Intelligent practices of software testing

Intelligent practices of software testing

(This was first published at dev.solita.fi)

Note! I am not using the term “best practice” here. Intelligent practice is something that helps people develop their practices into more suitable for their need. We actually should stop using “best practice” term. Instead we should use whatever helps us solve the problems at hand. The problem solving should come from people and their skills. Influences should be taken from everywhere! Practices should be molded to facilitate problem solving in YOUR context.

Very well. I came up with the following guidelines to help create a better testing environment for me and my colleagues. I am not trying to invalidate your practices that have been found to be best fitting for you. You should keep the practices you deem appropriate for your context. I encourage to revise your practices based on my own findings. It is up to you to change what ever you see reasonable, if anything.

Fight ambiguity with openness and communication

A few examples on ambiguity:

• The (written) requirements are vague and ambiguous at best. Usually they are out of context and/or vacuum packed. I remember ISTQB mentioning that “It is testers’ right to deny ambiguous requirements”. I believe it is the testers’ obligation is to address this as soon as it is found. And by addressing I mean talk with people. “I cannot figure out how the system should work. I found out that it works like this. Is this OK to you? If not, can you help me determine how it should behave?”
• The test cases are not concise. If we are to perform good enough testing we need to do testing. Writing test cases might be testing – executing test steps from a test case might be testing. This all depends on the skills of the tester. If the material we base our testing is poor, we need to be open about it. If we feel that we cannot do good enough testing, something needs to change. That change comes from talking about the issues, being open about the difficulties. 

If something is not clear, make it clearer. Find the information, people, resources that helps you make it clear. Learn from difficulties and be open when you face them. Hiding problems rarely leads to anything positive.

Fight ignorance with eagerness

Ignorance comes in many forms. One can claim she doesn’t know enough about the product to test it. Ignorance might paralyze us. Tasks can be daunting and we might procrastinate because we do not know some specific thing about the subject.

Enter eagerness! Try Proof of Concept type of actions. Try sandboxing the test area. Try having fun. Try getting a group of people who might already know about the domain, the product or the like, and test with them. Try walkthroughs. Try anything and everything to solve the problem. Be eager to to solve issues. If you can't solve them, be eager to get issues solved. Ignoring issues rarely leads to anything positive.

Fight über control with good-enough documentation and reliance to skills

Sometimes the aforementioned (ambiguity and ignorance) might lead into not trusting our ability to do proper testing. That might lead into a form of control that requires a vast amount of documentation and reports. There is a three-fold solution to this, I believe: rightly timed planning, unburdening reporting and reliance to people ability to the best possible job. When it comes to testing, people usually ask for test plans, test task descriptions (of various levels of detail) and test reports.

When doing good testing, it requires some planning to remove inefficiencies. That planning should be done in advance, albeit on a higher level. We must be able to plan our testing while we test, because we learn about the product, the project and everything surrounding us while we test. By timing our planning in sync with our testing, we can react to changes and discoveries more efficiently. The planning should happen as close as possible to the actual execution of the plan. Documents and plans deprecate quickly when new things are added. For example, Rapid Software Testing encourages planning and designing tests during testing. I have found out that a brief planning session before testing session is usually in order to be able to tackle the most important topic during that testing session.

We are chosen to perform the tasks because people expect we can do the task. There is little reason to stupefy the intelligent people that do things for us. Writing test cases, that basically make our brains redundant, is stupefying. In fact, it is stupid to write something that creates stupidity. “Stupid is as stupid does.” In order to be intelligent and harness out intelligent to our testing, it is wiser to write inspiring testing documentation. Missions, threads, ideas, broad descriptions, etc. encourage the use of our brains. I’d say “skill before process” and encourage to constant learning and teaching. Autonomy increases motivation see this post to do the best possible job. Critical thinking enables you to challenge your biases. Lateral thinking helps uncover possible issues. Thinking is the key, not the process or tools.

We also need good reporting off of our testing. Reports may be bug reports, testing transcripts, etc. An important thing to remember here is to focus on relevance and sufficiency of our reporting. The report should be a tool to improve and to facilitate discussion within our testing, development and/or project management. Thus I feel that reporting should be done in ways that support our cause, not because we want reports to begin with. Tools may vary from video recordings and screen captures to notebook scribbles. Anything is fair game as long as it supports the cause.

Fight measuring and quantification with reliance on feelings, observations and communication

Numbers are cryptic. Numbers can be interpreted in as many ways as there are people interpreting. Let’s say we have 100 test cases from which we have run 90. A clueless test manager might say: ”Only 10 more and we’re done”. An intelligent tester might say: “It seems we have 10 scripts to look at, but what else do we need to take into account?” Quantifying test cases (or bugs for that matter) is ridiculous. It is like counting unicorns! How many unicorns can fit into a cubicle?

A better approach to test case counting might be counting the time spent testing. Time is uniform in magnitude. Hour is as long in Finland as it is in New Delhi. What is the size of a test case? Few can tell. Measure what is worth measuring and what is objective.


If this is measuring our progress, how do we measure coverage?

We might want to ask “why we measure coverage” and then choose the metrics based on that. One good coverage indicator is a list of items in the product under test that we have touched. If an area is touched multiple times, we could be fairly certain that it is covered well enough, and we know the areas that are untouched. The human feelings come to play here. If a tester or a developer feels that some area is of poor quality, then we should play that feeling and test that area some more. A test case doesn’t tell how confident the tester is - talking about findings with the stakeholders might demolish the false confidence and lay ground for confidence based on actual findings and behavior.

Whatever you choose as your method of measuring, talk about it. The numbers are devious and one should ALWAYS talk about the coverage and confidence instead of using numbers to /prove/ why something is good. I support creating a measurement strategy that is little or no burden to the actual tester, and then use those findings to steer testing to the right path instead of proving something. Be critical about numbers because they can fool us easily. Be intelligent and critical on what and how to measure.

Summary

To summarize, my intelligent practices for software testing might include the following:

• Fight ambiguity with openness
• Fight ignorance with eagerness
• Fight über control with good-enough documentation and reliance to skills
• Fight measuring and quantification with reliance on feelings, observations

There might be more and I shall keep looking. The most important thing about these practices (or statements or whatever one might call them) is to communicate with people. Discuss your expectations and goals in testing. Discuss procedures and skills, how they can be improved. Whatever challenges you face, communication is the first step to solving the problem. An umbrella practice might go something like this:

• Fight <choose challenges> with <choose solutions> and communication

If you feel I need to clarify some of the practices, give more examples or add a fundamental practice to my list, please drop me a line. I’m more than eager to discuss. ;)

I quit my job, sold my apartment and started doing what I love - TESTING

People might have been wondering (or somewhere deep inside I hope they have) what has been going on in my life. I have been intentionally silent for a while now. I ain't silent no more. I believe the hibernation has been my salvation. I have been able to regain my passion and my confidence. This post is a short review of my year 2014. I'll describe some of the events that changed me and my attitude towards my career. I'll describe what made me lose my passion for a while and what made me regain it.

The beginning of 2014 was tumultuous time for me. I had done the EuroSTAR2013 talk and I was hugely perplexed by the amount of the positive feedback and the intensity of the criticism. I decided it would make sense to lay low for a while and reflect what I had done. I came to understand that I had been flying on my own hype. I didn't deliver what I had promised, I made grand plans and told about them like I had already done them. I needed to set my feet back to the ground. And it was hard.

A lot of personal changes have been happening in the past year. Among the changes a divorce. I now see how much relationships with close ones can affect ones decisions subconsciously. I must say that there were more good times than bad. However the beginning of 2014 set in motion a set of events that lead into my new found passion towards testing and coaching.

I realized during the summer of 2014 that I was utterly and completely isolated and desolated in my home, in a strange city. I cannot say how much of my discomfort came from waxing and waning depression. I do know that after getting out back to my home town, I have felt healthier than ever. So what I did, perhaps on the spur of the moment, I quit my job and moved away from Helsinki. I am actually still trying to sell the apartment I own with my wife, but I live in a 2 bedroom apartment now with my daughter. So basically I packed my things and left.

I was thinking for weeks that I regret the decision, and I might have for a while. Without a job, I found myself in school trying to educate myself with the ins and outs of Pervasive Computing at the Technical University of Tampere. I had some baits in the water waiting for a prospective employer to bite. And when finally Solita decided to give me a chance, I was relieved.

#High6 will be flying at NTD2015 in Tallinn

So, there I was once again, trying to motivate myself to study something that didn't give me the “thrills”. I mean, I like programming and scripting, I like the technology and all. I just… I am a square peg in the round hole, when it comes to formal education. The worst thing is that I keep hearing this “you should really stay in school, cuz you need the degree to get a proper job”. I feel guilty for those kind of comments. The most successful people I know or look up to aren't those who graduated from schools and universities (although they might have degrees), but those who followed their dreams. I know it sounds immature and possibly silly, but I feel I am being made homogeneous in the school.

I have realized my motivation is intrinsic to the core. It is almost narcissistically selfish, but when I follow my own reasons I get results. My motivation, it seems, is pleasure. I want the pleasure of feeling admiration. I want to do things that make me feel good. If I feel bad, I rebel, I fight against the restraints until I depress and collapse. To be able to function, I need to find things that I feel good about.

What happened then was quite miraculous. I started working at Solita to pay my bills and support my mind-numbing studying (which I also sucked at, in addition to despising my inability to study). I was just a consultant (a testing specialist) in a project, trying to find my place and role in the organization. Or that’s what I though. The environment was… magical. It made want to be a beacon of light. I saw people willing to listen to my insight on testing. I saw people seeking my company to chat about some testing problems. I was like “I found my people!”

Me talking about "How to make anyone do anything" at Solita

I've worked there half weeks for two months, until in April I started to do full week. To this day, I have been coaching three all-developer teams to test, manage their testing with Session Based Test Management, and more projects are lining up to use my services. Also I have been able to share my knowledge on coaching for my colleagues, invited to facilitate classes that are still to remain secret. This all and more. This all feels like I have regained my wings and I can fly again.

Long story short, I found my passion I thought I had lost. There is no reason anymore to fly under the radar. 

I'm back - loud and ugly as ever! ;)
- Peksi

Nordic Testing Days 2015 – Conference at a glance

Just to keep the momentum going, I shall tackle the Nordic Testing Days 2015 in a similar manner I did the Let’s Test. I chose the two conferences for they’re close by and I wish I could attend either or both of them this year. The real reason is that I want to keep writing, now that I have momentum. This is

Nordic Testing Days 2015 – Conference at a glance

The Nordic Testing Days 2015 is the fourth of its kind. Having had the privilege to attend the first of its kind as a speaker, I have a special kind of attachment to it. I did a full blown evaluation of the sessions I attended while I was at the conference 2012, but I shan’t do it this time. The conference is a 3 day spectacle with tracks, tutorials, workshops and more. I’ll choose the sessions as follows:

• Choose one session from each day based on my familiarity of the speaker
• Choose one session from each day based on my interest in the title
• Choose one session from each day that I pick randomly

Those should total 9 sessions. I’ll choose 2 random key notes to accompany those.

I will use a heuristic grading system (introduced here) to determine what would be the best session for me. I will grade the stuff with Angry Birds ™ grade – 0-3 stars per area – on five areas:

• Person-to-person (How will the person and his/hers work affect/inspire me or the people I know?), 
• Session value – short time span (How much can I get out of the session tomorrow – next year?), 
• Session value – longs time span (How much can I implement to my work and teach to my colleagues, my community?), 
• Steal-ability (How much of it am I willing to borrow and further develop to make it better and/or mine?), and 
• Challenge-ability (My past knowledge on the topic and my willingness to challenge the session contents.)

Keynotes

Mart Noorma’s “ESTCube-1: Testing in Space”

Intergalactic journey ahead. I would pay money to contribute to something that eventually goes orbiting the Earth. Alas, I cannot yet. Soon, perhaps. I know next to nothing Estonia’s space program, but I think this keynote requires some background checks to be able to get everything out of the keynote. Since I followed Philae landing (they had some Finnish technology there also) I am keen on hearing more on the subject.

I must admit I haven’t heard of Mart Noorma, but I think he’s not that loud on the testing scene. What are the key values here might be the inspiration to reach the stars. The short time value might be high-ish but I cannot see too much long term value in this. I might be the wrong crowd for this session, but I’m expecting inspiration and insight from Mart Koorma.

Although this keynote might be hugely inspirational, I see very little in the light of challenging or stealing ideas. It’s a shame, actually, for I am an avid science follower. The thing is that I might be expecting more of a testing approach to the keynote and less of a technical story. Experience report working in difficult situations is always good, but I don’t see myself as the optimal audience for this.

• Person-to-person: 
• Short time value: **
• Long time value: *
• Steal-ability: 
• Challenge-ability: 
• Total: 3/15 stars

Rob Lambert’s “Why Remaining Relevant Is So Important”

Why is it important to stay relevant? I mean, Rob is obviously going to answer that, but why make a keynote of it? Don’t we all know, if we fossilize we are, out in the next round of layoffs? What is the big deal? What I feel Rob is trying to say is we need an attitude change. The relevance comes from want to thrive and be the best. If you’re the one who’s always on the cutting edge of technology, skills and thoughts, other people want to be like you! You become the beacon people look up to.

Rob Lambert is one of the most influential people in the testing scene. His blog was one of the first ones I started to read as a budding tester. I have met him once in person, and he’s a warm, easily approachable character. The problem is that should I have more time on my hands, I’d be more keen on approaching him with my ideas on managing testing. Alas, I have not.

Staying relevant has far-reaching influence. It brings high long time value to the company and to myself. The ideas sound like easily adaptable and with genuine examples the value might become even greater. Short time value might be in form of planning ahead my skillset. With this session and Alexandra Casapu’s “Examine Your Testing Skills” session at Let’s Test 2015, I see no reason why one couldn’t stay relevant to their company or their community.

• Person-to-person: **
• Short time value: **
• Long time value: ***
• Steal-ability: ***
• Challenge-ability: *
• Total: 11/15 stars

Wednesday

Kristoffer Nordström’s “Taming the Terminal-based Applications and Testing Them” (based on familiarity to speaker)

Kristoffer was the guy that inspired me into taking my Pythonian skills forward. His lessons in “Python for testers” and many more inspire many. He’s a great sport and I wish I could attend his tutorial at the conference. If the session has anything close to what I expect off of him, people will be having a hoot!

After reading the description, the tutorial seems quite useful to me. When I was doing testing at F-secure I ran into terminal-based application every once in a while, I might even have created some tooling with Python. This tutorial strikes that particular nail in my skill repertoire.

The values right now are mediocre, however, since my current job description doesn’t touch terminal based stuff. I would have rated this very differently a year ago, I must admit. Also being one of the few testing specialist at the office, I think I wouldn’t be the guy to be teaching this to developers. I could benefit from having a better understanding of testing frameworks and tools, better confidence in my skills, and have a good time at the session. Also, since I have some experience, I could challenge Kristoffer to make him hone his material to perfection. ;)

• Person-to-person: ***
• Short time value: **
• Long time value: **
• Steal-ability: *
• Challenge-ability: **
• Total: 10/15 stars

Kristjan Uba’s  “Let's Learn: Experience Learning through Gaming” (based on interest in the title)

Gaming. My favorite way of learning. If we’re going to play games and learn from testing, I think this session is worth its weight in gold! …at least to a procrastinator and a child-minded person like me. The values are both immediate and long lasting, if done properly: one starts to seek out the games mentioned to play with their friends and colleagues, besides those games can spawn entire new epiphanies on some other testing related area.

I don’t Kristjan Uba from before, but I bet he’s the kinda guy I would get along really well. He sounds enthusiastic, innovative and funny, the kind of a person I like spending time outside work with. Perhaps, should I miss the opportunity to join, I can badger him to play some of the games on some other occasion.

• Person-to-person: *
• Short time value: ***
• Long time value: **
• Steal-ability: ***
• Challenge-ability: *
• Total: 10/15 stars

Robert Sabourin’s “Just-In-Time Software Testing” (random pick)

Ok. Rob has been on my radar from the beginning of my testing career, yet I know next to nothing of him. He’s one of those “one-star-should-be-three-stars” kinda fellas. I am aware of this “just-in-time” method, from some blog post in the past.

The description made me hum in pleasure. That is something, not only I want, but I need. As a professional tester I need to be able to make snap decisions about prioritization, change of focus and moving people to test the right thing. With content like that on a tutorial, I see no point to sit this one out! The values of this sessions are far reaching and immediate! These are the things I must educate my colleagues with, my community should be aware of this, and my work would vastly benefit from the skills and knowledge this tutorial gives.

For I know quite little about the subject to begin with, I see a lack of challenge-ability for me. Maybe a quick 1-on-1 with Rob might get me into the mood. Perhaps a blog post or two to limber my mind...

• Person-to-person: * (I wanted it to be ***)
• Short time value: ***
• Long time value: ***
• Steal-ability: ***
• Challenge-ability: *
• Total: 11/15 stars

Thursday

Sami Söderblom’s “If James Bach and Mary Gorman had a baby, how would it test?” (based on familiarity to speaker)

Mr. Happy Monkey himself talking about… WHAT? Biology? Child birth? Intercourse? I have to say if he hadn’t been picked based on me knowing him, I would have chosen the session based on the title. Sami Söderblom is a good friend of mine. He’s a whiskey-junkey, a cat-photographer, a father, an explorer and a good friend. We have a history through my whole testing career, from my first big testing project to this day. He’s the “three-stars-should-be-the-milkyway” kinda fella.

I must say I’m on pins and needles what the session is about. The description says: “FITCODES”. I’m sold. SFDPOT has been my guideline through my recent testing career. At the Turku Agile Days 2012 I modeled the testing of speedos using the SFDPOT. This week we did testing exercise on testing whatever found in one’s pocket using SFDPOT. To advance the heuristic that has been the lifeline for me is something I really, REALLY, would like to see.

The values, for me, are huge. Should I be able to use the heuristic in my everyday work is a great benefit. In addition to this, to be able to help others test their software better, to design better tests, to manage testing in a better way, make the session even more valuable. To learn how Sami came up with the heuristic is a good steal-able. To refine it to suit my particular needs would be awesome. And, since I know quite a lot about the subject, challenging would be the cherry on the cake.

• Person-to-person: ***
• Short time value: ***
• Long time value: ***
• Steal-ability: ***
• Challenge-ability: ***
• Total: 15/15 stars

Beat that! No pressure, Sami. ;)

Stephen Janaway’s “Why I Lost My Job as a Test Manager and what I Learnt as a Result” (based on interest in the title)

Test coach, he says. I think I like him already. The transformation to Test Coach has been my goal during this year. Teaching people on how to test and make them better at what they do. If Stephen can help me achieve that, I’d be happy as a hippo.

I actually don’t know Stephen from the past, but with his attitude towards coaching, I bet we can hit it on. Value coming out of his “shift to coaching” session could become quite valuable for me with my ambitions and goals, but to all traditional test managers. When I came to my current work place, I told I wanted to be a coach, but I have yet to find my focus and methods in implementing it.

To more easily understand Stephen’s session, I feel I must read the blog post first. Maybe then I can be able to challenge him in a better way.

• Person-to-person: *
• Short time value: **
• Long time value: ***
• Steal-ability: **
• Challenge-ability: *
• Total: 9/15 stars

Erik Boelen’s “Acceptance Testing At Its Best” (random pick)

I’ve heard some experience reports on the subject of coaching end-users to test the acceptance of a product. They have all been educational, but seemed to be lacking some punch - the methods to implement the procedure to one’s own context. I have never heard of the speaker before, but I fresh blood to the Testing Arena is always a crowd pleaser. ;)

This seems like a good session for those battling with limited testing resources and acceptance testing stuff. I see a lot of material I would like clarification to and some areas where challenging might be in order. Values are unpredictable here. Since I work closely to projects and the project management nowadays, I see some intersections to my work. This might be a huge value to a test manager of any kind. I cannot say.

• Person-to-person: *
• Short time value: **
• Long time value: *
• Steal-ability: *
• Challenge-ability: **
• Total:  7/15 stars

Friday

Erik Brickarp’s “Going Exploratory” (based on familiarity to speaker)

Erik. My man! He’s been around for a while. I was introduced to him by a hint from James Bach few years ago for paying the RST course from his own pocket. Anyone to do that is a personal hero of mine. He’s a great thinker, a fine coachee – fine and dandy bloke on all fronts. I’m really excited to see him in person since he has evaded me the few times I’ve attended conferences in the past.

So, Erik’s gonna talk about how he switched from rigid testing process into an exploratory one, failed, learned, tried again, repeated, succeeded. This is something that I want to do! I think my key takeaway is the sandboxing. In my recent project I have drastically changed the process with constant deliverables. This means more freedom in the execution but rigid documentation. I think Erik can give me a couple of good tips how to make the process less painful and more appealing to… the client. (You wer thinking I was gonna say “opposite sex”, weren’t you?)

I definititely see value in this. Short time value comes mainly from the insights that I can implement as soon I hit the desk after the conference and long term effects can sprout an inspiration where I combine my learning to what Erik gives. Very valuable in deed.

• Person-to-person: ***
• Short time value: ***
• Long time value: **
• Steal-ability: ***
• Challenge-ability: **
• Total:  13/15 stars

Radomir Sebek’s "You don't need to be a musician to test music production software" (based on interest in the title)

Music is close to my heart. I compose various kinds of music, hence I have an interest in both the industry and the tools of trade. Combine music and testing – I’m hooked. Although I have never heard of Mr. Sebek, I am keen on hearing what he has to say.

The whole concept is intriguing, having to quickly learn a vast domain to better test it. I think that is the core of software testing in general – fast learning, adapting, moving focus and prioritization based on learning. I want to examine his methods of approaching the subject. The coaching aspect (as in using testers with various backgrounds and influencing them) is also interesting. I am intrigued what kind of methods have been used in the influencing. Experience reports like this are usually difficult to challenge, but usually highly steal-able.

• Person-to-person: *
• Short time value: **
• Long time value: **
• Steal-ability: ***
• Challenge-ability: **
• Total:  10/15 stars

Ilari Henrik Aegerter & Ben Kelly’s “Ben and Ilari's Spectacular Testing Circus” (random pick, honestly!)

Like I mentioned in my earlier post, I have spent some time chatting with Ilari. He has coached me on different things. Ben Kelly has been on my radar, like many testers, but I haven’t yet figured him out. It seems I am compelled to read his blog a few times before I go chat with him.

The session itself is a puzzle (pun intended) since it can contain many things. Interactive games, puzzles, cool problems, etc. are the salt of testing skills. I bet this is a session where I shall spend at least an hour or two, since I just like to challenge myself. I expect to be challenged and to be able to challenge other testers and maybe increase some skills while having fun.

• Person-to-person: ***
• Short time value: ***
• Long time value: **
• Steal-ability: ***
• Challenge-ability: **
• Total:  13/15 stars

Conclusion

There are many sessions that I didn’t tackle although they might be worth gold. If you feel (as a speaker) that I should tackle yours, drop me a line. I’m also eager to discuss my choices with the people I rated.

It seems that I am attending the Nordic Testing days. I shall be there with my beard flowing and throwing #high6’es to people. ;)


Varsti näeme!
- Peksi

Let’s Test 2015 – conference at a glance (from a distance)

Just to get up again and write something, I decided I’d do something I’ve done before. I really want to join the Let’s Test 2015, but it seems I cannot. This blog post is similar to those I’ve done before for it is a “Conference at a Glance” kinda thing. So this is

Let’s Test 2015 – conference at a glance (from a distance)

It seems the conference is a 3 day thing with 2 key notes, 33 sessions or various kind. Since I’m a lazy person, I shall do the following:

• Tackle both key notes
• Choose one session from each day based on my familiarity of the speaker
• Choose one session from each day based on my interest in the title
• Choose one session from each day that I pick randomly

That should bring me to a total of 11 sessions that I try and grade. If you (as a conference speaker or as anyone else) feel like I should do more, just ask me in the comments section.  I try and keep it simple.

I will use a heuristic grading system (introduced here) to determine what would be the best session for me. I will grade the stuff with Angry Birds ™ grade – 0-3 stars per area – on five areas:

• Person-to-person (How will the person and his/hers work affect/inspire me or the people I know?), 
• Session value – short time span (How much can I get out of the session tomorrow – next year?), 
• Session value – longs time span (How much can I implement o my work and teach to my colleagues, my community?), 
• Steal-ability (How much of it am I willing to borrow and further develop to make it better and, more importantly, mine?), and 
• Challenge-ability (My past knowledge on the topic and my willingness to challenge the session contents.)

Ben Simo’s “There was not a breach – There was a blog”

Based on the description on the webpage, I quickly came to think I should have done something like that. I should have started blogging about something that is affecting major public. Like the Finnish Railway renewal or something else of a similar matter. Having not thought of the idea, I shall keep my eyes open the next time something big comes up. So “Thanks Ben for giving me a great idea. Don’t mind me copying it in the future!”

As we’re talking about a keynote here, I don’t think during-session-challenging will occur. As this is kind of an experience report, I feel I can absorb huge amount of wisdom and ideas from it. If only reading through the description gave me so many ideas already, attending the keynote might blow my mind. Alas, it might not happen. So my head is safe for now. Challenge-ability might be a bit low, but if you think the challenging as in self-challenging, things I can challenge in my own thinking processes, ways of working, how I present myself to others. On those parameters I see a lot possibility to challenge.

On that note, the steal-ability just went through the roof. As for long term value, I believe that short term value comes from bringing the conversation to the coffee tables for those who are not American nor have the exposure to HealthCare.gov. The long term effects lie in the the steal-ability I mentioned before. If I can introduce some public service kind of attitude towards my own behavior, it’ll really make a difference.

P2P-level is a bit tricky. Ben has been on my radar for years. I’ve been following him and reading his blog sporadically, but I never really came to realize how much of an influence he has been. There hasn’t been too much communication between him and me save for a few tweets now and then, or some random facebook comments to each other’s posts. I must say I should have been more in his face about stuff. I shall change that and get to know him better!

As for score (should I be at the conference I would attend the keynote whatever it might be):

• Person-to-person: * (I wanted it to be ***)
• Short time value: *
• Long time value: ***
• Steal-ability: ***
• Challenge-ability: ** 
• Total: 10/15 stars

Antti Karjalainen’s “Detecting the Heartbleed Vulnerability”

The description might not provoke my vastest interest, but I was part of the Heartbleed scene in a sense. While working at F-secure I heard about it weekly during the “hip season”. I didn’t particularly have anything to do with fixing nor working with it, but I was there to spread knowledge about it.

The thing is, I am the kinda guy who shies away from über cool tools, fancy technology and protocols. I have some interest in security testing, fuzzing and analytics, but I’m more comfortable to leave those to the people who know them better. When it comes to knowing what fuzzing does, I’m comfortable in what the Wikipedia says. That is to say with no disrespect towards the fine men and women who dapple with such technologies. Hats off to all of you!

P2P is a challenge for me, since Antti is a Finn and I might have run into him at some other conference. I can’t put my finger on it, however. I have never talked with him about fuzzing nor about tools (“the shying” and other excuses). The thing is, I don’t think I could talk with him about the fancy stuff. I might have a few cool comments like “that looks cool” or “whaddaya know”. The thing is, however, that I cannot say for sure. I wish there would be a common ground on which we could build a conversation and then work from that.

The short term value might be in form of an interest into fuzzing tools. Or to some yet unknown aspect of fuzzing I could use in my testing. I feel that the topic is so tool/technology oriented, I might not get enough. It also affects the long term value for I don’t think I am capable of transferring that knowledge to my community or colleagues. I don’t say there won’t be any inspiration during the keynote – I might change my way to think testing and tools.

And since my knowledge on the technology and the tools are so diminutive, I feel the steal-ability and challenge-ability are scored low also. This isn’t to say that Antti doesn’t rock most of the listeners’ world! I believe that he is the kinda guy we need more of. Just like Ben, helping regular people with their daily lives is what counts!

• Person-to-person: *
• Short time value: *
• Long time value: *
• Steal-ability: **
• Challenge-ability: *
• Total: 6/15 stars

1st day sessions:

Ilari Henrik Aegerter’s ”A Tester's Walk in the Park” (based on familiarity to speaker)

Ok. Having read the description, I’m torn in half: A session without a clear outtake or a fountain of good ideas. I don’t know quite yet. I do appreciate that the problem solving is the key to it, but are we talking about artificial, abstract problems like “where is testing going”, or concise practical problems like “how can I convince my manager to pay my trip to Sweden”? The uncertainty intrigues me in a way that I wouldn’t dare miss this session. If we can coax people like Michael Bolton or Ben Simo to join in with their problems, it can be a hoot. It could be a hoot with just me, Ilari and three guys I don’t know. The thing is “I don’t know”.

I have spent some time chatting with Ilari. He has coached me on different things, latest today (the April 1st 2015) on how to approach a testing communication problem. I know this guy and I like him. I have to admit I haven’t paid too much attention on his whereabouts the last 18 months, but I reckon that all will be changed.

The value of the sessions is a tricky one. I cannot say what value I can get for I don’t know the contents that well. On short term it might arouse good conversations and comradery between the people attending. Experience reports in the form of problem solving might be a good take-away. In longer time span, the technique itself might be a good thing to learn. The introduction of philosophical thinking and approach to software testing is actually quite intriguing. Challenging the session might be a tough one, since it feels like an experience report of a sort.

• Person-to-person: ***
• Short time value: **
• Long time value: **
• Steal-ability: **
• Challenge-ability: *
• Total: 10/15 stars

John Stevenson’s ”A Journey Towards SelfLearning” (based on interest in the title)

WOW! This sure sounds cool! A sessions in a form of a game show! Count me in! I am interested in learning and how people learn. I am a continuous learner myself and I think it is time to up that interest in me once again. If this session could make my learning more structured, I would get more out of the time I have at hand.

I know next to nothing about John Stevenson, but lately I have spotted some of his tweets. He could be one to chat more deeply about learning. Him and James Bach might be a good dinner guests if I wanted to talk about learning and teaching. Since I hope to be a teacher of a sort someday, I think they could give me valuable ideas.

The value I see from this session is vast, both long and short term. While stirring me short term, it could make me think about my life on a longer run, my education and my striving towards being a teacher (though Finnish teachers are paid really poorly). Since I know something about learning, I think I might even be able to challenge John on his ideas. Though I don’t think I can introduce any particularly new and fancy to his curriculum, I might be able to increase the value of the session by making him express thing in different ways to be more easily approachable.

• Person-to-person: *
• Short time value: ***
• Long time value: ***
• Steal-ability: **
• Challenge-ability: **
• Total: 11/15 stars

Louise Perold ’s "Non-violent Communication" (random pick)

Well well well. NVC. I must say I had need for those skills today when I argued with a developer on why the test cases written for manual execution are a poor excuse of a test automation. I did seek some coaching from Ilari (like mentioned before) but I wasn’t able to convey my point to him in a way that would have left both him (the dev) and me in a mutually enjoyable place of mind. Having said that, Louise’s session might be the one for me.

I don’t know her at all, though I might have traded tweets in the past. I’m intrigued meeting her, though. Should I not be able to come to conference, I really want to talk to her about Mortimer J. Adler’s book “How to Speak How to Listen” which I’m reading sporadically now and then. Also what I found out from Daniel Pink’s book “To Sell is Human” might contribute to the Non-violent communication.

Values from this session might be really high in short term and long term. I might not be able to transfer them to my community in a way Louise could, but I bet the example and behavior might influence my co-workers and other people as well. My knowledge on listening and conversation skills might enhance the challenge and steal –abilities, but I would have to let the time indicate what’s beneficial and what’s not.

Non-violent starring would be as follows:

• Person-to-person: *
• Short time value: ***
• Long time value: **
• Steal-ability: **
• Challenge-ability: **
• Total: 10/15 stars

2nd day sessions:

Laurent Bossavit & Michael Bolton’s ” "Defense Against The Dark Arts” (based on familiarity to speakers)

Critical thinking, they say. Very well. I would expect something like this from Bolton and Bossavit. Given Laurent’s book “Leprechauns of Software Engineering” it is about time to teach us Earth dwellers them skills to tackle possibly harmful (and perhaps even rigged) information.

I know both of the speakers and I love spending time with them. Both incredibly intelligent fellas with excellent ideas and views of the world. It seems almost a loss that I might have to miss their workshop. But I shan’t weep! I find their session really intriguing so I might badger for a coaching sessions should I need to miss the event.

As for value of the session, I see high value altogether. Critical thinking skills and the practical application of it are worth gold in the testing industry. Whatever I can bring home from that session would be valuable material for my colleagues in ways to think critically.

Since I have some former knowledge on critical thinking, I feel the challenge-ability is high. Also I see that the whole session is about challenging, I feel compelled to challenge much of their material. Steal-ability is high in a sense that I want to educate my colleagues on that particular subject.

My god, I’m looking at quite a session:

• Person-to-person: ***
• Short time value: ***
• Long time value: ** (it’s really 3 stars, but I cannot give the highest score yet)
• Steal-ability: ***
• Challenge-ability: ***
• Total: 14/15 stars

Huib Schoots’ “How to be an Explorer of Software” (based on interest in the title)

Mr. Schoots talks about creativity? The guy who had a conference sessions in which he mostly played music talks about creativity? I think this is the stuff everyone needs to see. The title pushed me in a quite different assumption on the contents of the session. I thought that it would be about hands on exploring something, but since the description kinda gave the impression that it’s about how we document and observe, it actually fulfills the title quite well. Interested I surely am.

Huib is a great fella and he could be one of the top 3 reasons for me to attend. He is the bloke that makes people smile on their worst day. All that and a world-class tester! Say no more! I have seen Sami “the Monkey” Söderblom talking about exploring, read (the beginning) Elisabeth Hendrickson’s book on exploring, so it would be nice to see another take on the subject. The value is hard to define, since I feel the values are more personal than community wide spreadable thoughts. To be able to more concisely test and document a software is a great skill to have.

To challenge Huib is something I think he would enjoy more than anything, so I think I must get in touch with him and get my hands on the material if I can’t attend. I might also be able to steal something that I later present something as my own, but I ain’t gonna let him know. It’s hard to put a finger on the stuff that I’d like to steal, but I bet there are loads of stuff.

The exploration of stars…

• Person-to-person: ***
• Short time value: ***
• Long time value: **
• Steal-ability: **
• Challenge-ability: ***
• Total: 13/15 stars

Erik Davis’ "Effective Practice Manager" (random pick)

A practice manager. That’s a new term for me. Based on the description I didn’t get what is a practice manager. Is it like a skill coach or a competence manager? Either way I feel this is an experience report with some educational features. Oh it’s an experience report with discussion. Maybe we have some cool practice manager problems we can help solve for him. Challenging might come to play while there’s a discussion in the session, but I do know so very little about the subject beforehand.

I was intrigued by the “increase their own impact at work” bullet point. That is something I want. I want autonomy and to see my own passions and skills realize in my daily work. In that sense this session might be a good catch. It would definitely have long term effects but I couldn’t get the short term value out of the description. Maybe it lies in the “whatever else comes out of the discussion”.

I don’t know Erik at all. He might be one of those blokes who have avoided my radar so far. Based on his personal description I think I he would be the guy to get to know. Maybe I’ll ask him for a beer at the evening activities. His interest in educating testers and building their skill set is something I want to do also.

• Person-to-person: **
• Short time value: *
• Long time value: **
• Steal-ability: **
• Challenge-ability: *
• Total: 8/15 stars

3rd day sessions:

Jari Laakso’s ”Security Testing” (based on familiarity to speakers)

Before I have even checked the description on Jari’s session, I must say I am intrigued by this. He is my first touch on security testing on my Finnish blog years back. Unfortunately, I haven’t met the guy. I know he’s intelligent and capable tester, but I haven’t been in contact him for some time. Maybe I have to rekindle that connection to get the latest.

Ok. The description. Very well! Hands on security testing! Where do I sign? This is like one of the essential stuff that people are asked to when doing exploratory testing. SQL injections are in every text book on testing, but this guy actually shows how to do that. Nice! I can see the value skyrocket! The thing is, to be able to share this knowledge I should know even more about the subject. I might lack the interest in security testing in general, so I might not be able to teach these skills to others (I’d ask Jari to do it for me).

To challenge him might be difficult due to the fact that we are talking about technical stuff once again. Things like cross-site scripting are founded on protocols, REST-calls and whatnot, and I don’t feel I can challenge him on those. I might wanna try, tho. ;)

• Person-to-person: ***
• Short time value: ***
• Long time value: *
• Steal-ability: *
• Challenge-ability: *
• Total: 9/15 stars

Alexandra Casapu’s “Examine Your Testing Skills” (based on interest in the title)

Hands on testing and discovering our testing skills. I like it. In EuroSTAR test lab I had the chance to dapple with Mr. Lyndsay’s machines and I really want to have another go! Besides I’m interested in how my skills map out. I don’t know Alexandra, but I’ve heard of her. She is one of those people I want on my “meet these people in the Testing Scene” list.

The idea of having various non-technical skills to help you with testing is interesting. I would like to know other peoples’ skills and if I can borrow their passions and learn what they know. I’d be able to steal ideas from the participants and from Alexandra. Very nice! Since I have been doing some reading on skills, I might be able to challenge her and my previous views quite easily. And skills practicing in practice is always something to take home to.

• Person-to-person: **
• Short time value: **
• Long time value: **
• Steal-ability: **
• Challenge-ability: **
• Total: 10/15 stars

Scott Barber’s  ”Experiencing Product Owners”  (random pick)

Random in deed… Scott, if you’re reading this, you might want to check the description on the website. ;)

A big star on the effort, though.

Conclusion

Having surpassed the pain of starting to write again, I feel joyous on how I managed to rate 10 (Scott’s doesn’t count) sessions on five heuristic parameters. The toughest thing is ahead of me, though. I need to convince someone to pay my trip to Sweden.

Vi ses!
Peksi

Doodling exercise

I was at the EuroSTAR conference 4th November in James Bach’s tutorial. I had not attended a full day training, talk or tutorial for a long time and my mind was still a bit rigid. I had a blast listening to James, but I noticed that from time to time my mind began to wonder. I started doodling on my note book. I didn’t pay attention. I was sitting between Laurent Bossavit (https://twitter.com/Morendil) and Kristoffer Nordström (http://contextdriven.blogspot.fi/). I know those guys are brilliant minds and I was actually a bit ashamed for doodling and losing my focus. So I doodled “in secret”.

At the coffee break I talked to Kristoffer about doodling and he explained it to me something like this: When listening to the talk and engaging one side of your brain, the other side starts to get bored. It begins shouting “Booooooring! I wanna do something creative!” and it makes you lose focus. Kristoffer told me to keep on doodling as part of keeping your focus. I did after that and I was able to keep my focus and come up with some more or less important ideas about testability and rapid test management – which was James’ topic on that day.

Kristoffer challenged me to write a blog post about doodling within one week, but I wasn’t able to tackle it before. Now I am, so I conducted an exercise. I tried to take notes on something that I have little or no interest in and tried to keep my focus on the job by trying to take notes and occasionally doodling. I did this by watching the most tedious video I can find from Youtube and I tried to summarize it using my doodles and notes. I chose “Intelligent Design and Creationism in the Classroom” (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x2qIAjtrNdY). It’s a 40 minute talk about something I try to stay away – religion and the teaching thereof. Here’s what I managed to do:

I started watching the video and thought there would be some fundamentalist talking about religion with such a zeal I couldn’t finish watching the video. Actually I couldn’t, because the video broke for some reason at 10:36. I did however rethought my previous attitude towards the video.

The beginning of the video was actually quite concise and gave things out in a quite unpassionate, to-the-point kind of analysis. I got a better understanding on why legislations on religion and marriage are the way they are. The context, I believe, requires some understanding of the government process and immigration policies. Also as a Finn, some of the things felt odd, like narrowing the gap between church and government.

More on the exercise. I tried to use doodling to keep me focused, but actually I had no trouble focusing. Taking notes was time consuming so I veered towards pictures to remind the topic that was talked about. It gave me something of an emotional attachment thus making the notes more understandable and clearer. The problem with this exercise was that it wasn’t authentic. I tried to make notes for the sake of note taking. I could formulate questions about the topics I doodled about, and in that sense I might have already felt that I must doodle about topics that I have some interest in already. I am keen to find out more about the “10 Commandments monument vs. non-Christian monument”.

As a conclusion, doodling is a good way to focus AND de-focus. I was able to shift my focus from the talk to the topics I got interested in. Also the doodles highlight the important stuff. Underscoring, circling, etc. make the text more dynamic and one can more easily find the areas of interest from the notes.

Thanks for challenging me, Kristoffer. It was a good thought exercise in addition to making me want to learn more about doodling. I still have a long way to go in note taking, but at least I know where to turn to get better exercises on note taking.

- Peksi

Note to self: read the following before going to the next meeting, session, conference or tutorial:
• http://sunnibrown.com/doodlerevolution/bootcamps/visual-notetaking-101/
• http://www.eurostarconferences.com/media/149386/alan-richardson_virtual-conference.pdf
• http://erik.brickarp.se/2012/10/practice-1-note-taking.html

Conference at a Glance, part II – My glance on the Tuesday AM tutorials

This is the second part of my series of posts about EuroSTAR 2013 conference. I apply the same method of evaluating as I did previously, so read the “My glance on the Monday tutorials” before this post, if you haven’t done that already.

Ian Rowland’s “Thinking Outside The Locks”

I have not heard of Ian Rowland, but I must say I’m intrigued. A magician? The biography in EuroSTAR page makes me want to know more about this fellow. In fact, I googled his name and got to his website. I’m really looking forward to see Ian do his stuff. I would guess that humor is involved in addition to mind blowing approach to thinking outside the box (or locks as he says).

To be honest, I think critical thinking, unconventional approaches, non-rational thinking are the tools of my trade. I would be able to use those both daily and they would make me become a better tester both short and long term.

I would recommend this to all my colleagues. In fact I’ve been thinking about a 30 minutes workshop on out-of-the-box thinking and using unconventional methods to solve a problem. If I get enough ideas for my workshop I might just do a workshop, and I hope Ian can help me generate ideas for it.

To be honest, I can’t think of anything to disagree from the summary of the tutorial, so I might not be able to challenge him. I’m curious to see how the methods he uses actually project to software testing. I might steal some of the details and trick he uses to my own work, like I mentioned before.

The tutorial seems very interesting as a light weight beginner for the conference (even better after a full day of Monday tutorial), but is this the best option out of the cast of many great speakers? I would be the one doing a half day tutorial on the subject, considering I don’t have that much experience in coaching out-of-the-box thinking.

After the smoke clears and the magician bows, I would like to see/hear/learn about implementing the skills and theories Ian shows to us. Theory is good and all but I would like to see results in testing craft to be happy with the tutorial.

On my Birdy scale, Ian Rowland’s “Thinking Outside The Locks” would scale as follows:

• Person-to-person: **
• Short time value: ***
• Long time value: **
• Steal-ability: *
• Challenge-ability: 
• Total: 8/15 stars

Prof Harry Collins and James Bach’s “Using Sociology To Examine Testing Expertise”

I think I said enough of James Bach on my previous blog post, so I will concentrate on Prof Collins. I find his resume quite impressive. He has (co-)written books that we testers should (I haven’t) be reading including the “Tacit and Explicit Knowledge” and “Rethinking Expertise”. I am eager to hear what he and James Bach have come up with. The duo of unschooled (but not untaught) and a University professor could spell doom to us mere mortals. I’m truly eager to hear their tutorial.

I am really eager to listen to stuff about meta-knowledge (or knowledge about knowledge). I do not, however, see a short term benefit from it. It will eventually develop my sense of self analysis. I’m very interested in any studies about testing and testing methodologies and this tutorial taps to that – using the tacit knowledge in addition to radiant expertise.

I don’t know straightaway how I could harness the tutorial for the benefit of my fellow testers. If the tutorial addresses social tacit knowledge, I could be able to make the company benefit from acknowledging that knowledge.

I am keen challenge the fact that there are skills that no person possesses but a group of people. Let’s say I invite a group of people to my house and I want to learn Chinese. None of these people know Chinese, but as a group we might be able to possess the skills to communicate in Chinese? Am I on the right path here? Or are we talking about more-than-sum-of-its-parts mentality, where we all would know just a little Chinese or a language close to Chinese?

I would refrain myself from teaching this. Maybe I could mention and guide people to seek for material appropriate to this experiment. I have no previous knowledge in this kind of study as I lack the university background.

Just like in Ian’s tutorial I would like to see/hear something that I could implement to my own work. What do I do with the information about what skillset does the teams have?

On my Birdy scale, Harry Collins and James Bach’s “Using Sociology To Examine Testing Expertise” would scale as follows:

• Person-to-person: ***
• Short time value: 
• Long time value: **
• Steal-ability: 
• Challenge-ability: **
• Total: 7/15 stars

Peter Zimmerer’s “Questioning Testability”

I begin to wonder what people think about me as a community member when I don’t know most of the people making presentations and more importantly tutorial speakers. This pre-analyzing the tutorials also helps me to familiarize myself with the people so I could recognize them at the event location in Gothenburg. I believe I have a lot to talk about with Zimmerer from all kind of things, but I believe we can make a conversation out of his topic also.

Testability is a freaky subject for me. I might be living in a bubble where we almost automatically plan our products with testability in mind. We aim to make the testing as fast and efficient as possible, so this tutorial might not give me too much in short term. I do believe that testability is one of the key things to enable efficient testing, so I more than recommend this tutorial to everyone!

I do believe that I could benefit from revolutionary points of view, which I hope Peter will provide. At some point when testability becomes more a worry for me, I might need the skills. Also the ability to promote testability could be important for me in this company. At some point the leading testability evangelists might leave the company, so we need as much tacit knowledge on testability as possible.

I’m expecting a lot of practical examples to be able to share myself (possibly after altering them to my own flavor). In that sense, the stealability is quite high in tutorial. I would focus mostly on practical appliances of testability, because testability as theory is quite trivial. People seem to have trouble in understanding how they can make stuff happen in practice.

When it comes to questioning, the words “step-by-step” rose a red flag. Is this method an omniscient, all-encompassing process? I hope this tutorial doesn’t turn into “do this and everything will be fine” but into “apply these skills where it’s reasonable”. If I am to join the tutorial, I will definitely challenge

On my Birdy scale, Peter Zimmerer’s “Questioning Testability” would scale as follows:

• Person-to-person: *
• Short time value: *
• Long time value: **
• Steal-ability: **
• Challenge-ability: ** 
• Total: 8/15 stars

Anne-Marie Charrett’s “Coaching Software Testers”

James has mentioned Anne-Marie a couple of time in our conversation and praised her coaching skills. Then again, I must admit that I have not made myself too familiar with her work. I’m looking forward to seeing her and possibly having a chat at some point. Hopefully she’ll be able to donate some of her time to me.

Actually the coaching method described here is something I have already done a few times. First James Bach coached me using the Socratic Questioning and then I used it to coach Erik Brickarp, Jari Laakso and Aleksis Tulonen among others. The amount learning on BOTH parties was phenomenal. I would love to gain more skills in this area to be able to continue my journey as a coach. This is something that both my colleagues and my fellow crafts(-wo-)men will benefit. I have some skills to begin with so I will employ them in future to the benefit of all, including me.

Having said that, I will try to steal as much as possible from this session and to mold it to my own. I recommend this session – yes, without having yet attended it, but having faith in it like in no other! Coaching skills are paramount on testers skill set if they ever want to become true professional.

I find it hard to challenge this on two reasons: I would consider myself as a member of coaching congregation and I would find it hard to challenge something I have unquestionable faith in. I am willing to try challenging for the sake of argument, but facing Socratic Questioning arguing for argument’s sake might be my downfall.

On my Birdy scale, Anne-Marie Charrett’s “Coaching Software Testers” would scale as follows:

• Person-to-person: *
• Short time value: **
• Long time value: ***
• Steal-ability: ***
• Challenge-ability:  *
• Total: 10/15 stars

James Christie’s “Questioning Auditors Questioning Testing”

James Christie (How many people called James are presenting in this conference?) is one of those that fall on the same category as Anne-Marie – I would love to talk to them for what I have heard from my fellow community members – but I have never delved into James’ work in-depth. Maybe I can sneak into his lunch table and steal a minute to talk about testing. ;)

In the past, I was working in a company where an audit was held. I was part of a group that coached the people getting audited to answer the questions correctly to appease the auditor. Wrong approach to audit – we do not always act according to the documented process but according to our best knowledge on the situation. The audit was about the documentation. The auditors were held in so high authoritarian position that they were not challenged – I was not allowed to talk to the auditors. ;)

I don’t see a short term benefit on this tutorial, however. I’m not currently in a position to be part of audits currently at F-secure. We do have security audits and the like, but I have yet to be invited to one such event. I might benefit James’ tutorial if I focus on questioning instead of auditing. If the scope wouldn’t be so narrow as to concern only audits, I would find it more beneficial to my current work.

If I could combine questioning to other areas, like specific levels of testing (unit, module, etc.) I could be able to teach or coach other testers and programmers to question their work more efficiently. So long term benefits could outweigh those of short term. More so, I don’t know where my life takes me so having some skills in challenging auditors might be my thing in the future.

I have such limited knowledge on auditing as such, so I find it difficult to disagree with questioning. Usually the person being questioned could benefit from the questioning too. I have been in a situation where I learned more by being challenged than by acquiring book knowledge on the subject. Like I said earlier, I would like to see tracks on more general questioning, arguing and challenging. This tutorial might answer some questions I have, but I’m not sure at this point.

On my Birdy scale, James Christie’s “Questioning Auditors Questioning Testing” would scale as follows:

• Person-to-person: **
• Short time value: 
• Long time value: **
• Steal-ability: *
• Challenge-ability:  *
• Total: 6/15 stars

Pradeep Soundararajan & Dhanasekar Subramaniam’s “Context Driven Mind Mapping”

I know Pradeep from tweeting with him and reading his blog. I also have followed the progress of Moolya for some time and I’m really impressed in their success. I’m also looking forward meeting Pradeep and Dhanasekar in Gothenburg to talk about mind mapping and all testing related stuff. I’m glad that Pradeep is hosting two sessions at the conference so I can join at least one of them.

I’m a bit of a mind map enthusiast myself so this tutorial is almost tailored for me. I find a lot of things here that are almost exactly from my workshop year ago from Nordic Testing Days 2012. I do believe that I have a lot to learn on both using the mind maps and hosting workshops. In short term, I would like to learn the most effortless way to utilize mind mapping. I tend to procrastinate during the testing, so if mind map can keep me focused, I would be on cloud nine. I also see mind maps as the tool of the future for it utilizes the brain instead of some arbitrary tool.

This tutorial would be worth stealing in its entirety and then I would go on promoting the ideas and practices to my company and to my peers in the community. In the long term, mind maps could help make exploratory testing both understandable and credible to stakeholders with minimum effort on documentation. I have already played around with the thought of decompiling the mind map into coverage charts by scripts, so this might even further automate the documentation of exploratory testing.

As for challenging, I know where I was stumbling in my workshop so I might tap into those subjects. First would be the content-switching during testing from the mind map to the software under test. If the mind map requires another window in addition to database browser, Unix log screens, browsers, standalone tools, etc. the content-switching becomes a burdening factor in the long run. Second would be the “free form” of the maps, which could result in inconsistent ways to report. I’m curious to see how Panda and Commander can tackle these. :)

I would recommend taking the Monday tutorial by James Lyndsay and combining it with this to make an awesome combo of exploratory testing and modeling. I haven’t yet decided which to attend, but if you, dear readers, should consider this combo really hard.

On my Birdy scale, Pradeep Soundararajan & Dhanasekar Subramaniam’s “Context Driven Mind Mapping” would scale as follows:

• Person-to-person: ***
• Short time value: **
• Long time value: **
• Steal-ability: **
• Challenge-ability:  **
• Total: 11/15 stars

Afterword

Once again I have not yet decided which to attend. There seems to be 2 top dogs right now, but I cannot yet say which to attend. I might even change my mind right before the session if other community members talk me to join a session other than what I would have chosen.

Anyway, I have quite a task ahead of me to plow though the conference tracks one by one. But be assured, I will go through as much as I can.

Also, I got interviewed to EuroSTAR community spotlight. I thank Emma Connor for the interview, and wish her and every tester out there a great summer!

- Peksi

Conference at a Glance, part I – My glance on the Monday tutorials

The EuroSTAR 2013 is knocking on my door. It's about time get some scribbles to my blog about it.

Quick word about what I’m doing here: I’m trying to get my thought on paper both to ease my burden of choosing the talks which to attend and also to write out my thoughts before the conference (as after the conference I might have a bit of a "information hangover" and I'm not that keen to write on stuff I didn't attend). If you think I have mistaken, misinterpreted or been outright wrong, please comment and discuss about it. I also encourage all the speakers, who I mention here, to comment on my expectations. I might be off by a mile on what the true content of the tutorial is, but please correct me if I’m on the wrong track.

I will also try a heuristic grading system to determine what would be the best session for me. I will grade the stuff with Angry Birds ™ grade – 0-3 stars per area – on five areas:

• Person-to-person (How will the person and his/hers work affect/inspire me or the people I know?), 
• Session value – short time span (How much can I get out of the session tomorrow – next year?), 
• Session value – longs time span (How much can I implement o my work and teach to my colleagues, my community?), 
• Steal-ability (How much of it am I willing to borrow and further develop to make it better and, more importantly, mine?), and 
• Challenge-ability (My past knowledge on the topic and my willingness to challenge the session contents.)

This doesn’t mean that 0 stars would mean “I hate it”, instead I’m looking for personal value against my beliefs, biases, former knowledge and worldview. I’m not saying that I won’t attend a low scored session, no, I might change my mind after talking to people at the conference and to the speakers. So I encourage you to talk to me about your session and comment what I have written about you.

James Lyndsay’s “Insights Into Exploratory Testing”

As a first thought, James Lindsay isn’t the one person that I recognize as my personal idol. He ought to be, because I read his blog once in a while, but I haven’t really gotten into his stuff. I love the blog series in which he describes different ways to manage exploratory testing! Kudos for that! However, I think I need to see him in person to suck in the charisma that he might have. After that I might regard him as my Top-3 testers. Right now, he’s a bit of a mystery man to me. And I always mix him for James Whittaker! *grin*

I’ve done exploratory testing a while now, so to answer the question: “What’s in it for me for tomorrow/this year?” I think hands on testing practices could be a remedy for my “sohpomoristic” (I have knowledge, but not enough experience implementing my knowledge to practice) way of approaching testing. The analyzing nature of the workshop could help me be a better tester on a daily basis. I was struck by a realization on few pair testing sessions with people who I really look up to. They were so much better hands-on testers that I, but they had high expectations on my skills.

Because I need to bring something back the “Ye olde Sweatshop” at Helsinki, I need to look for stuff that are good for my colleagues. The nature of the workshop could sprout some lightning workshops or sessions with my testing fellows, so I’m keen to see how to run a successful workshops with different backrounds of people. I’m also keen to see how I can use my skills to use attacking and exploitation in my everyday testing, ‘cause I work at a security software corporation. So I might be able to bring that home with me. Over all, all the things in exploratory testing might be good for my colleagues. The focus in my company should continuously veer towards exploratory approach. This workshops could give a lot – that’s for sure.

As I always tend to look on the bright side of life, I do want to be able to challenge James
and his topic. So what areas might be prone for me disagreeing? Workshops usually bring new course to the testing buffet, so I would have to taste the dish before being able to make hard decisions about it. I can’t say what would be the areas where I would disagree but I would definitely ask about how you could implement exploratory approach on a company that uses mainly test case driven approach. Let’s say there’s a company that uses only outsourced testers and they have one test analyst whose job is to design proper tests for that group of testers. How could one use exploratory approach to make their testing more efficient, creative and manageable?

What could be the next step after having this workshop? Personally I would try this on a larger scale. Oh! That’s a good question to James: “How will I be able to scale this up? How do I manage a team of these explorers?” Personally James Bach workshop could answer some of these questions. If it was somehow possible, I would attend to both workshops and then combine then seamlessly together. The next step would be to combine Lyndsay’s techniques to a broader audience and to organizations where testing is still in baby shoes (i.e. über controlled, test case driven, hierarchial, to name some).

I have one more thing to say. Mr. Lyndsay, if you happen to be at Gothenburg on Sunday evening, I would like to have a pint or two with you and talk about testing and your workshop. I might not attend it as there’s so much to choose from, but I’d like to talk to you about this particular workshop. You can give me a shout at Skype or Twitter, if you want to. ?

As for James Lyndsay’s Monday tutorial “Insights Into Exploratory Testing”, I would score like this:

• Person-to-person: **
• Short time value: **
• Long time value: **
• Steal-ability: **
• Challenge-ability: **
• Total: 10/15 stars

James Bach’s “Rapid Test Management”

Personally, I know James Bach and I’ve spent some time with him face-to-face. I attended his RST class on 2012 and the Rapid Testing Intensive course. I was exhilarated to be invited to the course as a special guest and it was one of the most joyous events of my end-year of 2012. I had the opportunity to have dinner with James and to get face-to-face coaching. He’s a radiant person who some people misunderstand as angry or frightening – choosing to see behind the façade gives you the opportunity to see a multi-dimensional, empathic person who’s a power to Testing craft all around the globe. I know it sounds like I’m secretly in love with him, but trust me: he can turn your world upside down.


As for the Monday tutorial, I feel the topic is slightly too narrow for me. I did learn a lot on the RTI course last year and I think this tutorial might repeat some of the stuff that I learned that year. For short time value the tutorial might not be in the top-3. I have a lot to learn about test management, yes. I do think, however, that I can get more by starting finally to implement the stuff I learned year ago. The opportunities to do that have been scarce. I think I need more advices on how to implement the lessons to my work instead of repeating the theory myself.

What could I do to make my colleagues life better using the lessons learned from the tutorial? I have experience already from the RTI, but my situation after that session forced me to forgo the implementation of the stuff I learned. The job as a maintenance manager also did not fully support the further teaching of the methods. At the moment I am in a position where I could help my team and all Quality Engineer at F-secure to make their testing both better (using exploratory testing) and ways to manage it properly.

I am quite biased in challenging James’ tutorial because I wish I was the one with skills to pull off a tutorial like that. I have seen the traps and pitfalls at least partially already, but I think I need a different perspective to the tutorial altogether. I like to think about the scaling of the methods and also the managing of outsourced testing. How will the methods James purposes will scale across rigid and wide spread organization? How could I manage a team of tester in Kuala Lumpur according the principles? I would have to delve a bit deeper into his material. That would give me pointers on the terms and techniques he uses and possibly I could find some holes in his reasoning to sprout a fruitful conversation.

When I think about areas I’m willing to steal, the whole material could be worth stealing. The concept of managing exploratory testing using the Rapid approach gives me new tools and tricks to make our testing at F-secure more efficient and manageable.

The next step with this presentation would be almost the same as I described earlier. The approach needs to be implemented on a team to see where it might go wrong. In addition to this tutorial, one might benefit from different coaching and mentoring lessons so that the problems are found early and dealt with – almost like testing you test management.

On my Birdy scale, James’ “Rapid Test Management” would scale as follows:

• Person-to-person: ***
• Short time value: *
• Long time value: **
• Steal-ability: ***
• Challenge-ability: *
• Total: 10/15 stars

Paul Gerrand’s “How to Create a Test Strategy”

Paul is one of those people whose name pops up every here and there – he seems to be able to do everything. Personally I don’t know him or his work, but it seems it’s about time. The description at EuroSTAR page describes him to be attending lots of events so it’s clear why he’s a well-known person. It's hard for me to develop an understanding of Paul’s achievements on a personal level but after a few YouTube videos and some googling, I think he knows his way around testing. I may not agree with some of the stuff he speaks for, but I cannot put my finger on any specific topic. Hopefully I can get some challenging happening about hit EuroSTAR tutorial.

The first thing that comes to mind is a hint of worry – he’s using a template. I know from past experience that templates are seldom abused and used to hide incompetence and lack of interest. They look good, though. Is there something fór me in this tutorial that I could use in the near future? I wish I had taken this tutorial 5 years ago when I was struggling to tears with a testing strategy to cover a whole organization’s testing. I did do some short and efficient testing strategies on a project-by-project level, but the framing, all-encompassing strategy was a vague scribble that I loathed where other loved it – I knew I could do it better, but I didn’t have the motivation to really get into test strategies at that time (or the time to do it, I might add). As for “past” value, I would rate this really high, but now I don’t see too much value to my work. This could be one of those inspiring and challenging tutorials to attend but I don’t see short term value to me here.

How could I use test strategy workshop in my company? I’d have to say: in a punch of ways! The opportunities provided by honing the existing strategy and being able to make high and low level strategies would be helpful. The test strategy does push you towards organized testing and even give credence to ones testing if one has a strategy which to follow. On that aspect, I might even benefit from it.

I try to find something worth disagreeing or to challenge in all the tutorials, but in Paul’s case the answer is clear – templates. I loathe templates as base of documentation. They usually lose the meaning as a template and become “fill form and deliver” –documents. So I am eager to challenge template in every aspect I can. I would rather have a set of skills to enable me create my own template than a readymade one. Does Paul provide ways to create a skill set for that purpose?

I would like to be able to understand a bit more about the techniques Paul Gerrard uses to create the testing strategy. I guess that the only way is to attend the tutorial. For now I don’t see much else worth stealing than the concept of improving test strategy thinking. I’m not sure if this actually increases or decreases my willingness to join Paul’s tutorial, because I might be lacking in knowledge to actually make that decision.

Personally I would focus more on the skill set instead of the template. If he does encourage in a mindset change then that would be one of the topics I’d like to steal also. This tutorial would benefit from getting the test strategy to context and possibly the implementation to a testing project. I hope Paul has some concrete material on how the strategy implementation has worked in the past, if he has used it before.

On my Birdy scale, Paul Gerrard’s “How to Create A Test Strategy” would scale as follows:

• Person-to-person: *
• Short time value: **
• Long time value: *
• Steal-ability: **
• Challenge-ability: ***
• Total: 9/15 stars

Torbjörn Ryber’s “Boosting Your Test Design Powers”

I know Tobbe just a little. I have met him face-to-face, but we haven’t actually had a long conversation at that point. What lingers in my mind from our talk is a single phrase: “High-6” I hope I get a chance to talk to Tobbe at the conference at least once for he’s a great character. He has a tremendous knowledge in test design and critical thinking, besides he’s funny as hell! So I encourage all you, go and talk with him – you won’t get bored!

The tutorial seems, at a glance, to be run-of-the-mill presentation on test design. I have Tobbe’s book on test design and it is THE book for every tester! If you don’t have it, join the tutorial – you will receive a complimentary copy of the book “Essential Software Test Design”. Just like James Lyndsay’s tutorial, this one would be a fun thing to join as I know already something about the topic and to increase skills in test design cannot be harmful. Besides, ways to design testing with tools (i.e. charts, graphs, mind maps) would help me on my daily work. I do hope that we are able to get some hands-on experience on using the design techniques.

I have already promoted Tobbe’s book here at F-secure and I lend my book to one out Quality Engineers to get some advice on her work. I would like to have all our testers to join the tutorial as a wakeup call. As this is elementary for any tester out there, I encourage every pudding tester and developer to join the tutorial. For those that have been doing test planning for long time, this could act as a reminder of the good practices in test design.

Disagreeing with Tobbe’s topics can be difficult because I believe in the most parts. I do however see an opportunity to play devil’s advocate and challenge Tobbe and his claims. I do however see more beneficial to get into a debate on a separate occasion to let him bring out the most of the tutorial to people who need the knowledge. I’m not saying I don’t need more knowledge, but I will restrict myself from spoiling the fun from others.

I did a similar class few years ago where I taught test design on our testers and developers. My point of view was however a little more exploratory testing oriented and heuristic driven. I could try to steal some pointers from Tobbe to support my own material.  I could then arrange a workshop here, at out office, to spread the joy.

The next step after this tutorial would be a walk to the test lab and to use these skills in practice. In that sense the schedule of this tutorial is perfect. Later in the conference people could try their newly learned or reminded skills to test stuff. I think Tobbe would appreciate the feedback that practical use of those skills could bring. For example, what areas require more attention in the future?

On my Birdy scale, Torbjörn Ryber’s “Boosting Your Test Design Powers” would scale as follows:

• Person-to-person: **
• Short time value: **
• Long time value: **
• Steal-ability: **
• Challenge-ability: **
• Total: 10/15 stars

Matt Barcomb and Jim Holmes’ “Becoming A Testing Craftsman”

To be honest, I don’t remember any significant details about either of these guys. I seems that matt is a busy conference speaker (according to his blog), but I did not yet find the tone in which would be in harmony with my own thoughts about testing. I do see that he’s a coach so I could try to approach him via Skype and ask for some coaching and to chat about the conference topic. Jim also seems to be quite a veteran in conferences. I scrolled through his blog and the slides that he shares are excellent! I love the way to make things simple and bite-size. If the duo is anything like what I learned from them, I would definitely want to meet with them and talk about coaching, motivation, innovation and testing topics.

On short term, this tutorial is like candy to me. Little programming excersises? Sign me in! Building your tools? I’m there! I also see that these guys focus on skills to get things done – automation is the extension of human mind, not the only solution to testing. This is by far the most fitting tutorial for the first day for me and my development, short and medium term. I am getting into trouble at my work by some tedious manual repetition that could be made easier with a shell script or a python script. I hope these guys can brrring it!

When I think about how to educate and help my fellow testers, I’m not actually sure if I could bring enough to the table. I believe, though, that the attitude towards being a craftsman instead of rank-and-file- employee could be beneficial to both them individually and to the company as a whole.

I would like to learn more programming and tool building before I could confidently teach how to build them. There’s a hell of a group here who can make tools, apps, what-do-you-need to make testing easier. I’m willing to see the applications of tool building and the test data creation/management and possibly try to teach that to my fellows.

This is an interesting topic, because I have little experience in actually building something functional for others (for myself a few scratch-built scripts, but nothing serious). If I was to choose what I would like to hear, I would like to hear more about the attitude towards craftsmanship and how we can spread the word around. I believe that craftsmen aren’t supposed to hold the secrets to themselves but to share their wisdom, like Matt and Jim.

I’d like to see these teachings to be implemented on some practical hands-on session, test-lab or something, so we can really get our craft to shine. I would also promote testing to other than testers – I think managers, documenters and all software project stakeholders could benefit from craftsmanship attitude.

On my Birdy scale, Matt Barcomb and Jim Holmes’ “Becoming A Testing Craftsman” would scale as follows:

• Person-to-person: *
• Short time value: ***
• Long time value: **
• Steal-ability: *
• Challenge-ability: *
• Total: 8/15 stars

Afterword

I’m still teetering on which tutorial to join, but I will try my best to decide. I know I need to make decisions fast so I can book my seat before they run out. I will let you know which one I chose after I book the tutorial. As for now, I will keep on writing about the conference. I’ll try to cover every conference day at least on some level, but I do not guarantee anything.

As you might know I am speaking at EuroSTAR on a Wednesday. I would like to hear what you might get from that session if you are to attend it. I will also hold a preliminary practice talk here in Helsinki, so if you’re interested to join, give me a tweet. ?