc) was inserted and tested? What about other capacity cards? Whether those cards also tested 2000 times?
4. Whether the card of one particular manufacturer (Transcend/xxxx Company) was tested? What about the cards from other manufacturers?
5. Whether all different types like SD/MicroSD/miniSD/MMC and any other available standard cards tested?
If we try to find out answers to all the above questions by doing testing of all the above points, we are sure we need to spend lot of effort and time which adds to a huge cost. But without having the results of all above tests none can claim the reader is 100% reliable.
So then how to believe the reliability of a device/gadget? This question cannot get answer easily since even no normal human being knows how many more days in general he can live further in this world and reliability is one such thing according to me.
