What is in your toolbox??

I often get the questions by my peers on what do I use for different kinds of QA related activities. So here are a few tools that I use. Hope this helps you.

Test Prep
During test preparation I often use CTE XL. This is Classification Tree Tool. This is a nice and simple way to lay out all your objects and classes and easily come up with your test cases. It can export to different format. I usually just export the test cases to an excel spreadsheet.

Another way to prepare a test is by doing a mind map. A good free tool to use is FreeMind.This is free easy tool to do your mind mapping documents.

In testing, I am usually face to creating data that I need to enter in the systems. And at times, I feel like I keep using the data over and over and over. So a tool that I found that helped me with generating test data is generatedata. Before you can use this, you need to set up a couple of stuff before hand.

Testing
Some quick automation tool, I use WatiJ(pronounced as wattage). It stands for Web Application Testing In Java. I don't have a lot of experience using java, but I found it easy enough to use referring to te API documentation. This needs a java ide. I really like IntelliJ and Eclipse. IntelliJ is not a free application while Eclipse is a Free application. Watij is a free software, so help is a little bit limited. There is a good user group that is really helpful.

Another good automated testing tool is QuickTest Pro from HP. This is a commercial so support is really good. I recommend this software to 2 of the companies i had work for. And for both times, it has really worked great. I would not recommend this for smaller companies as it can be expensive if not use wisely.

Another free tool that I use is Fitnesse. Now this tool is a bit tricky. Cause the whole organization should commit to using this to be successful. This needs some time from the development team as well to do the the Fitnesse Fixtures in the code base.

For testing the UI of a web page, I often use IETester. This allows you to switch easily from different Internet Explorer versions.

Some outcomes for testing is a big text file. And often, to test the outcome is to compare 2 text files. A good tool to use is WinMerge.