Testing in DarkAges!

After a long time..

I haven't got the opportunity to update my blog for many months. I got entangled in changing jobs, relocation from England to Hong Kong and sorting the property & money matters. Well, I made some big payments against my home morgage from my relocation allowances. No kidding! It's been vwery hectic flying back & forth, though.

Unfortunately after moving to Hong Kong, my only oppotunity to access to my blog was revoked by the site owners. Due to increasing spam & hacking attacks, they do not want any traffic from Hong Kong & China. Believe me, I am not one of those spammers or hackers. Well!

From testing perspective, last two years have been very challanging. I was a paradigm shift from retail to aviation. From a Programme Test Manager role to a Enterprise Testing Lead role. While the first one was more focussed on stakeholder management, revenue, budgets & profit margins; the latter is purely delivery focussed. Speaking of Retail & Aviation, the mind set is totally different in both areas. Context gets absolutely changed when you start working for an airline, especially on airline operations projects where safety & accuracy is the top most priority. I will write more about my current experience, but this post is more about introspection and retrospection.

Moving to Hong Kong was a difficult and daring decision. It could have gone wrong. I am thankful to my guardian angels that everything seems good thus far. I am earning well and saving more money (Dear Boss, if you are reading this, please ignore. My request for a raise is still valid.), I have made more friends, I have enjoyed holidays of two 'New Years' and the Chinese New Year gave me good time off with almost a week of holidays.

Food was, and is, definitely a major attraction for me in Hong Kong.

Empower your tester

Empower your tester!

You must be thinking what I mean by that. Or some of you must be willing to tell me that they already do it by delegating tasks to their testers. Some test managers would add that their testers actually prepare test plans or at least assist them in this, define scenarios and own test execution. And this is exactly where I think is the problem exists.

I will explain what I mean, but before that I would like to share a discussion I had with one of the test analysts in my group. This test analyst seemed frustrated and wanted to talk to me. I assumed that he already had spoken to his test manager, who reported into me. He mentioned that he was tired and sick of what he was doing because it was very boring, monotonous and uninteresting work. I asked him what he was doing and what actually he wanted to do. He said that he helped his manager in writing the test plan, prepared test data, defined test scenarios and wrote & assisted other testers in writing test cases. While there was so much of delegation, he did not feel empowered for these tasks became repetitive for him.

What did I suggest to him? I suggested him to focus on the planning & strategy part, as it was an opportunity for him to learn how to run the game. I also asked him to automate the most boring stuff. He smiled, seemed content and returned to his desk.

I did speak to his test manager, but that is another story. What I meant in the beginning of this post is, that we must empower our resources about thinking what they can do better and where they can focus. I don't say that automation is the answer to all the problems; all I say is that as leaders we will have to look for the ways to bring in the creativity in their testers. In  this case, a simple script and some Excel macros resolved the problem. I was not surprized when this tester came back in couple of days with a short script that made his job simple.

Testing was always creative. We just have to keep the spirits alive.

Bug in the men's room

I was in the Men's room. When I pulled c-fold towel from the dispenser, my friend who was also there (not incidentally, but for the same cause for which I was there. hehe!), said,"you know what, one of the testers in this world has questioned the functioning of this dispenser. There is no system that you always pull just one towel. Sometimes you pull one, and sometimes you pull more than one. So, it's a bug."

His, or the other tester's observation made me thinking. Is it actually a defect or not? Initially, I kind of accepted it. But later, when I considered the business point of view, I thought otherwise. Do you think that a world class company can be so dumb not to think of this scenario? They must have used this system atleast a hundred times before launching it in the market and out of those hundred times, they must have pulled more than one towel at least couple of times. Isn't it? Then why did they miss this 'defect'?

I honestly believe it was/is a deliberate defect. Think about it. Businesses run for profit. And all businesses run by rotating their money. There are also interdependencies on other businesses. Now, if they would have made the system fool-proof, every time someone pulled a towel, s/he would have got just one towel. This would have reduced the consumption of towels and might have hit the business of towel making company. Does it make sense?

I will not go into the ethics or no ethics. I am just being impartial.

it's been a long time..

It's been a long time I have posted an entry either at my blog or at the forum. I have been so much busy with my assignments that it had not left time for any of these activities. I feel bad of not doing what I enjoy.

I try to ensure is testing freedom / independence. There is no harm in making sure that testing team is independent of any influences and they follow the guidelines of the testing policy of the testing service.

I must ensure that delivery chain understands the processes and flow of procedures. How can we forget continuous improvement, value add, innovation and drive-change? Obviously that is expected from my role. Further, the expectation is to ensure effective utilization of test environments, resources, licences across the portfolio. Costs need to be justified all the time. Investments in trainings or conferences are a no-no, which is not in black & white, though.

The unwritten rules also include people management, risk management, atttrition, resource planning, team building and mentoring.

There have been hiccups, but I have proved it a success in the last many months. I think most important is, I want to do justice with my personal life, with my family and with myself, for which I am striving hard!

Exploratory testing

After a long time, I revisited the link from my favorites:

http://www.satisfice.com/kaner/?p=42

This is how we defined exploratory testing: "Exploratory software testing is a style of software testing that emphasizes the personal freedom and responsibility of the individual tester to continually optimize the value of her work by treating test-related learning, test design, test execution, and test result interpretation as mutually supportive activities that run in parallel throughout the project.”

Practically speaking, how many of us get the personal freedom to continually optimize the value of our work? We work with limitations and within boundaries of completing the work in squeezed timelines & budgets. Neither do we question the practice that has been running for many many years now.

In one of my older posts, I mentioned testers being idiots. During those days, I mentioned the same post in many of the meetings, testing discussions, other forums etc.  I hate to say this, but even after a long time, I hardly find any of the testers I know look for newer, better ways of improving their work.  :-(

GTAC 2009 talks now available

On youtube..

Customer is kid!

Last week I attended a three day training on ITIL v3 foundation. The objective was to understand what Service Management is. We had a great trainer in Perry, who knew his stuff well and also knew how to teach grown ups.

The first thing the old man mentioned was that there were some children in the class. When we looked at each other, he added that he would like to see more children in the class and that whether we could bring out the child within. Anyways, the point was, it is easier to teach kids as they do not bring biases, pre-formed views and arguments in the class. I agree with him that there is a child in all of us. (I honestly do not mean that we all are pregnant! heh! Just kidding!)

While we were discussing all this, a thought was running into my mind. Is customer King or Kid?

As customers, we show tantrums, we ask many questions, sometime silly ones too; sometimes we look at things blankly, we have expectations & dmands and we want attention. Isn't it? Isn't this the same behavior kids show? As vendors, we listen to customers' demands. We are supposed to listen to them to keep them happy. Isn't it the same behavior we display with kids and vice versa?

BTW, I honestly believe that kids are kings because you tend to obey what they demand. And then, when they become nasty, we get upset and try to resolve the situation either by talking to them or by getting angry on them. Hah! That's one thing you may not want to do with the customer. However, I am somewhat convinced that the customer is kid!

Testing & IT Magazines

Its been a long time I am reading & referring to Software Testing and other IT magazines in both online and printed formats. I think it would be a good idea if I share this with others. The reason is just not that others will benefit from it; but also that I may get some more names of magazines or other useful resources.

1. Better software magazine: A publication from SQE group, who are better know for their site stickyminds.com 

2. Testing experience: As they call it, 'A magazine fro professional testers", you can find some very good articles in them.

3. Software Quality Professional magazine: This magazine is published by American Society of Quality. It has various references to articles and papers.

4. Software Test and Performance Magazine: Published by BZ Media, this magazine focuses on Testing & Performance Testing. One can also download articles & white papers from here.

5. Quality Matters: They mention on their website that "Quality Matters is the first magazine in the area of Software Testing and Software Quality based in South East Europe."

6. Professional Tester: An English-language quarterly magazine targeting professional testers of software worldwide. Offers online articles, jobs, information about testing companies and event calendar..

7. T.E.S.T. Magazine: Available in both print & digital formats, it is a good magazine to read about testing.

8. Quality Magazine: There is a lot available in this magazine, provided you try to look.

There are many more magazines available for testers. But as I said, I am sharing only those which I check out.

Apart from these, there is one more that I refer to and that is TechRepublic, as it keeps me connected to the other world of IT.

Is formal testing education required?

Here are the excerpt of a discussion between a Test Manager (TM) and his subordinate (TE):

TM: So, you have been in testing for last many years?

TE: Yes. More than four years.

TM: Good. Do you read books on testing?

TE: Why?

TM: To get testing knowledge?

TE: Well, I think I've got enough testing knowledge by working in this field.

TM: Ummm, do you have a formal education or training in software testing?

TE: No. But I read a chapter on Software Testing during my graduation.

TM: Don't you think one should have formal training or education on testing? Or, that one should read at least some well recognized testing books?

TE: (smiles and leaves).

...and the question on formal software testing education remains unanswered.

Let me tell you that this discussion was not hypothetical. Testing education is still considered as a non-essential item by the academics and the indsutry. Except from CSTER, which had support from Florida Tech, I never heard of any other institute having testing in their course curriculum. Please correct me if I am wrong.

You may refer me to some of the companies which provide software testing trainings and certifications. Do you think those are dedicated to training & education, or they are doing it for making profits? I am not against making money, but the objective of education simply gets lost as soon as you focus on money matters.

Software Testing is a prominent field these days and in my opinion, we must seriously look at the need of proper education in this area too. For any computer science course, alongwith software programming, software testing should be added as subjects. Testing Courses must be designed at various levels. And this can happen only when industry starts asking for such people.

Testers are Idiots

If you read SDTimes, you might have read this story too. (Read full story at http://www.sdtimes.com/link/31789). They published it in March, 2008 and it was based on the assertions from audience of FutureTest conference (www.futuretest.net). The editor mentioned few assertions from audience like:

Testers are idiots. The practice of testing offers no innovation. Testing is boring, manual and repetitive. It’s not a career. Testers aren’t as smart as developers. They’re nitpicky, pencil-pushing quality/process geeks. They’re beside the point and are easily replaced. Testing is not a career; it’s a necessary evil between application users and the brilliance of developers.

So, why am I remebering this story after more than a year of this conference. Because, it reminds me of the punch line, Testers are idiots.

I wrote in one of my previous entries that we miss innovation in testing. Don't you think it is true in some sense? What additional have you done that was different than your usual way of work? Have you ever thought beyond Automation whenever someone mentioned 'innovation in testing'? Why is it that we testers only think of usage of commercial tools and processes when it comes to innovation? Do we lack innovation in testing? Are testers really idiots?

I, somehow, think it is not totally true. There are innovators in testing too. Unfortunately the number doesn't seem that big, though.

Testing is not boring, repetitive and just manual. I as a tester take interest in testing; I try to reduce number of defects by this repetitive process and I do try to automate the repetitive processes. Depending solely on certain commercially available tools may not be right, though.

Testing is very much a career. Would you like to travel in a plane which has not been tested for? Isn't it that because of some of us testers, many lives are saved? If I do not choose this career, will you be so sure of using medical equipments in the hospitals?

Agreed, some of us are nitpicky, pencil-pushing geeks. But you can find same breed in other areas too. Why just testing?

I know we lack innovation. There aren't many innovative ideas floating around in the testing hemisphere. But this is not an imperfection. We are living happily with t. And we are also trying to make it better. Ain’t you agree?