007 Unlicensed to Test

Imagery and metaphor - a falliable helper

2011-12-20T14:17:00.000-08:00

I stumbled across a few videos on the UK's Open University course site in itunes a while ago, a couple that grabbed my interest were about imagery and metaphor.

The videos about the Open University course can be accessed using the following url:
http://itunes.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewPodcast?id=380224003

Initially I though the idea of using imagery and metaphor was a bit 'way-out', however the more I watched the more I believe it could be a useful in my testing work to identify and/or solve problems think of ideas and/or communicate.

I was so intrigued I decided to try it out. At the time I discovered the videos I also was about to start some data integration testing - In my context that meant passing data between two external systems.

First came the metaphor I chose; the first thing that came into my head. erm Aeroplanes.

So data integration is now an aeroplane... (erm yes it sounds far-out right? - I hope you stick with me)

I then drew an aeroplane on my notepad.

Then, I started to think about all the things an aeroplane journey might have:

- cargo Ah yes that could be data...
- then secured cargo, different sized cargo, labelled cargo, damaged cargo.. I'm thinking data here

- What kind of Aeroplane is it and does it matter? i.e. propeller vs jet, size capacity. Or what kinds of aeroplanes could they be? Could these be structural things? Technology, servers

- Speed How long for takeoff, duration and landing, taxi-ing to the runway? - Time

- Does the aeoplane go to a specific runway, do the wheels come down for landing?

- What else is going on in the sky? Other planes? Birds? on the ground? Air traffic control

- Who is using the Aeroplane? and why? Importance?

Test ideas came very quickly to me and I found it quite easy to relate to my metaphor (I've been on a few flights and used to work in the airline industry) so I decided to use the metaphor for facilitating my test ideas.

One thing I am aware of is Joel Spolsky's 'law of leaky abstactions' so am still wary of treating my testing as a metaphor. An abstaction from the problem and in turn
may be simplifying a complex problem. However I found the strength of using imagery and metaphor was it's simplicity - not getting too bogged down in my data integration detail.

I regarded my picture as a different kind of mindmap.

I did discuss my picture with some members of the team but a team adoption of this approach may require some effort and buy in. I will try again...

After creating my metaphor I used it to create some test sessions and tracked the test sessions rather than metaphor image. (I may try this again and see if I can somehow display my testing efforts back through the metaphor, somehow showing the test sessions on the image, maybe using colour - although I am also wary of doing this - i.e. focusing on pictures and colour rather than the testing.
It could be a good way of reporting (I kept thinking about a video Rob Lambert posted on Visualizing progress through images and not charts i.e. things people can relate to see - http://thesocialtester.posterous.com/communicating-testing-using-visuals
Note: whilst looking for this link I also discovered/re-discovered lots of other interesting posts Rob has made which included the following: http://thesocialtester.posterous.com/game-storming-and-exploratory-testing which I believe may also be related)

One area I think imagery and metaphor may help me in the future is in mneumonics, i.e. instead of memorizing letters like SFDPOT, thinking of an image or story that bind the themes of the mneumonic helping me remember

I am sure imagery and metaphor will be helpful for me in the future and is firmly part of my toolbox, but what I am aware of is that using images/metaphors are falliable. They may not work all the time (the same as any mind map)

What images and metaphors are you using?

Memetics and a testing schema

2011-05-24T04:00:00.000-07:00

In my previous post about a challenge that Michael Bolton gave I was trying to use past experience as a helper to solve a current problem. (not always a good thing - especially in isolation) I then thought of the times that past experiences have helped me when testing. I feel that experience helps me a lot when testing, but experience is too wide or too vague to be meaningful to me or any reader. I therefore have been trying to dig deeper into experience and try and explain what it means to me and how it helps me.

I started thinking about test ideas.

Definition: idea for testing something - see http://www.satisfice.com/blog/archives/43

How test ideas might come from previous test ideas, partial previous test ideas, a fragment of a test idea, a fusion of previous test ideas or fragments.

This can also apply to a method.

Definition: Method: a way of doing something; an idea or ideas that specify behavior.

There are times when I might be testing or thinking about how to test something and the memory of a test, test idea or method pops into my head. How does that happen?

Isn't this simple?, what I've observed or encountered previously might help me in the future. Ok, but what about other peoples test methods or test ideas? (What I'm meaning here is I quite like finding out how other people have got on with the testing that they have been doing, and also looking at bug, issues that they have raised - erm I quite like trawling through the bug database

Note: What I'm not saying is that every test should use previous tests.

Having said that the test ideas and test methods of previous testing may be useful to form new test ideas and test methods based on the thought of those previous ones to perform new testing.

This led me to a few internet searches and I stumbled across memetics. I am quite excited by memetics - but I'm still a bit skeptical because it is just a theory.

Ok so what's memetics? Well the crux of memetics is the idea of ideas that spread between people.
The wikipedia definition is this: 'Ideas, behaviors or styles that spread from person to person within a culture' - Wikipedia

Why am I excited by this? Firstly I have discovered a theory about ideas - yay, and secondly it has testing connotations. Ideas around a product or function concept, an implementation and execution. CIO ideas, stakeholder ideas, programmer ideas, project manager ideas, tester ideas, customer ideas that spread. Ok so groups of people might share the same meme (share the same idea - which may be good - on the same page, or bad - groupthink.) Or people may have memes only within their own group - one I came across recently was a customer meme - the next version will be faster (or the meme that the current version is slow).

Another thing that sprung to mind (or memed) was a session I attended with Rachel Davies at ACCU2010. One person made up a story and wrote it down on a piece of paper and handed to the person on their left, the person on the left had to draw what the first person had wrote and then pass it to the next person on their left who then had to draw another picture based on the picture passed to them and so on. It was an interesting session (particularly as I had to draw first from the words of the first person - a car crashing into the central reservation of a motorway ermm and my car drawing was interestingly basic) I think this may be an example of mutation of a meme.

In my research I found the following podcast which gives an introduction to memetics:

http://itunes.apple.com/gb/podcast/radical-nlp-mythology-spirituality/id263470927
#14 Introduction to Memetics

In the podcast, the book by Chip and DanHeath called 'Made to stick' was mentioned with 8 criteria for ideas which was implied to apply to successful memes.

1. Simplicity - memorable
2. Unexpectedness - Emotional energy
3. Concreteness
4. Credibility
5. Emotions
6. Stories
7. Habitat
8. Stability

I keep loooking at this list and keep thinking about bug and test reports.

I also keep thinking about Certifications and false memes..

The 'Velcro theory of memory 'also gets mentioned whereby we have an underlying schema in which we use to match ideas, so when I'm thinking about previous experiences am I pattern matching attributes of my testing schema against a current experience. Yikes a bit deep...but there could be advantages to having a big testing schema to match against couldn't there? and also to weed out crap...

One of the big things I am taking out of memetics is disinfecting from bad memes

Some of the innoculations suggested are the following:

1. 'Knowing who you are and what you stand for'
2. Having a breadth of experience so you know whether to accept or filter out ideas.

When I think about these innoculations I immediately think about the 'Schools of Testing' (oh dear I'm not sure I want to enter this debate) http://www.satisfice.com/blog/archives/565

I do think it is important however for two reasons 1. Formulating your testing schema 2. For filtering out memes from other schools.

Dr Susan Blackmore also adds the following:

'Meditation and mindfulness can be thought
of as meme-weeding techniques, designed to let go of words, logical thoughts and other memetic constructs and leave only immediate sensory experience'

Well I have discovered a theory about ideas - memetics but I have also discovered the work of Dr Susan Blackmore. http://www.susanblackmore.co.uk/

I will follow up with Dr Susan Blackmore and meditation in another blog post.

Initial Reading:

The Lifecycle of Memes: http://www.aleph.se/Trans/Cultural/Memetics/memecycle.html
Dr Susan Blackmore: http://www.susanblackmore.co.uk/
Memetics: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Memetics

'Every failure is an opportunity to learn'

2011-02-23T16:29:00.000-08:00

I took up a twitter challenge by Michael Bolton (@michaelbolton) over a month ago. He blogged about the challenge.

I learned a few things from the challenge which I wrote down at the time. Writing things down at the time was important for me for a couple of reasons:
1. So that I didn't forget about the things I learned
2. So that it was harder for me to 'distort' things, I didn't want to be caught out by any hindsight bias if at all possible. (although I'm wondering if that can ever be possible)

note: I have also been avoiding reading a few other challenges in the community so that I didn't become bias by what people have been saying about those. I believe Michael Bolton set another challenge since

The challenge that Michael gave over twitter (by mistake ironically) was this:

“Challenge for you: think of at least ten reasons why the programmer might be wrong in marking a problem fixed. I’ll play too. #testing”

I think it is important for me to reflect and learn from my answers to the challenge.

I saw a few answers coming in from the people I follow on twitter...

So I started by trying not to think of things already being suggested quickly by other people. I was also trying to think of non-obvious/obscure or unusual reasons

I learned a few things there, don't forget obvious things just because they are obvious and watch out for being swayed by other suggestions.

These issues can happen in our testing work and have happened in my testing work, a couple of things spring to mind:

- Assuming because a bug is obvious that someone must have reported it and yet the bug gets unreported.

- It can be easy to get swayed by other people a lot I have been in teams where you are all pulling in the same direction right? But sometimes what you may be sharing is a 'vision' or perceptions and not the 'actual'. This reminds me of groupthink where the group thinks something and everyone goes along with it. Also, I remember seeing a video once where a group of people were in a room and smoke started pouring through the door, people saw the smoke but because no-one in the room moved to escape the fire everyone remained seated in the room.
Also commuting each day I do seem to get carried and swayed by the mass of people and speed of movement in the crowd of commuters.

@michaelbolton Postive outcome bias? Ostrich effect? Have they fixed the problem or just the consequence of the problem?

Well I was a bit wayward here too, for positive outcome bias what I was thinking though was the programmer wanting the problem to be fixed. So saw or enhanced the positive effects but ignored possible negative effects i.e. introducing more problems. I initially thought that was positive outcome bias but what it really is a sort of valence effect or optimism bias.

When mentioning the ostrich effect I was thinking that the programmer just buried his head in the sand didn't fix the issue and marked the problem as fixed.

Two learning points here:

1. These are possible causes of a reason not a reason

The reason being that the programmer has introduced more problems or not fixed the problem

2. I'm not entirely familiar with all biases and must make sure I am.

I am now trialling the following resources as my own bias think list:

Table 1 in the http://www.skepdic.com/essays/haskins.pdf

Fallacies Mindmap - http://www.fallacyfiles.org/taxonomy.html

Cognitive Biases Visual Study Guide - http://www.scribd.com/doc/30548590/Cognitive-Biases-A-Visual-Study-Guide

I am also in the process of creating a mnemonic for these biases (except it is taking me a while, there are at least 43 letters )- How about a test community challenge to come up with a mneumonic? Any Takers?....I was starting with the z so was thinking about a 'z-e-b-r-a' story.
If anyone wants to have a go here are the letters:

A A B B C C C C D D E E E F F H H I I I I I L M M M N N N O O P P P R R S S S S U W Z

UPDATE: Wow, since I posted the blog John Stevenson came up with not one but two mneumonics and I am impressed with the incredible speed in which he did this:
schizophrenic San Francisco MILF DEB weds bum pimp
Wimp scrubbers demonize spliff and chic champions

Simon Morley added the following Mneumonic:
shrewd insomniac scoffs prized climb in beach pump

@michaelbolton may wrongly think it does not apply now that the next release of code is iminent.

I think this is a valid reason, and one that I have experienced the hard way, the issue was still there in the next release of code even though it was claimed by the programmer to be fixed.

@michaelbolton No user they could think of would ever do that.

What I was thinking was to have a humurous element to a response, but also that the programmer marked the problem as fixed because he didn't think there was a problem.

This is more likely to be a 'not a bug' status rather than 'fixed' status

It was my attempt a humerous response which does not apply in this context and therefore not helpful.

Learning points:

1. Although humour can be used in a postive ways:
- As a good ice breaker - Building team relationships
- Can be useful to dissolve tension
- Coping with unpleasant situations
- Gauge information or extract information that may not be shared formally.

Caution has to be taken in it's use for a questionable humorous response out of context may not helpful i.e it must be used wisely

@michaelbolton The programmer was told to mark it has fixed to get the fix rate up

My thinking here was that the programmer may have been ordered/influenced by someone else to mark the problem as fixed because the team may have been influenced by numbers and by marking the problem as fixed made the numbers look better for them.

@michaelbolton their definition of fixed did not match those of others

Here my thinking being what the programmer thought was fixed is not what other members of the team mean as fixed, a meaning or interpretation difference and hence the programmer marked the problem fixed when it should have been marked as another status and hence could be construed as 'wrong'.

Ok, I started mulling over the words in the challenge a lot, could I be misinterpreting the words? (I know this can be quite easy on Twitter), also could Michael be presenting us with a 'trick' question...

I started to think about who might be 'wrong', could it not be the programmer who is wrong at all, could it be the team? could it be me the tester, could the programmer be fixing an issue I raised, and I have not reported it clearly enough and therfore the problem has not been fixed at all. Could I be 'wrong' in that sense? Could I not have been communicating clearly enough with the programmer, i.e. should I have known that the programmer was fixing the problem and therfore we could have worked on the fix together, or should I have built a 'better' relationship such that we collaborate on fixes before the problem is marked 'fixed', (like what Darren McMillan has described as a 'show and tell' in Proactive Testing - Technique 2) .Or the programmer didn't understand me when I asked whether he could show me/discuss with me the fix before it was marked as 'fixed'. This led me to my next tweet:

@michaelbolton the programmer didn't know how I could help. I didn't build a good enough relationship or I didn't help enough.

All through the challenge I was trying to put a situational context to the question, tried to remember things that may have happened to me previously.

@michaelbolton fix was low priority, coding fixes are required in perceived 'higher risk if not fixed' areas.

Another situation I have been in, whereby a percieved low severity bug has been fixed over a percieved higher severity bug, this could be percieved as problem as a lower risk problem may have been fixed instead of a higher risk problem.

@michaelbolton do we need to focus on what's wrong?Solutions?Are we missing something else by focusing on what's wrong?

I added a human element to the question and started thinking about the programmer. I did ask "Do we need to focus on what’s wrong?" - which I think in hindsight the answer is 'Yes' that was the question!
I'm not sure if I was feeling it was a pointy finger at programmer moment. Or whether I was putting too much emphasis on the word 'wrong'. - (or associating it on not being a nice thing to be) I was thinking about whether I could help with a solution (which wasn't part of the question), Again I think I've learned something here, as I'm not sure I needed to do this, the question wasn't about a particular person or specific situational context.

In my last question "Are we missing something else by focusing on what’s wrong?" I was wondering whether I was missing other things, other issues elsewhere by focusing too much of my efforts on the change in bug status which could have been a 'wrong' thing to do. Since asking this question Michael clarified the challenge question for me and changed the word 'wrong' to 'misleading' - I'm not sure if this would have changed my thinking radically but I may not have asked the last question.

I was thinking about the words in the question a lot, and probably should have asked Michael to clarify things further, but didn't want to prolong the massage Michael seemed to be getting from his phone with the vibration of all the tweets he was recieving on the challenge. I was aware that there can be a restriction in understanding specific meaning in words especially on twitter.

What I should have done is gone away written down my 10 things and come back and presented them. I think that is a big thing that I didn't do.

I write things down all the time at work, I mean all the time write draw, doodle...
I must go through so many sticky notepads it's unreal...ah but what about the things I don't write down?...

Isn't that simple, write things down? I think it's more than that, it is thinking about what you wrote or writing what your thinking. (what I have also learned is I haven't got this facility on my iphone, that enables me to right things down as quickly as writing them down on paper - any suggestions please?)

The quote below was from the following article which I think may have helped me a lot.
http://www.positivityblog.com/index.php/2010/09/30/write-things-down/

“When you write down your ideas you automatically focus your full attention on them. Few if any of us can write one thought and think another at the same time. Thus a pencil and paper make excellent concentration tools.”
Michael Leboeuf

Learning Point: I'm now looking at ways I write things down, what I write down and how I can improve that.

Another big thing was that I think I may also have distorted the context in some of my answers, or not got the correct context, or applied a specific situational context where there wasn't one.

Actually that's massive I could have been trying to solve the wrong problem! I could have got a better understanding of the context from Michael had I asked a few questions:
Problem - What did he mean by 'problem'?, whose problem? How big?
Fixed - What does that mean to you? to the team? Does that mean Code?
Wrong - Wrong to whom? What does Wrong mean? What does wrong mean to you? What is the significance of being wrong?
Marked - Did 'marked' mean in a bug database?.
Do you mean?
Or simply, Can you explain the context?

The following is a link to Einsteins secret to Amazing problem solving:
http://litemind.com/problem-definition/

Here it is stated that Einstein was quoted to say that if he had one hour to save the world he would spend fifty-five minutes defining the problem and only five minutes finding the solution

I didn't know about that quote, and I think the 10 tips will be useful to me.

I have probably fallen into a lot of bias traps - there are a lot of them maybe even a hindsight bias...

Thanks again to Michael Bolton for the challenge
Thanks To Michel Kraaij for his tweet which ended up as my blog title.
And a big high 5 to all those who contributed to the challenge!

Can you spot any bias traps I fell into?

What could you learn for your next challenge?

Also whilst reasearching how to get better I stumbled across the following resources:

Einstein's secret to Amazing problem solving: http://litemind.com/problem-definition/

Among other things in the Skeptics Dictionary- Critical Thinking http://www.skepdic.com/ticriticalthinking.html

Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy - Analytic/Synthetic Distinction (which has been like open in safari on my iphone for an age:
http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/analytic-synthetic/

Panic Testing...

2011-01-02T04:07:00.000-08:00

Don't Listen to your stakeholders? nah really? Well sometimes....eh? you what!

....but I thought you said two posts ago to that it may be worth keeping in-tune with stakeholders??? hmmm

But what about panic testing?

Panic testing...never heard of it?

Well it's not panic testing as such it's panic applied to testers....

If you get to the end of a cycle of anything, panic can ensue. Or how about some left field new feature all last minute, yeh but we're on an agile team? I've still seen some panic happen....last minute or in-live fixes

Have you ever been there?, any team plan or strategy or principle? seems to go out of the window. ( well it seems most reasoning actually)

It normally happens at a management level....where the 'Nike Slogans' kick in and you get the phrases of 'Just Test it' or 'Just Do It'...'Just Pass it'

I actually quite enjoy it, when someone comes to me and says 'we only need to test this?' Yeh and I think to myself....really...we only need to test this? But I think what 'we only need to test this' actually means is 'This is the only thing I've thought of to test right now'

So Just test this? Are you sure...I mean really sure?

Let's talk over the possibilities...Why do we only need to test this? Or why do you think we only need to test this?

There has been some activity recently about 'selling testing', so this is a 'selling testing' moment isn't it? Or how about a selling your testing moment? Is this the stakeholder listen to you moment?...no I think it's more than that it is a stakeholder getting 'in-tune' with you or a stakeholder enagage...

When there may be panic, this can be where a tester can show there stuff', giving as much information to the stakeholder as possible, explaining why you would like to test more or something different than what may be suggested.

And what is the driver to the panic? Time? ok...but we still don't have to drop our principles because we have a time pressure do we?

In fact I think that's maybe where 'rapid testing' comes into it's own doesn't it? So we shouldn't throw it out the window because of a panic should we? I also think if testers don't get swept along with the panic we can provide valuable information to subdue the panic.

I think everybodies situation is different but I still think this is a good article that sits in the back of my mind if ever these situations arise http://www.satisfice.com/articles/explaining.shtml

So ok there is nothing new here, but something I have experienced, was in the back of my mind and been in draft for a long time...

Anybody experiencing a panic how do you deal with that?

1 Year on...Wahoo!

2010-11-04T07:44:00.000-07:00

Ok it has been over one year that I created my very first blog post...Wahoo!

I have got to give a big shout out to Phil Kirkham for encouraging me to start...Thanks Phil!

I want to also give a big shout out to all those you have read my blog, following or commented it's much appreciated...

A big shout out to the STC ...(love ya peeps)...who put me on the testing feed...

I made a tester carnival!...let's partayyy...lets all do the conga...hey! (thanks Simon, thanks for the comments aswell...skype session????) Is it a full moon yet?

Abe Heward talked about his experience starting his blog and the 'large and vibrant testing community' and John Stevenson talked about his experiences starting his blog and the online community. Mine echoes their experiences...the online test community is awesome!!!

One thing is definately for sure, I've learned a lot through blogging, this was one of my primary goals when starting. Try and write down what I do (or think I do, or figure out what I do), good or bad, and try and learn from it, can I do things 'better'?

I have found out some people are doing some great things, have been doing similar things and doing them better and I think that can only be good for me. Some of the comments have really made me think /re-think what I'm doing again I think this can only be good.

I think some people have also been on the same wavelength aswell...(a brucey bonus)

It's been a busy but exciting year, did I mention busy?... (wow I so need a extra weekday...anyone want to give me an extra weekday?...oh please...please,please,please)

One other thing, don't mention a r&b star in the title of any blog post, your blog will appear in the first page of a google search for that star...whoops...I think I appeared in some bump and grind search...mega whoops!

I have got lots of posts that I want to get out, I am struggling with a few but I want to try and focus on my experiences (they seem to be the ones that take the longest to do)....I think I may have an example of threads...

What have you learned through blogging? How vibrant is the testing community?

Party over for now...

Can you care too much?

2010-11-02T05:40:00.000-07:00

Can you care too much?

I think I do sometimes and I'm not sure it's a good thing. Hmm how can caring less be good?

Well it's not about caring less it's about caring enough for your stakeholders isn't it?

Caring too much has got me in hot water, how so? Well there are times when there I things which I think could make the software better, much better, I care a lot about what I'm doing. Why could this get me in hot water?, because I'm not the gateholder of quality or gateholder of anything. Making these types of decisions are up to stakeholders.

I could bang on about something that I feel isn't right with the software I'm testing (I do sometimes), and sometimes I have to let it go - after being raised, there are stakeholders commercial decisions to be made and the thing I'm highlighting may be small in the grand scheme of things. It's hard letting go isn't it?, it's hard knowing an issue that you feel strongly about is not going to be fixed...How do you deal with that? Well is it more about caring about the wrong things rather than caring too much?

I remember an article James Bach did (I think it was nearly 10 years ago now) where he mentions good enough testing, like you can't test everything but does this also mean good enough caring? (I really wish I could have a heated debate with James Bach rather that promoting his stuff all the time - How about threads? - a Digression)

So, If you get 'in tune' with your stakeholders, Is good enough testing also good enough caring? Is it that the same thing?

I now think that if I feel I'm caring too much, it may be time to re-evaluate my testing. (is my feeling of caring too much a rumble strip?) Are my perceptions correct? Have I understood things properly? Has my thinking misaligned to my stakeholders? Am I focusing too much? Spending too much time on one thing?

Are you caring too much? How do you deal with that? Are you doing good enough caring?

My Testers Playbook?

2010-10-11T08:22:00.001-07:00

Ok James Bach tweeted about his 'Testers Playbook' a while ago, I don't think I fully understood what he meant (maybe I should ask him more! - hey James what do you mean by a tester's playbook, do you actually mean a book? can you give us some examples and why do you think it's important? How does it help you? other people you are working with?)

Anyway it made me think about whether I had used a 'testers playbook' or not. Aswell as trying to understand what James means by a tester playbook I'll try and explain what I mean by my 'testers playbook' and what it means to me. So I looked back at some of the things I've tested and looked at one of my notebooks - I'm not sure if James actually means a notebook but I did find some interesting things in mine.(not a notepad, a notebook), you know the ones? The one's with a hard back, the one I looked at was red and reminded me a bit of 'this is your life...' although the coffee ring stain on the front cover ends that similarity.

I did take pictures of my notebook that I had intended to publish here, but after some thought I'm not sure I could publish them without censoring a lot of it, which could take a long time..(although I still intend to do this)

I'll try and share however the essence of what is in my notebook. This is not all encompassing, it is just what I have for the particular testing I was doing at the time. I hope some other people can share their notebooks or playbooks.

I've categorized what is in my notebook, based on what I think I'm trying to do.

So here are some of things in my notebook:

Lists - The particular thing I'm looking at in my notebook here is a list of stored procedures
The list is actually ticked, and some items in the list are different colours
Also things that are important - Risk? some I have put an asterisk at the front of some are coloured red so they stand out.

Tester's Models - My model/my own take on how things work - A diagram/text/flows (some serious working out of flows)

Tables - A configuration table / a risk table - or perceived risk table (again I have a table of stored procedures with frequency of use, importance of operation and complexity Is that risk? - note: I only use this as a guide not to necessarily follow to the letter...

Tech Notes - Notes from technical meeting(s)

Questions - Questions that I wrote down- That can be about the above but about anything I'm not sure about.

Scenarios - Me trying to work out some scenarios, lots of crossing out a re-work trying to get to a 'compelling story'

Collaboration - Any of the above with interaction with someone else - I have extensions or extra explanations of the above. The instance I'm looking at in my notebook is where a programmer wrote directly in my book, we were discussing something, I showed him my diagram he was explaining and added to it to, a sketchpad. - Note there were lots of pen points on certain aspects of the page like where we were using the pen to point to stuff -important stuff? is that an indicator for me to look there? ;o)

Environment stuff - Stuff I need to remember. The thing I'm looking at in my notes is an important registry key. It's right here in my notebook to remember and refer to. Hey what if the registry keys not there :o) Oh and stuff on scalability.

Reminders - In my notebook I have actually got some test reminders - they are Test strategy heuristics for me to remember, Yes I know a mnemonic should do that for me, but sometimes an unlikely reminder in my notebook does it for me..

Bugs - or are they just the questions as above, repros

Doodles - Thinking doodles...shapes and stuff...Can someone tell me if doodles are important? Are they a release of energy or something?

Feedback notes on Testing - How we think we're doing? Improvements?

I'll try and elaborate in future posts on the above a bit more to indicate how I think it helps me.

Do you have a 'testers playbook'? A notebook? What are you noting, writing, sharing?

Probably the best tester in the World!

2010-09-03T01:24:00.000-07:00

Ok, Friday's are now 'probably the best tester in the world' days.

Anyone drunk any Carlsberg beer? Then you might know the slogan.

I want testers that nobodys ever heard of, without a community presence to have their voice!

There may be several reasons why you testers don't have a blog, time....commitment to frequent posts, crikey it even took me a while to get going...and lapsing..

You might even be shy about what there doing, i.e it doesn't sound like what other people are talking and blogging about..well I want to know anyway...

I'll even interview you...How about that...

I also want testers to come forward who are doing something, or some kind of testing nobody has ever heard of.

But, could you probably be the best tester in the world?

Let me know...

Bugs have names?

2010-07-16T06:37:00.000-07:00

Ok, so bugs have names!

My son has had the following t-shirt for a while, which was actually a hand-me-down from my nephew.

Where's the cartoon tester? He never said they had names..hehe

Where did you find 'Kevin' was he an Ellis Island Bug?

Have you got names for the bugs you've found?
What's in your bug collection?

What testers can learn from cbeebies?

2010-07-09T02:30:00.000-07:00

Well it's Friday! Hurrah, So what can testers learn from cbeebies?

Well I've already mentioned that Waybuloo could be good for stressed out testers.

I've come across another cbeebies favourite called 'Tinga Tales' - Tales from Africa.
My son watches it most mornings (if you want to catch it it's normally on at 7:45am uk time) I watch it too...(I actually love it)

Why do I think it's good for testers? It's questioning? Why? Why? Why? Why a crocodile has a bumpy back? and it tells the story of why?

Being able to tell the 'testers story' and also being able to question - good things for testers right? - but also being careful on the stories aswell)

I think that might be good for me, always being reminded to question.

Also is there something in the blurb:

There is nothing more important than community and friendship in Tinga. There are good animals and bad animals, grumpy animals and patient animals, water animals and land animals, tall animals, short animals, loud animals and shy animals – but they all have their role to play. Big personalities for big characters, running jokes, catchphrases and lots of music.

You can meet the animals here .You can watch the intro here . My favourite is the tortoise.

Does it relate to your project team? the testing community? does it have any relation to Simon's post about the animal kingdom?

Tinga....Tinga...Tinga....Tingaaaaaaa

Being Imprecise: A De-Focus Heuristic?

2010-07-05T08:57:00.000-07:00

So I have been watching my 15th month old son learn and grow, one thing I have noticed is that he seems to learn and figure things out by being imprecise. Hmm like when he tries to stack cups he puts one on top of the other but he doesn't seem to be precise about it, sometimes they don't stack they topple and fall, sometimes they do, sometimes they do but are not exactly stacked on top of each other,sometimes they do stack and then fall. Is he purposefully being imprecise? Is he working out the boundaries of stacking? Is he just learning? Is it because he just doesn't understand what stacking is? Does he just have no assumptions or illusions? Does he even know what a cup is? Is it just one object on another object? I need someone who knows loads more about philosophy/psychology to give me some pointers.

Now I've been thinking about how this applies to software testing...black swans! Black swans? Yes....Black swans.... Well Simon Morley blogged about black swans and Michael Bolton too...(lots of references on Developsense. - and Abe Heward (thanks for the nudge to Abe's blog Simon) Damn I think they've already forged this path... (bizarrely - oh sugar...I'm now thinking about Michael Bolton and Simon Morley doing a 'Duke of Edinburgh' style backpack hillwalk..exploring? paths? hills? hunting for black swans? who knows....nuts yes, but at least there wasn't a vortex in sight!)

..I must admit I haven't read the Black Swan book by Nassim Nicholas Taleb...That's shame on me I know....gosh there's so much I want to read...(well actually that's a question I'd like to pose to Michael Bolton if I get the chance (or any tester for that matter), how do you choose what to read? Do you schedule time for reading? How do you retain what you've read? - If Matt Heusser hasn't interviewed Michael yet can someone pass the questions on)

Anyway, From what has been written about black swans I believe a 'Black Swan' is 'a rare event that is unexpected and inexplicable, has extreme consequences, but, in retrospect, appears to be easy to anticipate and explain' . So what I'm trying to say is can being imprecise (amongst other things) catch a glimpse of a black swan? I think it might....

My son, also got his finger caught in a train toy, you can push a button on top of the train, I think your supposed to put the train driver on the button and the wheels go round on the train. He is fascinated with wheels, so what he does is he tips the train upside down and pushes the button to see the wheels go around. He also then tries push the wheels while they are moving, but sometimes he misses the wheels and his finger goes in the gap between the wheel and the wheel arch but the wheel still goes round (because he's still pushing the button on the top) and he gets his finger caught...Is this being imprecise? Is it a combination of things? not sure...is it a black swan?...I think so....

Ok, so not only have I got all the context people pinging my poor brain cell (I think it may be withering) I have now got James Bach doing it (or doing it twice)....I think the thing that he's bellowing at me while he's pinging is this: De-focus = lots of change. Ah-ha is that what my son is doing when he's stacking...just doing lots of change..Oh and now I've got a black swan lurking around..

'Doing loads of unnecessary stuff that's inexpensive' - I'm still not sure that's being imprecise , isn't that just the de-focus part? but it could be being imprecise couldn't it?....like bashing the keyboard any way with anything....that's being imprecise isn't it? or hitting in between keys? Clicking not quite where you're supposed to.

Ok, I just did a 'bounce' with Simon Morley(@YorkyAbroad) on Twitter I think one of the key things is having a purpose for being imprecise.

I have thought a bit more about this...and am I just trying to describe fuzzy logic?

UPDATE: Hang-on if I have a purpose for being imprecise isn't that focused? What I'm now thinking is that being imprecise could be focused and defocused, but also it depends on what is meant by 'being imprecise'. Arghh..So I probably need to define it. . Also, could I be fooling myself that being imprecise really matters, and that black swans are just going to happen whatever, by reducing one black swan increases another? Or is it just not being imprecise but just freedom, Sounds a bit muddled...cue Bateson and again something else to re-read.
However, I think the essence of what I'm trying to say is violate and deviate from percieved models.

What do you do when your defocusing?

Off-blog questions:
How do you choose what do read?, when do you read it? How do you retain what you read?

Say What?...Beam me up Scottie!.....

2010-06-22T13:50:00.000-07:00

Ok, I recently participated in a testing challenge posted by Lanette Creamer.

The challenge was to test a Star Trek Teleporter where the 'Head Honcho' wanted to do a demonstration in 3 months.

I want to try and explain what I was trying to do in the challenge. ( Or what I think I was trying to do)

Ok when I started looking at the challenge there were already a few test ideas that had been posted. With limited time for me to do the challenge I skimmed the posts.

My immediate reaction, was to assume nothing. I was thinking about what is a 'Star Trek Teleporter' - I was thinking what if this was a kids toy or a computer game, and would I test this differently than a teleporter that beams people and objects about. Like way different test ideas, different customers, laws, competitors - the works.

Who was the customer? that's gonna tell me something right? A lot. I need to understand the customer don't I? What they want? Their expectations? What they want at the demo? Why they want a demo? Is there any significance in the time frame of 3 months?

The 'Head Honcho'- What someone calls the 'Head Honcho' might not be what I might call them? Aha.....queue the 'Test Automation' debate on Twitter! (well I do want to do a separate post on words, meaning and perception hopefully in less than 2 months time)

Anyway how might the 'Head Honcho' affect my role? What I do?

I'm not sure if people doing the challemge had already made some assumptions or were defining ideas to test assumptions. From my 'skimming' however, I thought there were some good test ideas from previous posts and a basis for good 'Quicktests' - I believe as Cem Kaner defines them, Tests that were ready right away. Things that wouldn't take to long to perform to give some information.

I think that may be important...you can question or test assumptions...or is that the same thing? de-dah a meaning behind the post..nearly...

Even when I found out the customer was the CIA, I was thinking hmm..could this really be the Central Intelligence Agency, but what if it was a company called Criminal International Arms, and would my view change? Assumption or skepticism?

Aha Skepticism, I had a conversation with one of my colleagues a while back, I'm still thinking about it now, I think it's just niggling me, He said the earth is tilted on is axis at 23.5 degrees? So I say 'really, how do we know that?', and he says 'it's proven, it's known, it just is'. I'm still thinking how do you prove that?, do you need to prove that? and is it really known?, a mathematical equation has proven it? I probably don't need to worry about this but hey I google the question... Interesting information, and some disagreement...but lots of forum information about measuring the axial tilt using a stick the sun at noon, summer solstice (just missed it?!) something flat, a shadow and an equation..... Time for me to put the skeptical axial tilt thoughts to bed perhaps..a digression..

Now, I think some of my questions may not have been necessary had I talked to Lanette, or some of the other testers, the 'Head Honcho' or the engineer, oh and of course the customer.

I asked a question about whether we could use Bob 'The Lab Rat' and what was really great was that a fellow tester knew the answer to my question - Thomas Ponnet and replied...How kool! Collaboration? on a challenge on a blog....ace!

So what am I trying to say out of all this, well In this exercise I tried not to assume to too much, I was almost thinking like a kid who was trying to figure something out. Can we call that the 'What's that Dad/Mum heuristic'?. (I do use this heuristic, because I've been 'caught' a few times on assumptions - mostly recently with test environments - like spell it out to me)..does that make sense?...You know what I mean though right? ...sometimes when you have a conversation with kids they say What is that? what does that mean? why? or why does it do that? I think I was trying to strip back my assumptions...

I wasn't thinking about it at the time, but do you you remember James Bach's diagram at ACCU2010?

So when all the testers were doing the challenge which parts were they trying to find issues with? Was I looking more at the imagined bit?...not sure...

Anyway I learned a lot from the challenge, from other testers, and about the stuff I did...(especially skimming and scanning which requires another blog post)

Are you doing a testing challenge?
What are you thinking about when you're doing it?
What did you learn?

Music, Mneumonics and a 3-D model?

2010-04-23T01:56:00.000-07:00

Kanye West does Performance Testing? Say what?....Well it might have got your attention right?

So what am I talking about? Well I'm going to have a 'crazy' Half-baked half hour? Inspired by Jon Bach's blog post and sleep deprivation oh dear...Oh well...

Here goes...

1. How about itunes (or any other music provider) does mneumonics?

-btw if I mention itunes enough do I get any freebies from any Apple people out there?

Well I thought of this in the car on the way home from golf with my father-in-law ( I won btw!) and on radio 2 there was a music quiz...a song came on...which I recognized and guessed the right year...which happened to be when I was about 3. So had I remembered the song from when I was 3? or was it just a coincidence...or had I just thought that I'd thought I'd remembered it...hmm...anyway I thought I'd remembered it...then I thought about a lot of songs I remember....can I use this in testing?? Also, I started thinking about songs and experiences....so can you do songs/experiences/mneumonics?

Parimala compiled a list of mneumonics in her blog about the power of mneumonics.

So can you turn stuff like SFDPT and CRUSSPIC etc into a playlist? I'm proposing the 'P' of CRUSSPIC to be Kanye West - 'Stonger' (Should I really be promoting Kanye West?)...anyway I heard the song and bizarrely I thought of Performance Testing....tenous linkage...

oh and Kanye West also does 'Love(Bug) Lockdown' aswell....Is Kanye West a tester???

Anybody got some kool songs to fit into this? I really want to fit Michael Jackson's - 'Beat it' in somewhere...hey if we can get some songs for a mneumonic we can create a playlist...oh and the STC might distribute it in the next edition of their magazine...

Half-Baked idea turns into Apple Freebies and magazine download....rar...now we're cooking! or baking or whatever...(Well I told you it was a crazy half-hour)

What if we all have our playlists but swap them, and try and find out what mneumonic it is? So thinking about a mneumonic that makes you think about a mneumonic that makes you think about heuristics...wow a lot of thinking...

or can you over-think? (another blog post in the making)

2. Concentration break 10 second mneumonicizer

That moment your into something intense on your screen or keyboard , you lift you head and hands for 10 seconds you need a break. Back in the day I had a miniture basketball net in the test lab so I'd pick up the ball and launch the ball towards the hoop, and then go back to the screen.

So now what I'm thinking about is a little thing you have on your desk. A thing that you could flick and it would rotate round showing you all the words for a mneumonic... A blinking mneumonic....You could have sounds aswell....A musical blinking mneumonic...

Don't tell me, the testers...oops...I mean Engineers at Google already have one of these....

3. Model Exploring

Instead of 2-d models we have 3-D ones which you can explore. Like a testbox360 or testbox live? pick up a console and off you go...We have games where we do exploring and stuff don't we? ..could you not have a model represented like a game....One snagging point would be transalation of the model...abstraction....hmm...There's got to be some research project looking at this stuff hasn't there...Where's Q?

I'm still going to get this wrong....but while I'm talking about models I got confused by 'model-based testing' a while ago and I want to make a distinction. Documented Models that we can use to aid our manual testing I'm thinking 'Model-Assisted testing...'

A machine that automatically generates checks from a model I'm thinking 'Automated Check Generation'

A machine that automatically generates tests from a model I'm thinking 'Automated Test Generation'

Have you got any crazy-half baked ideas?

Oh and is it me or did OpenVolcano seem like Tribal Gathering? (was Jeff Sutherland Pete Tong?) and can we just call some agile methods something kool like 'Sunrise', 'Raindance' or 'Perception'

Crazy half-hour over......phew....

ACCU 2010 Day Four....Sapient Testing...C+-....Kanban

2010-04-18T05:12:00.000-07:00

Wow! Thursday at ACCU 2010 seemed to have created a some activity amongst the test community. Matt Heusser created this post and Markus Gärtner created this one

Did it create a storm amongst the dev community?....

I am slightly amazed if it has....but if it has it's all good isn't it?....

So what happened? James Bach presented his keynote 'Hello I'll be your tester today.....'

Talking about sapient testing....

For me as other testers have commented I didn't see this as new thing, we have to use our brains right?

James: "I'm testing outside the spec because the specification is just a rumor"
Spec vs Actual vs Imagined ????

"Simple tests tell us whether a product works. Good tests determine how it might not work "

Is that 'can it work' vs 'will it work' ?

One of the key things for me was when James started talking about automated tests not being the same as a manual tester conducting tests (however they can coincide)- I've been meaning to blog about this for a while. John Stevenson beat me too it.

James got challenged on this point( I think it was percieved (wrongly imo) to be an attack somehow on agile automated tests) , I think this may have been when dev cogs started to turn...but like you can't automate a testers mind can you?

I attended the first session of that day which was James was talking again, this time about 'The case against test cases"

So if James was talking about professionalism in the keynote, was he talking about integrity in the 2nd? Like don't go along with the test case illusion.

He talked about beyond Test Cases by:

Test Framing

Test Factoring

Floating

Critical Thinking

"Test Cases shouldn't be taken seriously....Cases over focus testing. It's the de-focus that find the problems."

"TDD not being a test thing but a methodical heartbeat to development thing"

"Activity based Testing rather than artefact based testing. "

The next session was by Sergei Ignatchenko giving a talk on The importance of early bug detection for improving program reliability and reducing development costs.

Sergei baiscally talked about personal experience where he found that nasty bugs among others are hard to find in the following areas:
- Multithreading
- Security
- 3rd Party Bugs

He mentioned the existing solutions of:
- Production mode logging and reporting
- Asserts - With more asserts you can get closer to the cause of the issue
- Static Code Analysis
- Language features - Const/Private

His solution was an opensource project called C+- (a new language) which allows you to create extensions for preventing restricting bugs in code.

The next session on Thursday was Database Testing Demistified by Sven Rosvall

He talked about Why we test Databases?
- to protect the production db
- test db as components
- automate tests
- facilitate change

What can we test?

- Table/Cols
- Constaints
- Defaults
- Triggers
- SP's
- Views
- ACL's

How we can test?

- Single stepping Sp's
- Unit Test Frameworks i.e. Spunit

The demonstration was good, however some of the stuff, it seemed I had been involved with about 5 years ago..

The last session I went to was 5 steps to Kanban by Karl Scotland...

Kanban taken from Toyota....the car manufacturer....Are they still using Kanban?

hmmm.....
Ok the 5 steps were these...
1. Recognize the value ( queueing theory....others in the session weren't convinced)
2. Visualize the work
3. Limit Work in progress
4. Discover Cadence
5. Eliminate Kanban

I just wasn't convinced on this (although I took the most notes on this session the whole week)
It just seemed very processed...

Is anybody testing within a Kanban environment?

Because I have got this post out so late....Thomas Ponnet has already blogged about Friday at ACCU 2010 (well he's more Observant than me!) and it seems he was in 2 sessions I was in!!!!! Arghhh!

Lesson learnt I must read tweets more often......(Sorry Thomas it would have been good to meet up!....)

Parting notes...I haven't been to a conference in an age (years) everyone was very friendly, there seemed loads of energy a real buzz of an atmosphere! I got the impression some great things were being developed without being developed - if that makes sense. I need to make it next time!

Oh and I was gutted Lisa Crispin couldn't make it for her session (aparently something to do with a volcano, anyone heard about that?....Lisa can you still do your session some time.....by some other means?....

(If anyone is still stuck there?....are you lot going to build some software while your there...nothing better to do....well if you need a tester give me a shout!)

So is anybody got a conference lined up? where are you going?

ACCU 2010 - Exploratory Testing with James Bach

2010-04-14T02:34:00.000-07:00

Wow....where do I start?....

Well I attended ACCU 2010 at the Barcelo in Oxford Yesterday..

I had a mixed fortunes 'early morning' - waking up with a dodgy tummy....but followed by a black cat walking across the road right in front of me on the car journey to the venue, I took this to be a good sign and soon forgot the dodgy tummy...

I attended the session with James Bach entitled 'Exploratory Testing Explained'. I have to say it was awesome and there are some things I can instantly use from the session....

As far I remember James started the session talking about self defence in testing....what? you may ask....

ok....so have you ever had anyone come up to you and ask you whether your doing something you've never heard of.... i.e. Are you doing 'super douper equiv part version 1.2.1'? Have you done 'blahdeblahblah'?

Rather than a 'no' response it would better to respond by using a phrase like 'Not known by that name' but we're doing this that and the other...

My own thoughts on this also included asking the person what they mean by the phrases they're are using...but I guess by responding like that may take time, while a 'Not known by that name' response gives instant feedback to the questioner

James stated that exploratory testing is an approach and not a technique, exploratory testing can be applied to techniques...

We moved onto the distinction between scripted and exploratory testing

Thinking of scripted testing as a straight line

and exploratory testing as loops.

James talked about the idea of 'soft scripted testing'....and who is generating the test ideas, are the test ideas under the testers control...I think there probably should be cartoon for this...where's the cartoon tester?

Exploratory testing can have scripted elements for example using a tablewhen testing (scripted) but changing the data within it (sorry for the bad explanation) I have done this before and have been meaning to blog about this for a while...A good prompt from the session to get that post out.

We did several exercises, firstly where James presented us with an application to generate the minimum number of tests...

A few tests later.....

In fact there were no minimum number of tests which James called 'epistemic infinity' - I think this means something finite with no upper bounds....

We did another exercise with dice, we could throw dice(of all shapes and colours) say a number and James would then say a number back to us. We had to work out James algorithm. I learned a lot out of this exercise, because it was all out about focusing and defocusing....

I would like to have done a lot better at this exercise, however because I didn't do as well as I'd liked it's kinda etched on my brain.....which can only be good right?

I think I was probably thinking about lots of things and tests in my head all at once.....i.e I want to try this this and this rather than focusing on one thing at a time. Or I should have fused these strategies?...interchanging focus and de-focus...

I did contemplate asking other people about what they were finding to get a better spread of data in order to perhaps get to the algorithm quicker....but would that have confused me even more?

James mentioned the Car Park Calculator to everyone (I think this causes a twitter storm when Matt Heusser presented the challenge) I briefly had tested this before when Matt originally released the challange......How did you fair with that challenge? What's is the highest amount that you can get? Good practice?

James demonstrated blink testing....

Mentioned that you can't rely on your memory for recording exploratory testing. James uses video to record sessions...(this is quite interesting as I have recently done some videoing of my own). I also have previously used tools like Wink and fiddler. James also advocated function level logging. I think this is great....there is lots of logging going on with the system I'm currently testing...however, I have one caveat to this...You don't want to spend too much time testing the logging!!....

James mentioned visualization and a tool called ( NodeXL) - which I may look at using amongst other visualization tools - look out for future posts...

We also covered sessions.

The whole day was great, lots of vareity interaction, magic tricks and it most definately kept my interest throughout the entire day...'there was definately no afternoon switch off'. At the end of the session I felt more energized...

The things I will instantly do:

1. Blink testing......I currently working on a system that has huge log files and I have been searching the log for specific things or blinking at specific searches but I think now I'm just going to expand that and look at the whole log and see if my brain notices any patterns..

2. Focus and de-focus - Focus meaning small change, de-focus meaning lots of change
I need to practise this a lot.

3. James taught me a magic trick which I'm going to try and perfect through practice...

4. Practice, Practice, Practice and more practice.... ( I quickly realized that I need to do a lot more - I may get to get coaching sessions over skype yet!)

Is there a theme here?

Practice? What are you practicing?

Context free...really?

2010-03-21T12:48:00.000-07:00

Can something be context free?

eh?

but...context is always important isn't it??....

aha....maybe not....or maybe not initially?

I remember a blog post a while back (time for you bounce buddies...if anyone can jog my memory as to who's blog that was..that would be great..), where I think Mr. Bach asked someone to post a blog about when context isn't important.

I racked my brains for ages, thinking about that question, like context isn't important when things are so generic, or maybe so routinized.

However I stumbled across an old blog post by Andy Tinkham that gave me a different angle on this. Is Andy still blogging?

Questions can be context-free. What? Yeh...Context doesn't need to be important for some types of questioning. hmm...

I think in a way it's so obvious that I take it for granted, like you have to start somewhere to find information. Can this be used to focus and de-focus? Even Heuristics prompt context-free questions don't they? So can heuristics be context-free?

Andy Tinkham mentions the Phoenix Checklist in his post, and produced a paper with Cem Kaner that mentions this. Rob Lambert also mentions the Phoenix Checklist in his blog post about the subject. However being a 'Double 0' do I want to use a CIA checklist?? How about Box 850 questions??

Joe Strazzere has also posted some context-free questions in his blog post about asking great questions.

I think I use context-free questions to get a 'handle' on things or get a greater idea of the context..or more ultimately identify risk..Who are the stakeholders? What is the product? What is the schedule? etc etc
Are context-free questions just prior to testing?

Some of these questions I kinda call getting in your stakeholders head(s)...customers head(s)....developers head(s), fellow tester(s) head(s)...there are some generic questions that you can ask as initial guides before delving into context aren't there?

What is this project for? What are the benefits? to whom? What is the application written in? How is this built? Delivered? Can I see the code? What is it supposed to do?

I'm not advocating context-free testing (well I don't think I am), I think all testing has to be driven by context (i.e once you have an intial view - the context? Then you will want to ask contextual questions), adaptable to whatever your situation is right now. (Oh no - does that mean I have succumbed to a group/school - I so wanted to be schooless, oo-ahh my own Bucaneer! Anyway, Those context-people have probably just pinged that brain cell of mine too many times...)

Are you using context-free questions? Is everyone using context-free questions?

What questions are you asking?

Scriplory and Checkest...

2010-02-18T14:28:00.000-08:00

Imagine this...

You've got a test script....your supposed to follow it but you don't.....well you do but you do other stuff in between.....well designing, learning and executing?

Right...So you can do exploratory testing with a script can't you? I don't think anyone has said you can't...I just think this point get's lost in the debate sometimes...(is it because it's bad?)

When I started out in testing, scripted tests were 'all the rage'. (yes I know some of you weren't using scripts way back in 1983 and earlier) They were test cases generated with templates. Well anyway, even though I might be following a script I still used to deviate from it (well actually I usually totally forgot about the script deviated and then went back to it.)

What am I trying to say? Well even though I may have used a scripted test case, to me I think it was just a 'trigger' to find out more, probably when I noticed things. It may have been a narrow trigger however.

When I was following a test script....it did take me a lot longer to complete it....because I was interested in other stuff (that wasn't in the script) that may have been happening in the System under test.

So what is that hybrid? Is it a hybrid? Is that a check and a test? or a Ch-est-eck? Does anybody care?

Well this can become a minefield can't it?

Ok, so what happens if I find something that wasn't on the script? An issue? How does that work because I shouldn't have found it really.

(Note I used the word issue. I like to use the word issue as anything I find might not necessarily be defect - another blog post looms)

Well for me, I just raised them, an issue, is an issue, is an issue important to someone right?

Ok, Do I now have to retrofit the script to include anything that I did that wasn't previously on it? That could be a lot of work especially if I find a lot of issues. If I then ran it again, (if I would want to) and went off-script again it could mean more work...

hmm..maybe I've now convinced myself that there should be a seperation of Checks and Tests?

I think I kind of morphed from test case scripts to test triggers, and I'm now quite fond of test sessions that may use triggers which I may use as a basis (but not bound by) of exploring in that session.

Is anybody doing Scriplory? or Checkest? or Chestesk?

How is that going?

Proper Testing on the Toilet!

2010-02-15T04:47:00.000-08:00

Now you can do some proper testing on the toilet! (aka TotT)

eh?

Yeh the new STC magazine is out! Wahoo! Print off your copy and have a peruse at your leisure.

There is some fantastic stuff in there! Stuff like you've never seen before....Well Done STC!

There will be 'tester points' on where you can strategically place parts of the magazine around your office...Ready Steady ...Go! (particularly the cartoons)

A big shout out to Rob, Phil, Joel and Rosie for their fantastic efforts!!
( I hope there weren't too many dramas Rosie)

A big shout out to contributors, proof readers helpers etc....

A special mention for myself...haha...I made the first issue!......Wahoo! Wahoo! Wahoo!

Go check out the 'I'm not just a tester' article and tell me what you think....

What I was trying to convey is...there are just loads of stuff a tester does, and there are many strings to our bows...

Another thankyou to Rob, Phil, Joel and Rosie for selecting my article....

p.s. While your 'testing on the toilet' you can have a think about your own article and get it submitted to the STC! Ah...Gawn...

The developer is my friend...

2010-02-01T04:25:00.000-08:00

So...a new post has been a long time coming...

Wow what a busy start to the new year....

ok here goes...

I have found that it's good to have friends in the dev team...I mean real friends like 'go out socially outside of work kinda friends'.
(Yes I know context people..you can stop pinging my brain cell..that may depend on your context..distrubuted teams and all that..)
However, I have been fortunate in the past that I have been able to call some developers I've worked with 'friends'.

Why do I think this helped me?

I think it's easier to be open with each other, less formal - is there more free thinking? - maybe, there's a definate trust, perhaps more inclined to listen to each other...more comfortable perhaps...you can have some banter without offending - knowing the other persons boundaries. Knowing and understanding each others strengths and weaknesses. I may have got this all wrong, but I think it becomes easier to push together to the 'common' goal. You do more downtime (non-working environments) discussions, questioning, thinking, helping?...

You don't have to be friends to achieve this, but I think these traits get enhanced if you do...

Having just read Joel's post here I think it's maybe about getting good regular feedback, growing together and building relationships... does that mean friends?

Are you friends with your developers? Does it help you?

p.s. Does anybody know of any MS Research project/ Cem kaner article about this?...
Well any justification for pub time right? 'We must go down the pub because the research suggests...'

The Tester Reflection

2010-01-07T05:47:00.000-08:00

Happy New Year everyone!

Wow what an end to a fantastic year!

A time for a bit of reflection, together with anticipation and excitement for the year to come.

So what happened last year (I'll let Simon Morley do the Testers carnival over the last year)

- I started this blog (Wahoo!) Thanks to everyone who's taken the time to read it...
- I joined the Software Testing Club community - which in all honestly suprised me a lot...There are shed loads of you out that there with lots of opinions, knowledge and experience willing to share along with a 'bit of banter'
- I submitted an article for a testing magazine
- I have been working on my own ASP.net application and re-familiarizing my self with the asp gridview...hmm... and itextsharp a pdf generation library..so I've gotten to script about a bit.

The one thing that has been 'mind blowing' this year is that there definately feels like a testing community. Well Done Everyone! High 5!

What am I getting 'juiced' about for 2010.

- Visualization...Why? because I think I might be able to help me test...I have been mulling over Fred Beringers blog on James Whittakers outline of test visualization for a while and I think visualization might make me to be able make more sense of complex stuff and therefore try and help me focus. I think Marlena Compton has been outlining similiar things around visualizing quality. I have already been thinking about Testing Reports and visualization. There are now quite a few tools out there to transform data (Google Visualization being one).
How are you using visualization in your test efforts?

- The possibility of perhaps getting a testing lesson from James Bach he's doing some coaching, you can never stop learning right?

- The possibility of testing with Phil Kirkham

- The STC. I think theres lots more to come there are some great discussions and a magazine. Keep your eyes peeled I hope to be participating more.

- More blog posts - One of my previous colleagues has urged me to get more controversial

- Tester Blogosphere - There's some great people and great testers out there.

Other Stuff for 2010

- I posted up some questions for Harry Robinson (or the Phantom Harry Robinson) about model based testing. Harry seemed to have helped me by not helping me, how kool is that? (well I re-re-read stuff i.e I did research - something I want to concentrate on for future blog posts) Anyway I've come to the conclusion we're all using models! ..all the time and I don't think it's that a complex a topic anymore (it might even tie in with visualization...2 new blog post ideas in 30 seconds I'm going to be busy in 2010). I also stumbled across a modelling tool at Compendium Developments which I want to try out.

Is anybody using this tool?

- I have got to get out more....I haven't been to a conference in a while so I am going to try and get to few in 2010.
Any conferences to recommend?

- I revisited an archive of the globaltester website. The website was maintained by Jeff Nyman I think it ran from 1999 and then disappeared in 2005. It was a good source of information for me when I was started testing. I believe Jeff stopped the website due to a change in his thoughts.
There's stuff about critical thinking and information and knowledge which I think I need to re-read.
Is Jeff still out there? Anyone know what his current thoughts are?

- I think I'm also on to something for stressed out testers.....Waybuloo! It's just brilliant!

What are you getting excited about in 2010?

007 has a plan! This document will self destruct in 5 iterations..

2009-12-03T03:00:00.000-08:00

This post was triggered by Alan Page's post here about iterations. Like keep iterating often. Isn't this kinda like evolving something? Well I thought so, what did I first think of?..I think as Alan did....Test Plans and strategies

Why did I think of test plans and strategies? Well I just think that a test plans/strategies should be an evolving thing, have iterations. It is all too often that I see a Test Plan/Strategy that relates to a document. A document that gets written 'before' testing begins and left. It becomes out of date doesn't it? I have seen this a lot, I don't particularly like it that much, because most of the projects I have been on generally evolve, you gain more knowledge as you progress..focus, may change, risks may change, environments change, time changes, stakeholders change? etc etc

I know it's not always possible but I prefer an evolving test plan in my head that I try and transfer somewhere via /notes/scribbles or a whiteboard (Or does everyone just have that? and does everyone have that even if a document may be out of date?) Why? I have seen it all to often that a test plan/strategy document has been created and followed to the 'letter' and lots of tests get run and pass - All good right? or is it?

What happens when things change? The plan/strategy has to change doesn't it? and that affects the way we test right?

What I like to do is have a thin spread of sessions, across percieved high risk areas and see what happens. (these might not necessarily be sessions of test execution either, they could be meetings with a developer or stakeholder) , Are there more issues being found in one area than an other? If so should a deeper session be created for that area? Does that area become higher risk because more is being found there? Maybe, and that's where I might want to change my plan and strategy. I want to find the 'failure points' as quickly as possible. (Preferably the failure points that are important to the stakeholder(s) of the project)...What if you're finding no issues in a particular area but you intended to do lots more testing in that area? Do you still want to do that? You might want to change your focus away from that area...isn't that a change of plan and a potential change of strategy?

While writing this blog, I reverted to this document which I think aligns to what I am trying to say.

Also I can feel myself getting sucked into the checking and testing debate....eek....So should their be checking plans and testing plans? or is checking part a test strategy? i.e. sapient processes surrounding the check?, or is checking part of both..a checking plan and a testing strategy?...(It's now I'm probably confusing myself...)

Do your plans and strategies change during your testing? How do you document that? Do you need to? and how do you deal with the changes?

Michael Bolton alluded to the problem of measurement in his posts about testing here and here.

Michael will be able to explain things better than me no doubt in future posts ( like way way better) , but Jonathon Bach outlines an approach here.

I know this may not work for all situations but I have found that a customized low tech Testing Dashboard has helped me alot along with beginning of the day stand up meetings (What did you do yesterday, what are you doing today, what did you find, what is your feeling etc) I think these help in the project team understanding what you are doing, how you are doing it what issues you are incurring, understanding possible progress...

It's Friday, so are you watching closely?

2009-11-20T06:43:00.001-08:00

It's Friday, so are you watching closely?

What do you get if you cross a 7 month old baby, testing, and a vortex?...Epistemology of course!

2009-11-19T04:45:00.000-08:00

I have been looking at things outside of software testing lately and trying to see if they apply to testing software...

I have a 7 month old baby boy who I love dearly...

It has been fun watching him grow in the past 7 months.

He loves his activity gym, (a play mat with soft crossbars that you can hang things from via plastic hooks). It has been fascinating watching him on his gym. I could watch him all day..

Ever since he was a couple of months old, he would try and get toys, that were hanging by the plastic hooks on the gym, off and hold them himself. Sometimes I would see him working the toy to the gap in the hook and then pulling it off. Sometimes he would put one hand on the other side of the plastic hook (I assume so that the toy wouldn't go passed the gap...clever) then move the toy to his hand/the gap and pull the toy off....

Other times I would see him just pull the toy...and pull the toy..and pull the toy and eventually it would come off through the gap in the hook...(I'm thinking brute force)

He now rolls around on his gym and I noticed when he rolls around he might be trying to get to one toy and his hand lands on another which he then picks up and starts playing with ...he seems to stumble across toys....

So me being a tester thinks that this is quite interesting (not that geeky really)

What I'm thinking about is how he is learning? Ok so what?

Well here's the thing...'exploratory testing' is supposed to be 'simultaneous learning, test design and test execution' right?....Aha...Ok so there's learning in there....

So what I'm now thinking is, is there quick way that I learn when I'm exploring?, a 'better' way? or can I learn to learn more quickly when I'm doing this exploring....or are there different ways of learning based on your context?

Whilst I'm watching my boy grow up it seems he does a lot of 'Trial and Error...(I could be wrong however) this term keeps sticking in my mind...When I looked this up on Wikipedia this is what I got:

'Learning doesn't happen from failure itself but rather from analyzing the failure, making a change, and then trying again'

Is this what I do? It sounds a bit like it..I try something see what I get, I get nothing..(or after some analysis)...I try again or try something else...this sounds way too simple...

On the wikipedia page I get an issues with trial and error section, which reads:

'Trial and error is usually a last resort for a particular problem, as there are a number of problems with it. For one, trial and error is tedious and monotonous. Also, it is very time-consuming; chemical engineers must sift through millions of various potential chemicals before they find one that works. Fortunately, computers are best suited for trial and error; they do not succumb to the boredom that humans do, and can potentially do thousands of trial-and-error segments in the blink of an eye.'

Ok, so that doesn't sounds like what I do...

I see a link at the bottom of the trial and error wikipedia page...

Empiricism ...interesting....what's this all about?

Here's what wikipedia says:

In philosophy, empiricism is a theory of knowledge which asserts that knowledge arises from sense experience. Empiricism is one of several competing views about how we know "things," part of the branch of philosophy called epistemology, or "the Theory of Knowledge".

Now I've heard about epistemology somewhere else....damn....has someone else trampled a similar path?

Well epistemology is mentioned here http://www.satisfice.com/

Do all paths lead back to James Bach? perhaps not lead to him, maybe brush passed him? Or maybe there is no path just a wide open space that James pops up in now and then...(weirdly I'm now thinking about the Vortex on the TV Show 'adventure game', anybody remember that? An absolute classic if you could persuade you gran from not watching Corrie) probably....can anyone find another path/route/way? Is there one?

I have known about James Rapid Testing class for a while now (I think Mr Bolton also does the same class) but I now revisited the outline, and here's the paragraph I'm now quite interested in.

The ideas in this class are drawn not only from experience, but are also grounded in epistemology, cognitive psychology, decision theory, and other fields. Testing is a far more interesting field than most people realize. We're at the crossroads of many other traditions.

Or maybe it's just all to do with deliberate practice ?

Ok, well this post could go on forever, and I might be approaching a crossroad, with a vortex on it which I might have to think about crossing, so I'll stop now.

Is anybody consciously using learning techniques while they are testing?
Is anyone deliberately practicing?
Has anyone else found out what's at the crossroads?

UPDATE: The possible learning styles used whilst exploring are outlined here

KB007007007a

2009-11-18T02:19:00.000-08:00

In one of my first blog posts I blogged about a 'screwy' MSDN blog search. Thanks to the clever people at Microsoft they fixed it...or rather changed the search to use 'Bing'...all this in just under the nanosecond...impressive...

I've got a feeling those clever people are setting us a challenge aren't they?

Well ok I've been busy for a while I've come back to it....
Are you ready? This could get complicated....

I go to Michael Hunters MSDN blog again (hey Michael you are getting a lot of plugs here!...)

http://blogs.msdn.com/micahel/

Ok lets use the new bing search...

In the search input box on Michaels blog lets input the word 'the' and then click the search button.
A search box opens displaying the results
It tells me that there are 1,440 results returned....I've got no problem with that.

Ok I click on the hyperlink that indicates page 5, the search then shows me what I assume to be the results from page 5.

No problem there.....except....On page 5 the search results number has increased to 1,960. Either Michael has added blog posts in the seconds that it took me to click to page 5 or there is something wrong...

hmmm....

Let me try something else....I input the letter 'i' into the search box and clicked the 'search' button.
One page gives me 11,600,000 search results, another gives me 1,400 results, another 12,900,000.....am I going nuts? There maybe lots of variations in numbers of eyes on the blog but i's....nah..that's way too big a variation...

Again, I run this passed someone else, thankyou for this and your time Rosie. (btw Rosie is an all round superstar - running Lewes Werks founding Software Testing Club and co-starting Flash Mob Testing amongst other things)

Rosie had a look at the search and found something else.
Rosie inputted the word security into the search box, clicked the 'search' button which displayed results, she then clicked on the page 5 hyperlink which then presented her with '0 Result' and 'We did not find any results containing security.'

Anyone find anything wrong with that? As Rosie pointed out to me...there should not be a page 5 hyperlink to click on if there are no results for page 5, and the message '0 Result' probably should be '0 Result(s)' shouldn't it?

Ok what next? I tried it on another blog (this time I was being wary of an angry weasel), yep same issue.

What about bing itself? well yeh, the search results totals vary from page to page on 'ordinary' bing search...hmmm...and double hmmm...

Isn't this confusing to the user? It confused me....

Someone has got to have noticed that right?

I tried a google search, however there is nothing obvious amongst a lot of 'noise'

Ok, maybe these are not 'showstopping issues' and maybe Microsoft already know about them, I'm sure they do...but I got to learn stuff right?

So what have I learned...

How about...
- A fix isn't always a fix it could be a change
- A fix/change can introduce new issues
- You don't have to accept a fix from someone you might respect...
- Always re-test
- The bug isn't always in the thing your testing or perhaps the bug might have wider implications(I think the bugs may be in bing itself...not just a msdn blog search)
- Remote testers joining together is fun
- I like 'tag pair testing'
- Is something worth testing?

UPDATE:

After reading this blog post I'm now thinking my post becomes irrelevant...like who cares? Maybe I didn't think, well I know I didn't. (thanks for reminding everyone Alan) Anyway I think this might be the real lesson.

I also remembered the following except from James Bachs Rapid Testing Course:

A product is good enough when all of these conditions apply:
1. It has sufficient benefits.
2. It has no critical problems.
3. The benefits sufficiently outweigh the problems.
4. In the present situation, and all things considered, further improvementwould be more harmful than helpful.

Something sourcey could help...

2009-11-06T02:11:00.000-08:00

This post has been sparked by the opensource testing post by Yvette Francino. I've got to be careful of flattery spam but...I like Yvette's blog. Her blog reminds me of my journey in testing, doesn't it remind some of you of your journey? I wish blogs were around when I started out.

Now...I assumed (I think wrongly) that the places I go for tools and stuff were just the places everyone else went...

Just in case, I'm going to post the sites that I have found quite handy for free tools...(I apologize if there is any overlap)

http://www.opensourcetesting.org
http://www.codeplex.com/site/search?projectSearchText=test
http://code.google.com/hosting/search?q=test
http://www.testingfaqs.org/ (hosted by Danny Faught - Who has done a few posts on free tools)
http://sourceforge.net/softwaremap/trove_list.php?form_cat=45
http://www.tigris.org/
http://www.softwareqatest.com/qattls1.html
http://portableapps.com/
http://xprogramming.com/software
http://openqa.org/
http://www.testdriven.com/modules/mylinks/index.php
http://www.sectools.org/
http://www.agile-tools.net/
http://www.codeproject.com
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/magazine/default.aspx
http://research.microsoft.com/en-us/
http://www. google.co.uk

There are some tools, that you can only find whilst visiting specific tester/dev websites.

I also carry 5 dvd's worth of stuff around with me, (a tool for every occassion...nearly) so at some point I'll share what I've got if your interested..and maybe I'll post how I use them.

I have probably forgot a few places.

Can anybody suggest anywhere else?

Cocktail mix on the Fed-Ex Tour?....

2009-11-03T03:36:00.001-08:00

Are you on the Fed-Ex, the Star East, Star West, Star anything, GTAC, European....well any tour for that matter?

That means you got 'hotel time' right? A few drinks maybe...and saw lots of testers.... Sounds like the perfect cocktail to......................................

Write an article for the testing community...

Yeh you!

For me personally I don't want to know about the speeches, no no I want to know what you lot were talking about in between the speeches after the speeches, at the bar..the next day....the next week...Have you implemented anything because of it? There have got to be some wicked exchanges happening there...tell us!

That's the stuff I want to know about...

Well ok then, you can tell us about the speeches...

If like me you weren't on a tour..duty calls :o( ....
You were testing? No...really?....someone does that?

How about....

Writing an article for the testing community...

Tell us what you were doing!

It's your chance to address the testing community..

You don't have to do it on your own, you can co-write, use your bounce buddy, use your roundtable. Are videos and podcasts accepted?...I don't know...get in touch with STC and ask!

Tell us what you do and how you do it!
I might even submit an article myself....keep your eyes peeled...Anyone want to see the tuxedo?...No I didn't think so....

No tool plugging allowed....No cash changes hands...

If you are interested in writing about software testing then why not contribute an article to the Software Testing Club's (STC) new magazine due to be published in January 2010.

The STC are inviting anyone in the software testing community to submit articles for review on any testing subject you want to write about.

The STC are accepting articles from anyone working in the testing industry with a testing story to tell.

Experienced writers are welcome just as junior testers are.

So if you have something to say, post it to the following address: rob@softwaretestingclub.com.

Visit here for more detailed information regarding your submission.

This is a testing community promotion

Keeping your head when they're losing there's

2009-11-02T02:05:00.000-08:00

My wife met up with a couple of friends last week, one is a nurse and one is a paramedic. My wife asked them whether they would be busy on bonfire night (It's all about a gunpowder plot from 1605) . On Bonfire night there are fireworks and sparklers and a bonfire, my wife was presuming they would probably be a few incidents with in all the frivolity. Their reply suprised my wife who relayed it to me later.
'Bonfire night is not a problem and not that busy, but the full moon is!'....'what the full moon?' 'Yeh the full moon!....'

When they have such a busy night they have a look at the sky and it seems to be a full moon.....coincidence maybe....but what an association...

But the moon does have an affect on tides doesn't it?

So what we're saying is that hospitals get busy on the full moon when people do things they wouldn't normally do, maybe that's just a coincedence (and a gross generalization..eek)...If there's something in this we would have heard about it right?

On the weekend there were also the most red cards ever in the English Premier League (football/Soccer)...Is this because we're moving towards a full moon? Is the referee making decisions he wouldn't normally? Am I reading something into what isn't there?

Well from what little research I've done it's a full moon in the UK tonight! Does that mean a dev might not do something they would ordinarily do? Will there be more bugs in the app if stuff is coded today? Perhaps they might go a bit crazy around this time (along with us testers, or does everyone go a bit crazy around this time)...hehe..Maybe I'm on to something here....or maybe just claptrap coincedence...

Well I might just try the theory out....I could even search for code checked in today...
But if I'm looking more thoroughly at something I'm bound to find more things wrong aren't I?
I want to coroborate my theory but won't I be skewed?
What about tenuous associations?
(I'll let Mr Bolton give you an analogy there's probably one in here somewhere)

Hang on, what influences a dev or tester....what would make you do something you would not normally do? Is that good or bad?

What I really need to do is look at big bugs and track them back to code, will they all be written today?

Wait...there might me some testing stuff in this blog post....Testing for coincedences? or what about assumptions?

Have you noticed more bugs around the full moon?
(not actually insects or anything...I mean....oh you know what I mean don't you?)

007 and the performing art?

2009-10-23T02:33:00.000-07:00

Performance test when you have the full solution...No....Performance test on the live environment...No...Performance test with the full network..No
What are we going to performance test then?

Do I really mean no? No not really, I mean yes but yes with more...

'We can only test when we have the full solution, on the live environment, with the live network with the app version as close as possible to live'

How many times have I heard this. Loads....
What about 'performance implications - none' in documents (if you get any)...yep..seen it....lots

I've chatted to a few performance testers , and asked them the same question, what about performance testing at the code level? Mostly the same answer....Not something I do

I always think to myself, why not....I mean wouldn't it be better to catch stuff early... (I know it's not alway possible for all situations - context again)

Maybe I'm way too weird....Maybe that's just supposed to be a dev thing...

So who does do the performance testing at the code level?

The dev's? except they've already stated in their document there are no performance implications, hence no tests? hmm The profiler, well it needs someone to run it doesn't it, and what would it detect?

Ok maybe this is a grey area, perhaps the dev's should performance test their code. Or do performance test their code, or perhaps this isn't a grey area at all, perhaps dev's performance test their code as default, maybe it's just a 'given', maybe profiling tools run as default, but wouldn't you want to see them do that?, or see the results?, well I would....

I got asked a question once, (why do people keep doing that?) it blew my mind and has stuck with me ever since (oh dear yes I did say that...shame on me, that's got to be reserved for someone else blog hasn't it?)

Ok here's the question I got asked...

How would you extract the max number and min number from an array of integers?

If you have the array {4, 59, 600, 1, 3} you would extract 600 as the max and 1 as the min. Also, keep in mind the array is fixed is size, but that size can range from 1 to something like 1,000,000

So I'm thinking to myself this is a coding question, he wants to check my coding prowess. Now I don't profess to being a coder, I don't want to be a dev (although I do like to look at code, why? because I might get some insight to how things work - and therefore generate some test ideas!) but I take on the challenge, the challenge suprised me, a lot.

So I wrote some code, it looked good it worked......but....

I didn't stop there I re-wrote the code, and it was nearly 3-4 times quicker...and hence blew me away...and got me thinking....

I was thinking more about the efficiency of the code, and how it performs better the larger the array...Now that's kool...very kool...and I didn't need a live rig or anything!

But could I have stopped at my first attempt?...I actually may well have done...Would a test or profiler have picked anything up?...maybe...do I want to leave it to chance?

What did I take from it?
Well now I like to ask the 'What algorithm are you using?' question....(which normally sparks a few more questions) and 'why are there no performance implications?' and 'Are you using any profilers?', 'can I see the results?'

Maybe those performance testers are right, and maybe this isn't a performance test of code thing, maybe there are just pre-code questions that you need to ask.

Are you performance testing at the code level? What questions are you asking?

Google errors follow me.....

2009-10-20T03:47:00.001-07:00

Google errors are following me but it's ok it's still in beta...

The quick buzz affect...

2009-10-19T02:07:00.000-07:00

Step Back, deep breath and stop. Stop? yeh stop! Have you ever found yourself with a new thing to test and you do the exact same thing or explore the same areas you did when successfully finding something in a previous app. Well I do this, Is this me being a skilled tester? nah....I think it's the 'quick buzz' affect, isn't it good finding something bad quickly you get to punch the air and everything!..cmon. (but you can't shout or anything 'cause that'll upset the dev....I wanna keep that good relationship in tact)

But I'm not sure this is necessarily a good thing, I mean the new app I'm now testing is different to the ones I've tested previously right? I might not find anything at all and have wasted a lot of time. Believe me I've been there and done that.

So what do I do, I still try and get the 'quick buzz' still do some stuff I've done previously but I timeframe it. I put a short timeframe on it and see what happens if I find stuff I can punch the air, if not I can get it out of my system and get it out of my system quickly. I mean I shouldn't be doing this, I know I shouldn't be doing this, but I do.

This new app should be a clean slate, I'm not testing that old app, I'm testing the new one, and I should be thinking about that new one. I should be thinking about stuff around the new app, the new app that's different, that behaves different, that's been developed differently etc.

When the timeframe has elapsed it's time to step back...stop and rethink.

Anyone else get caught by this? What do you do?

UPDATE:

After reading James Lyndsey's paper I think this may be 'confirmation bias'. Or could we call it the 'Confirmation Bias Quick Buzz'?

Anybody got a bounce buddy?

2009-10-16T01:58:00.000-07:00

What I have found that helps me a lot is to have a bounce buddy. (don't worry it's not something dodgy - I don't think so anyway)
What do I mean by bounce buddy? Well, I mean someone to bounce ideas off, someone to think out loud to? Someone who listens...gives feedback, yes sometimes but not always...Someone who's not necessarily involved in what your doing? Someone who helps you solve things without doing much....A soundboard..yeh kind of.
(I don't mean pair testing, although I think pair testing is good I think that's something else.)
Does this make any sense? Maybe it's just me being weird, or perhaps bounce buddying is just me releasing some room in my head, or making ideas more real, or me getting instance feedback on stuff - a second opinion maybe?.

I'm sure someone can tell me, anyway I think it helps me, maybe you are all now my bounce buddies? Wouldn't that be kool!....ok you can all stop bouncing now...

Does anybody else do this? Anyone else got a bounce buddy(ies)?

007 and the beautiful model...

2009-10-13T04:59:00.000-07:00

I've got a few thoughts on model based testing, there may also be a few questions in there that I hope Harry Robinson can answer. Thanks Harry!

So Harry at the end of these questions, will I be surrounded by models?

Right, so I'm doing some sort of modelling in my head (I call it thinking like a computer) and I'm using that to explore and create tests ideas and tests. I'm using it like a springboard and the more I explore the more developed the model and the tests get. Sometimes I sketch things down.

I am assuming that 'model based testing' as Harry defines it takes this a bit further and allows you to create a model, write it down (like properly), generate tests and explore either manual or using a tool right?

But can all that stuff in my head/or other peoples heads be translated to a diagram?

If it can I see this as a good thing for complex systems because it would otherwise take me a while to model it in my head (especially with that brain cell), and unless I shared the model from my head nobody could take advantage of it right?. If I have a universally recognized model eveybody could benefit couldn't they? Also I see this as as good thing because it would free me up to do other stuff wouldn't it?

What about the model? Wouldn't it take a long time to create a model to generate tests? Does the model have to be a written diagram? There's got to be a better way, a more interactive way to represent a model hasn't there?

I've tried to use other peoples UML diagrams before, but I haven't found them good enough for me, that may be down to not enough detail? who should create a model? Shouldn't everyone be involved in the development of the system be involved in creating a model? Should testers create their own model from scratch? from other models?

What about misinterpretations? Won't it be hard to represent something complex, like wouldn't you have a 100 page model? I guess you could have mini models?

What about using tools to generate tests from the model? Have you got to have a model first? Could a tool create a model? I mean what I'm now thinking is, could a computer think like me thinking like a computer? and could a computer explore, test and update a model? That would be kool right?

(Well, actually can a computer think? and how would you test that? - a digression....)

Also if you had a tool that could explore, if it found interesting stuff it could flag it up on the model, so if it found 20 interesting things in a particular area (this might be an area we as testers might want to look at further) parts of the model could even go red, and we could put it on a projector so everyone can see....oops I think I've got carried away

Isn't there stuff you just can't model? Can you model eveything? Is it worth modelling everything?

What about things you find when you didn't mean too? This happens to me all the time, I'm looking at one thing and find something else somewhere else?
Do you just try and exercise incorrect paths/behaviours of the model?

I think that's about it, I'm sure I'll think of some other questions for Harry like why is everyone called engineers now? and what were people doing that would make them late for google tech talks?....(more interesting stuff?) I'm curious....

Those google tech talks are way kool, must be a 'buzz' to be at some of those and some interesting conversations afterwards...

Agifall and the lost testers....

2009-10-02T05:14:00.000-07:00

I have been wanting to do this post for a long time...a very very long time....

Please be gentle with me....

ok, I go to google....I type in agile testing.....I get 1,740,000 results
I go to google again and type waterfall testing....I get 1,320,000 results

I try google again, I type agifall testing....I get 23 results....

What am I talking about?
How do I explain this?

Ok your agile right? you've got sprints? 30 days duration...yep ok...working software at the end of it....hmm maybe....

So what happens in those sprints...backlog...yep we got one....designs well...some...but it's like people over processes right?...testing...yeah...at the end...what at the end of the sprint?....yeh at the end...ok so while the testers are testing at the end of this sprint what are the devs doing? Well they're coding the next sprint...Wait so they've already designed and started coding the next sprint...What about tests? no no...we do Code Review...(being involved in the code review would be useful...very useful....confirm a model? create a model..maybe?...test idea generation..yep that too..)

Does this sound familiar to anyone? How do you cope with this one? Is this agile? (There has been some debate about what is agile from James and also Ron believes agile is an 'ideal' - Something to work towards. Does it matter whether it's called agile or not? ...we've just got to deal with it right? Well it's not our place to change the world is it? or is it?

oh and where's the stuff on agifall automation? Is there such a thing?

Some of the stuff I try and do whatever it's called:

- Get in your developers head, customers head
- Do workshops...
- Get to love the whiteboard (a future post)
- What are the risks?
You've heard the following right...everything is high risk! hmm..we need a subtler approach...What would you like to see out first? If we have a problem here what would that mean to the company? the user(s)? the application?
-Talk to everyone...observe...I remember reading this article about super testers at Microsoft...
I think they just got wind of stuff by talking and hovering around and stuff....(well perhaps more than that...but they noticed things)
I see a gaggle of devs round one machine for a long time....I want to know what they're doing....'cause to me they're working on something hard, complicated, difficult?...
- Get a developer to help you lots, without them knowing that they're doing it...
They're pretty wicked at coming up with test ideas when you give them a nudge....
- Polish Hockey Player
- Examples are good
- Write things down and doodle? do you also notice a lot of doodles on your notes?
- Read the things I wrote (there are lots of times I've written stuff down, then spent ages trying to figure stuff out, only to find I'd written it down...)
- Explore
- oh and question...question and question again...
- thinking like a computer...

I don't thing this is an exaustive list just a few things that came into my head....

Back in a week...

It's Friday Lunchtime! Have you got 5 Minutes?

2009-10-02T04:48:00.000-07:00

Do I drink too much coffee? It feels like it, maybe I'm just on the crest of that wave..I'm desperate to get the next blog out. I may post 2 today as I'm on holiday next week...( I may run out of subjects....oh well... c'est le vie)

One of my colleagues calls it 'living fast' I like that phrase...but I must slow down...especially Friday Lunchtime...

Ok here it is the 5 minutes lunchtime challenge...It's a question someone asked me once...

How would you test a can of coke?

And for those of you who've asked that question, or have answered it before I've got a variant...

How do you test 'Happy Shopper' Lemonade? Does anybody remember that? On Happy Shopper products you used to get a 'My mums' slogan (a slogan that summed up the product submitted by real shoppers) I could be wrong, very wrong....but wasn't the slogan something like 'My Mums lemonade, it fizzes up your nose!'

Am I getting Cloud Fever?

2009-10-01T07:34:00.000-07:00

Wow...everyone's doing cloud stuff now right? Amazon have a cloud, Google have a cloud, Microsoft have a cloud....So testers can have a cloud can't they?

I think so, and I'm getting excited about it! Why?

Well I can have all my tools all my platforms in fact all my tools and all my platforms in the cloud. Accessible from anywhere....I can start, stop, snapshot, increase and decrease machines.....on the fly....

(Anyone remember the TV show Monkey Magic? I loved that show when I was a kid....When monkey blew his fingers down came a cloud...and off he went.....I can blow my fingers and instead of on the cloud I'll be in it....neat)

Can I finally de-clog my laptops?....(yes I have more than 1...doesn't every tester?)

I thought back in the late 90's that having a lab of 8 identically spec'd PC's with the ability to change an OS config on them in 2 minutes using a ghost image was kool!...(not forgetting the SPARC and the macs....) I lived in that lab back then and loved it!....

But this cloud stuff is kooler...I mean way kooler....
This allows me to try loads more stuff right there's no restrictions any more are there?

There are loads of cloud extensions aswell, public and private clouds and privlic clouds...

This is the way forward right? or is it? you tell me? There are dangers though aren't there?
I mean there's got to be a catch?

Damn they've done it again, those people that always seem to be around pinging that brain cell of mine whispering the word 'context'....I know they're right....

It's easy to get carried away...step back...deep breath...

Ok, so clouds are good for some things, well it depends on your context..how do you use yours?

Are Clouds condusive to all types of testing? Are all apps cloud friendly? And then there's the network, well the virtual network...Virtual LAN's (VLAN), Virtual Switches (Vswitch)

Are you using a cloud? How are you getting on? I'm sure there are people that have been doing this stuff for years....come tell me all about it....

I'll keep the clogged up laptops for now, just in case that VLAN does something rather screwy to the Vblade...

-------------------
UPDATE:

What about a 'head cloud'? That's what I really need...Where's that clever person who blogs on MSDN?

There they are....clever people drink coffee too..(hehe)..but have you tried hazelnut with that?
....

You're working on Windows 7....done and dusted???...well not quite....hmm..interesting..

..ok well lets's work on this on the day you get to play (I mean work on your own projects) It'll be good you'll get to blog about it...

'Head Cloud', I can clone my brain cell, increase my processing power, memory..yep that too....stop, start snapshot...yep all those...

A while later...
ok then let's call it a 'Head Cloud for testers'
A while later...
You like football too?
A while later...
What happens if the brain cell has been stopped and those context people are still trying to ping it and are still whispering nicely...
hey but I haven't started coding yet..

Oh what's that on your screen....a debugging tool....
And what does that do?
Could I use that for....

-------------------
And on to my next post!

KB007007007

2009-09-30T02:28:00.000-07:00

I noticed something interesting the other day which intrigued me....I was inquisitive...Also check out the following post (http://testers-headache.blogspot.com/2009/09/are-you-inquisitive-tester.html)

If you have read Simons post.....Should we add persistent to this?

Anyway I digress....

I went on to Michael Hunters blog....aka The Braidy Tester...good blog by the way....

http://blogs.msdn.com/micahel

I hadn't been on his blog for a while...shame on me....

Anyway for some bizarre reason....I put the letter 'a' in the search box....Why?...because I can right?....Hey I'm a tester I'm allowed to do things like that....

Also I have done this to a few sites before and guess what?...the search returns all the searches with the letter 'a' in....nice...except....that probably returns everything! Do you want your site search to return everything.....nah...don't think so.....

Have I digressed again...oh well....

Anyway, when I put the letter 'a' in the search box on Michael's blog and clicked the 'go' hyperlink...The search was taking an age....Aha me thinks.....it's trying to search for every blog that has the letter 'a' in....

de-da!...wrong....the search took an age and then returned with...'No Results'...hmm..what's going on?....I then entered the word 'stack' in the search box and clicked go.....(I know Michael has written about his automation stack...there will probably be a few results but not enough to slow down any search)

So what did I get....again after an age the search returned...'No Results'...

That's wrong...that's like way wrong....So what have I got....a search that doesn't return what it should and also takes a long time...over 100 seconds...to return nothing....

What did I do next....

Fiddler (http://www.fiddlertool.com/) ....yeh...that's what I'll use.....that'll tell me what's going on....
Sure enough it indicated that the search was taken over 100 seconds...hmm...

Ok kool, but maybe this is just Michael blog...What did I do next?....I tried another MSDN blog....and yep the search did the same thing.....

What did I do next? I tried it on another machine of course....same problem....

What then? I asked someone else to see if they could find anything (thanks for that Rosie!)
Yep same problem...

I am now thinking....do I need to go any further?....I mean how important is this?....
Well most other blogs have searches right so there should be a search shouldn't there? and because there is a search, isn't there an expectation from the user that it should work?, otherwise why have it there?

Next I googled for slow MSDN blog searches.... I couldn't see anything obvious....If it's that important someone must have already seen it right?...

There's a workaround though you can use google....Using google for MSDN blog searches... ;o)

nah..that doesn't sound right....there's got to be some clever person (whose got some debugging tool we all want to get our hands on) who blogs on MSDN who can look at this in a nanosecond....

Maybe I'll report this....ok....no obvious links from Michael's blog...howabout...http://blogs.msdn.com/ aha....a 'contact us' link....

oh no that takes me to microsoft support stuff....I don't want to report a problem with a microsoft product...and endless options to fill in.....urgh....

Anyway I'm still intrigued by why the search takes too long...what would happen if I throw a lot of MSDN blog searches...is there a bottleneck? maybe....the next thing to try?????

oh I found a few other interesting things while I was there.....perhaps another blog for those..

In MS stylie heres the Knowledge Base....(although a bit vague in detail...well the posts gone on long enough...)

SYMPTOMS:

Searches on MSDN blogs do not seem to work properly

MSDN Blog search does not return correct results.
MSDN Blog Search taken over 100 seconds to complete.

CAUSE:

Currently unknown:

WORKAROUND:

Use google??????

-------------------------------------------------------
UPDATE:
Since I first created this post I went to lunch, then came back....I've thought of something else...What if the search is hitting some kind of threshold? like it never completes.. What if the search is taking too long theres a timeout which then returns nothing...

My friend google may help.... I search for '100 second timeout' ....hey there's like loads of stuff here....Is this an IIS default timeout setting? or a stored procedure timing out?

Am I getting closer?
-------------------------------------------------------

I have arrived Miss MoneyPenny....

2009-09-29T02:36:00.000-07:00

Oh My Goodness...My first blog.....Wahoo! I've finally got around to it! (eek it's taken a long time!)

There's loads of test stuff rattling around in that head of mine..(that brain cell has a lot to do you know) ..it's time to share some of it....(before I forget...)

Here goes....

Think like a computer? Sounds weird right....but I actually do this....

The requirement says check a field for a value, but a computer knows nothing about the requirement....it takes input and outputs stuff....

I've also done some scripting in my time so I start thinking....how would you tell a computer to do this? and if you were a computer what would you do when you got the instruction? I don't visualize the code more the concept and what possible misinterpretations there might be. What would the computer do if it got a right value, it outputs stuff right, but to what and where? and what if it gets a bad instruction what does it do?

Is this me building a model in my head from which to explore, who knows, maybe Harry Robinson can answer that...

Thinking like a computer is only one aspect of what I do...I'll try to expand on other things in later posts....

and lastly...

Test ideas....When do you get them? Do you get them when you least expect them? When your trying less hard to think of them? I would be interested to know. Is there an optimal time for a test idea? Is there an optimal environment for a test idea? Do you get them on your own or when your in a group? or like.. all the time?

I get a lot of test ideas before I go to sleep or in the car or going for a walk...Is that when I assimilate all the information I've gathered or just when I notice getting them the most....

Phil K mentioned to me about the following book which I will be reading shortly..
http://www.pragprog.com/titles/ahptl/pragmatic-thinking-and-learning