Testing Skills #7 - Reflection

What type of learning do you need to engage in today?

Do you need to learn facts?

Or

Do you need to analyse and critically think about what you need to learn or have learned?
Neither of these ways of learning are wrong and each has its place in your learning journey.  Knowing which to use and when is a great tool for a tester to have.

Learning facts is defined as a 'surface approach ' style of learning and writing and thinking critically about what your have learned can be defined as a 'deep approach'.

Reflection is important in software testing and you need to be able to communicate what you have found and uncovered when testing.  If you have no opportunities,  in your organization, to be able to communicate with others then you may find you have a lot on tacit knowledge but little in the way of explicit.  It is vital to set aside time for members of the team to discuss what new information they have uncovered or learned when testing.  This allows them to use reflective reasoning to turn tacit into explicit and gives the person providing the information a sense of purpose and achievement in what they have learned.

To improve your own self-reflection produce a reflective action plan. By doing this you are committing to your self what you intend to do and engage critical thinking skills in doing so. Make sure your plan has goals and deadlines that you can commit to.  Make this deadlines and goals public it encourages you to keep to them.  Using a personal Kanban board can help you achieve this.

"First, the deep and surface approaches are not personality traits or fixed learning styles.  Students adopt an approach which is related to their perceptions of the task."

Marton and Säljö - Student Approaches to Learning - University of Oxford

When you need to think deeply about what you have been studying then writing down you own thoughts and understanding is a good way for you to be able to see what you have remembered.  If you only need to learn information or facts then other models would be more suited.

Writing down you thoughts on what you have been attempting to learn enables you to better remember or apply what has been studied.  Reflection is about doing your own internal self-assessment  of what you have been learning.  This assessment enables you make what you know internally, tacit knowledge, and attempting to make it clear and detailed explicit knowledge.  To do this you need opportunities to talk to others verbally or by writing down what you have studied to invoke critical thinking.

"In general, writing appears to be suitable for tasks where the aim is fostering understanding, changing students' conceptions and developing their thinking skills, but less suitable if the goal is the simple accumulation of factual information"

Conceptualizing and Measuring Knowledge Change due to writing

Schumacher & Gradwohl Nash (1991)

One way in which can improve your learning is to use reflection:

"Reflection is an active process whereby the professional can gain an understanding of how historical, social, cultural and personal experiences have contributed to professional knowledge and practice "(Wilkinson, 1996).  

You learn from your experiences and to make this happen you need to engage in reflection.  If you think about what you are doing or what you have experienced you are engaging in self-reflection. This approach helps you to turn learning into knowledge and it is vital in improving your own knowledge and skills.  Reflection is really about looking back at a situation, thinking about it, critically and learning from the experience, then using that new knowledge to help in future similar situations.  This in many ways is similar to the approach you will taking when engaging in testing activities.

"The process of reflective writing leads to more than just a gain in your knowledge; it should also challenge the concepts and theories by which you make sense of knowledge. When you reflect on a situation, you do not simply see more, you see differently. This different way of viewing a situation is reflected in statements about a commitment to action. Action is the final stage of reflection. "

Learning through reflection(Word doc)?

Testing Skills #5 - Remote Experiential Learning

Many people work with teams which are globally distributed, this has some logistical issues, one being how to implement useful and practical training approaches.  One common approach used is C.B.T. (Computer Based Training).  This is where participants login in and listen to pre-prepared exercises and videos, sometimes with a test at the end.  Another approach is to arrange a video session with an online tutor where they go through the material and the participants can ask questions whilst listening to the tutor.  These are OK as learning tools, but it is difficult for the participants to apply the knowledge learnt to their daily role. 

There is an alternative distance learning approach that I experienced whilst attending an online workshop run by The Growing Agile team (Samantha Laing and Karen Greaves).  I have since this course created my own remote workshop using this approach with some success.  What follows is an introduction to this approach.  Hopefully you can take this and adapt it for your own teams.

The basic principles of this remote training approach is based upon the 4Cs as described in the book “Training from the back of the room” by Sharon Bowman. Each of your learning elements should include all elements of the 4Cs in each module.

For each module of the course I create a workbook which goes through each aspect of the 4Cs.

The first ‘C’ is Connect

Before you start teaching the students ask them what they already know about the topic.  Create activities they can do offline to find out how the topic is relevant to their current role or what they currently know about the topic.

The next ‘C’ is Concepts

This is the traditional learning part, where you can introduce and explain what the topic is about.  You can do this as either a series of written articles or pre-recorded videos.

The third ‘C’ is Concrete practice

Students apply the concepts in practice.  If you are running this remotely you can set up activities and exercises related to the concepts which the students should, ideally, apply to their own working domain.

The final ‘C’ is Conclusions

This is best to done as a small group, maybe as an online video call.  All the students get together and discuss what they have learnt.  This is a great way to reinforce the learning since each person should bring different examples of applying the learning to the discussion and provide a more context rich learning experience.

When you are looking to create any remote learning experiences it is worthwhile making sure that each of your training sessions covers all aspects of the 4Cs. An advantage this learning approach gives is that it requires only a couple of hours of learning from each participant.  They can do this at their own pace and then discuss their learning and how it applied to them during a weekly hour long video conference call with the others taking part in the course.  It is crucial to set your expectations of the participants and get them to give a commitment to spending some time doing the exercises before the video call.   

As an additional option when I ran my remote workshops I set up a closed wiki site so that the participants could have discussions and provide some information about what they have learnt.   Also with permission from the participants I recorded the video sessions  and uploaded them to the wiki so they could go back and watch them later.

What Interests you? - A Short post.

One of the topics I am currently researching is motivation and how we become passionate about certain activities and ideas.  Part of this research is for my workshop at Lets Test.  One of the most interesting techniques  I have found for uncovering your passion is to use the following simple question:

"What interests YOU?"

What thoughts occur in your mind when you ask yourself that question?

Now ask yourself what YOU can do explore this further? The key to uncovering your passions is to find out what you like and pursue it. This does not mean it has to be work related, it could be doing charity work, travelling or some other activity which interests you and gives you a warm happy feeling.  Once you have found something that interests you, it is a good idea to find ways to write about either privately or publicly.

There are ways you can use the answer to that question to motivate you to do more. Look at talking to others with similar interests by joining clubs or organizations that have similar passions and interests as yourself.  As a tester it is also good to attend events where people have different perspectives and views to your own to expand your knowledge.  If your passion is an subject related to your work then it could be a good idea to do a show and tell about the subject in the workplace, this may encourage others with an interest in the subject to approach you.  There are many opportunities as a tester to talk about your passion, if your passion is testing.  I get regular opportunities to talk about my own passions at conferences, some of these are because I have submitted to talk and others where I have been invited to talk.  To begin with I started small and presented at local meet up events in front of a few people and once I got experience of this I moved on to giving quick talks at conferences before feeling confident enough to talk in front of big audiences. Talking in front of an audience is not for everyone but it is a good way to share your passion with others and I do recommend you try it, even if you only do so with a few people. You never know you may enjoy it and this will motivate you to learn more about hat interests you.

In my workshop I will be discussing this in more detail and investigating intrinsic and extrinsic motivation.  We will be playing games, having fun and hopefully learning.  Look forward to see those lucky participates in Sweden.

If you cannot make it I encourage you to reply in the comments about what you use to inspire and motive you and others.

A discussion on do testers really need to code.

Recently there have been a few posts talking about testers learning to code.

• Rob Lambert: - Why Testers Really Should learn to Code
• Fiona Charles - Why I believe its good for testers to learn to code
• Anand Ramdeo - Do Software Testers need to learn coding
• Maaret Pyhäjärvi  - Learning to Code - Just Learning

I find these discussions interesting and at the same time very worrying.  I have seen many posts that say testers ‘should’ or ‘need’ to code as shown from some of the examples above, excluding the one from Maaret. To make it clear none of the posts dictate that testers MUST code, but they do appear to give an impression that for testers to make themselves employable they sure should learn how to code.

My temptation was to reply to each of these posts as comments but in the end felt that would not be a great platform to get across my concerns and views on this topic, a topic that keeps coming around again and again.  I am not against testers learning to code but feel that going down this path could have a significant impact on the testing profession in the future.

What do people mean when we say "Learn to Code."?

To the majority of people learning to code means learning a programming language and being able to write an application/script in that language. I can see,  to some, in certain situations where that can be very useful, however do we really need to learn coding or would just having an understanding of the syntax of code be just as useful?

What does this mean when I say syntax?

The Oxford dictionary defines Syntax as:

The arrangement of words and phrases to create well-formed sentences in a language:

Or

The structure of statements in a computer language.

http://www.oxforddictionaries.com/us/definition/english/syntax

E.g.: the syntax of Java or Python.

Having an understanding of the structure of a programming language does not necessary mean you can code an application in that language but you should be able to read and follow lines of code and have a fair idea of what it means and what it does.  The first key point in this article is that we need to move away from creating generic testers who all code to ones that have a fair grasp of the syntax of languages.  This way we will not excluding, what could be, great testers, by turning them away from testing by insisting they learn coding, which is something they may have little or no interest in.  An English major for example could make a wonderful tester by understanding the subtle written words given by a customer to the project team and providing a multitude of creative testing ideas.  Do we really want to exclude these types of people from the testing profession?

This leads on to my next concern, if we insist that all testers need to learn to code we miss out on building diverse teams with many skills that compliment and sometimes conflict each other.  This enables much deeper critical thinking processes and ideas to emerge.  It is a concern that if we insist on testers all learning to code or need to code, then becoming an entry barrier into testing then we could lose a great deal of diversity among software development teams. We instead get a set of ‘cookie cutter’ clones who all code, think and work in similar ways.  This will diminish the testing talent pool, as those who would love to become a tester get set aside for an ex developer who can code but now wants to try their hands at testing. This is not to say that ex developers do not make great testers, we just to need to welcome people with a diverse range of skills and expertise into this great career rather than limit it to those with a coding background or skill set.  Also what do we mean by coding?  I touched on this earlier, within software development coding normally indicates being able to program.  However in social science and especially ethnographic research coding has a different meaning.

Coding is an important technique in qualitative research such as anthropology, ethnography and other observer and participant-observer methods.

http://changingminds.org/explanations/research/analysis/ethnographic_coding.htm

If we insist that testers need to learn code, how about we twist this around and say that testers need to learn social science methods and use that in our testing activities.  To quote the title of the article by Rob Lambert:

“Why testers should really learn to code”

If the code Rob was referring to above was the social science technique and he stated in his article that all testers ‘should really’ learn to do social science coding.  How much debate would that have caused?  If others insisted that every tester should really have this skill and that without it you have a far less chance of being employed as a tester, how would you react? Does a tester having this analytical skill make them any less important to a development team than someone who can do programming? I am unsure if this is the case, since the cognitive thinking skills needed to do programming and to do testing are different as mentioned extremely well in the article by Maaret.

One argument put forward is that testers who can code can create their own tools to do tasks such as data generation, performance, load or stress. I do not see a problem with this but I would add that there are many FREE tools available that may or could do the job without the need to re-invent the wheel. For example for data generation I use Excel  and PerlClip both of which suit my needs.  I have a tool inventory that for the majority of my tool requirements perfectly meets my needs.  I have seen many cases of people writing tools or scripts for the sake of doing so instead of researching or asking advice on tools that are already available.  This is not to say there are situations where creating or writing a tool could be more useful and time saving.  I have in the past done this and my programming skills are not great and I would rate as rather mediocre.

We have to be careful about the barriers we put in place for those who show an interest in having a career in testing.  Sure they need to have certain characteristics such as:

•  A willingness to learn.
• Self-improvement
•  Critical and creative skills
• Plus many more.

Classifying this to one particular skill such as programming rather than a characteristic, such as analytical thinking or logical thinking in my opinion is very narrow minded.

One other aspect that I have not seen mentioned in any of the articles is the issue of bias caused by thinking in a similar way.  If there is a continuing trend to insist that testers learn to code then there could be a convergence towards similar thinking for development and testing.  This may lead to bias in the approach to testing where the effort and focus is on the logical way in which the code works rather than an outward view of how the user may, or may not interact with the application.  Humans are not logical and will not follow the path you expect them to do so.  This is what I feel distinguishes good from great testers, the ability to think critically and apply creative ideas in a way that exposes flaws or issues within the system under test.  If we  continue to insist that testers should really code we could end up with a set of people developing software in which everyone thinks in a similar way and there is no movement from the well-trodden path.

If people have no interest in learning about coding and instead have a passion for testing and how to improve testing then we need to be careful about the message we are sending out from this profession.  I would rather have people working with me who are passionate, driven to learn and improve themselves and others than an excellent coder who want to do just a 9 to 5 job and no more.

I will finish this post with the following quote:

“We are not supposed to all be the same, feel the same, think the same, and believe the same. The key to continued expansion of our Universe lies in diversity, not in conformity and coercion. Conventionality is the death of creation.” Anthon St. Maarten - Divine Living: The Essential Guide To Your True Destiny

EDIT : Corrected some typos.

Tis the Season for Conferencing

It will soon be the start of the main software testing conference season and there are many people who will not be able to attend for lots of reasons.  So if you cannot attend in person then why not use social media to follow what is happening at the conference.  The best way I have found to do this is to use twitter and a hash tag designated for the conference.  I personally use twitter a great deal when attending conferences even going so far to automate my tweets when presenting at Lets test.   So I have gathered together as many hash tags I can think of for upcoming testing conferences so you can be virtually there.

If there are any I have missed please add them as comments and I will add them to this article giving credit of course.

For those who are attending a testing conference can I ask that you use twitter to keep others informed about the conference and some of the key points being said it helps the whole of the testing community.

For those organising a testing conference please make sure you have a hash tag for your conference and make it widely known.  There are some conferences organisers that do not have this in place and it is shame since it is way of drawing attention to your conference and for sharing knowledge beyond the confines of a physical location. It is also good to keep it the same each year instead of adding the year on that way it can be used all the time over a year and keep conversations going.

The following is a list of hash tags for upcoming testing conferences for which I could locate a hash tag for.

• #CAST2013 - CAST –  - 26-28th August 2013 - Madison, WI, USA

• #SIGIST - SIGIST Conference - 12th September 2013 - London, UK (@Stephen_J_Hill)

• #STARWEST – STARWEST -   29 Sept – 4 Oct 2013 Anaheim, California, USA

• #STPCon – Software Testing Professional - 21-24 Oct 2013 Phoenix, Az, USA

• #UKTMF  UK Test Management Forum - 30th October 2013, London, UK (@Stephen_J_Hill)

• #agiletd – Agile Testing Days - 28-31 October 2013 – Berlin, Germany

• #esconfs – Eurostar Test Conference - 4-7 November 2013 – Gothenburg, Sweden

• #bscadc – Better Software Conference East - 10-15th Nov 2013- Boston, MA

• #testbash – Test Bash - / 28th March 2014 – Brighton, UK

• #letstest – Lets Test Conference -  May 26-29th May 2014 – Runo , Sweden

• #bscadc – Better Software Conference west - 1-6 June, Las Vegas, NV, USA

• #letstest – Lets Test OZ - 15-17th September 2014, Gold Coast Australia

• #shefftest– Sheffield Test Gathering - TBD - Sheffield, UK (@TNRidgeback)

Also there are testing events being organised that do not require you to pay.

• Software Testing Club Meet ups
• Weekend Testing

If there is not one near you, why not organise one?

For those attending a testing conference I would recommending reading the excellent guide to attending a conference written by Rob Lambert (@Rob_Lambert)

Testing Qualifications - Certification revisited

Let me start this article by saying I am not against testing qualification at all and they can be a useful resource. Note I use the word qualification; certification is getting to become a bit of a loaded word. Richard Bradshaw talked about his experience here.  I tend to agree with what Richard is saying, as a starting point ISQTB (Or whatever name they wish to use) is a good idea and concept.  For those who have never been involved in testing and wish to know more about ‘some’ of the techniques and methods and a little about the history of testing then it can be a useful building block.  My concern is that it is not being sold in this way and that it becomes a filter to be used by companies and employment agencies.  I have talked about this previously here.   Danny Dainton also talked about his views on ISQTB from the new tester perspective here 

The reason why I have revisited this discussion is due to the recent debate on twitter about test certification and especially ISQTB.  Part of the discussion was the way in which numbers appear to have been used in an advertisement for companies to ensure their testing teams get the ISQTB certification.

Advert can be seen here. Googling a little more provided me with this information 

The bit that concerns me with this sort of misleading propaganda is this:

Various studies estimate the cost of a post-production software defect in the range of $4,000 - $5,000.[1] If ISTQB Software Tester Certification can help a software tester to eliminate just one post-production defect in his or her career, the return on investment for an ISTQB exam could exceed 1500%. With the Volume Purchase Program, that ROI could exceed 2000%.

Where are these figures obtained from?  It is a fallacy that with the way software development works today that fixing a defect later costs so much more.  Details of the cost of defect fallacy can be found here and ANYONE working in software development please read this great  book – The leprechauns of software engineering

This then lead to a talk that Rex Black was doing at STPCON in which the phrase:

“…greatly lowers the cost of post-release defects.”

Can clearly be seen

This is what concerns me a great deal, everything within the ISQTB world appears to be focused on profit and how to maximize the most amount of money with the least amount of effort.  Now someone may correct me if I am wrong on that one.  I do hope that I am and that the people who provide this training do really care about the testing profession and the people paying their hard earned money is of something that is worthwhile to them.  The problem is when profit is involved in learning activities the needs and the best interests of the student are normally lower down the list than the ROI (sic) for the training company shareholders.

I am not against testing qualifications I am against the way in which they are being sold and used within the profession.  I do not like the use of multiple choice exams in which someone can learn by rote and then pass and not know anything really valuable about testing.

We need a system of learning in which we can learn the basics, practice them and be assessed on our thinking and reasoning. The problem is that this is too difficult to do en masse since it eats into profit hence my concerns about profit before learning.

There are other testing training opportunities such as the Rapid software testing course by James Bach and Michael Bolton is another alternative.

Or  black box software testing course created by Cem Kaner is a step in the right direction.

How come we do not hear more about these?

Is the lobbying and scaremongering of the ISQTB too big?  I really hope not there are many passionate testers in the world and we have a moral and ethical obligation to provide the correct training and learning opportunities for these people.  We need to stop using false data and information to scare companies and managers into making people attend these courses

We need to be truthful to both those attending such courses and those paying for these courses.   Maybe there should be a disclaimer on the ISQTB website?

• This foundation exam will teach you about some methods and techniques of testing however it will NOT be able to prove the testing competencies or abilities of those doing the examination.
• It will be able to tell you that the person doing the exam has a good ability to remember stuff or got very lucky when selecting multi-choice answers at random.

I think I would be more comfortable with ISQTB if they provided alternatives and did not sell the exam as a way to be competent tester.

Off track slightly – when I decided to become a rugby league coach many years ago I had to do the following

• exam
• a practical assessment with the trainer
• 3 assessments in the field with an assessor
• keep a training diary for a year, of new stuff I learnt or stuff I implemented 

Only after that year could I class myself as a competent rugby coach.   Hmmm that is an idea maybe ISQTB could do that kind of assessment and training?

We are all responsible for our own training and learning and there are many ways in which we can learn. The problem is I see time and time again many people who call themselves testers and have done no learning or training specifically about testing since sitting the ISQTB foundation course.  This is what really needs to change in our craft.  We need to have a passion for what we enjoy.

I will finish this article with something I tweeted during the discussion and something I really do believe in

Testing is about asking questions and using critical and creative thinking.  It cannot be measured with a simple pass/fail

Time to slow down.

This short blog post has been inspired by some of my reading over the holiday period including the following

• Future Minds: How the Digital Age is Changing Our Minds, Why This Matters and What We Can Do About It by Richard Watson 
• Future Shock - Alvin Toffler

We appear to be living in a constantly connected world where we are being bombarded with Terabytes of information each and every day and we could be approaching information overload and the dangers this bring.  Since we are receiving so much information our brains are taking the easy route and mainly accepting what it is been fed without questioning and you start believing things you would not normally accept.

 In A Mind of Its Own, Cordelia Fine makes the point that the brain’s default setting is to believe, largely because the brain is lazy and this is the easier, or more economical, position. However, when the brain is especially busy, it takes this to extremes and starts to believe things that it would ordinarily question or distrust.

Richard Watson in Future Minds states the following:

One of the consequences of rapid information transmission is that we increasingly fail to think properly about the validity of incoming or outgoing information; we are too busy and there is too much of it.

There is so much pressure on us to be doing stuff and looking up stuff and being always available no matter where we or what we are doing, there are very few places where you can escape to think.  The traditional places such as the pub (bar)  or the local park have been taken over by constant ringing and people with their faces bent over a tiny screen.

Alvin Toffler talks about Information Overload in his book Future Shock and talks about how we freeze when we get overloaded with information.  He talks about being overstimulated in war situations and how people will just shut down.  This appears to becoming more common with people turning into mobile phone zombies craving for their next information fix and ignoring all possibilities of serendipity moments from looking at the world around them.

We are using our memory less and less since we can now “Google” it, so we have less storage in our own heads to be radically creative and generate ideas.  Life is being run in the fast lane and we are in danger of doing less and less serious thinking.  We are being told we need a decision NOW, so we skim, scan or ignore and then make a (what could be a wrong) choice.

I feel very much spilt on this subject since I am a techno geek, I have a passion for gadgets and anything technological but at the same time I am starting to realise that I have less time to myself to do nothing and gather my thoughts and do some SLOW thinking.

Richard Watson suggests going for a walk or just starting out of the window.  How many people do you see today in the office day dreaming or just starting into space and really thinking?  What would happen if you did this in your office?  He suggests that we have a day in which we plan and do nothing and allow ourselves to be immersed in our own thoughts.

My own view is that we need to step back a little sometimes and slow down to allow our minds to think and to think deeply.  I have a concern that in the future there will not be any deep thinking and people will just be looking at what they see on the surface and believe that to be true.  We need to start carrying or using notebooks to capture our ideas especially when in a deep thinking moment.  We may have many ideas during the day, some great, some good and some bad but we need to start capturing this and help to provide situations which are conducive to the generation of ideas and deep thinking.

Richard gives the following helpful hint:

If it helps, create three physical notepads, files, or boxes marked “no,” “yes,” and “maybe” and place a note of your thinking in the appropriate one. 

This is a method I use for my ideas for a blog article I have currently about 400 ideas marked 1-3 with one being likely and 3 not likely.  I review these about once a month and change the rating of the chances that it will appear as an article.  This is important since my views and thoughts over time will change and something I felt was relevant at a certain time is no longer relevant.

We can also apply this to exploratory testing There is a still a strong contingent of people in the testing world who measure by number of tasks (test cases*) being completed is a useful way to measure progress and know when we are done testing.  However I feel we need to take a step back and slow down a little to allow ourselves sometime to think.

Exploratory testing is a very human thinking activity and it is easy to start measuring progress by number of missions/sessions completed.  Instead we should allow time to thinking deeply about what we are testing and what information are we uncovering since this could lead to moments of serendipity and that eureka moment.  So the next time you see a tester staring into nothing it may be that they are deeply thinking about what they are doing.  TE Lawerence is quoted as saying the following about people who daydream:

“Those who dream by night in the dusty recesses of their minds wake in the day to find that it was vanity: but the dreamers of the day are dangerous men, for they may act on their dreams with open eyes, to make it possible.”

(*This blog is not going to get into a metrics debate here others have done a much better job than myself see Michael Bolton links here)

So to conclude

• We need to get off the information highway sometimes and reduce the information we are receiving.  
• We need to slow down and allocate some time to thinking
• We need to do something different so we get more experiences that can help generate more serendipity ideas. 
• Do some gardening, take a bath, go for a walk in the countryside with no destination, lose yourself in your own mind.
• Take vacations(holidays) and remain unconnected from the office/work
• Do something you have a passion for and enjoy
• Do not be afraid of making mistakes with the ideas your generate this is valuable experiences

“I may not have gone where I intended to go, but I think I have ended up where I intended to be.” Douglas Adams

Emergent Strategy

How often have you been asked why do we do exploratory testing rather than planned and predicted scripts.  Recently I have been reading some material on corporate planning strategies and how some become successful and other do not and looking at how this links into software development especially from a testing perspective. 

Given that software can be very dynamic and react in some unpredictable ways no matter how much planning we do.  It surprises us and more importantly it surprises the person who created it.  This goes against the commonly held notation that software is predictable since we planned with great care and detail what was going to be coded.  The problem comes is that we are human and may not act in a rational way and this is reflected in our creations.  

So what is the best way to do software testing?  

The purpose of testing is to learn things about it and the best way of doing this is to experience it and learn by do it.  This is best summed up by Nassim Nicholas Taleb

 We are better at doing than learning. Our capacity for knowledge is vastly inferior to our capacity for doing things – our ability to tinker, play, discover by accident.

http://www.fooledbyrandomness.com/notebook.htm

Within the corporate strategy world I have discovered that this appears  to have a  name  'emergent strategy'  (or realized strategy).  Looking more into this I found the following link http://planningskills.com/glossary/154.php

One of the most interesting part of the above link to me that I noticed was the following sentence:

Emergent strategy implies that an organization is learning what works in practice

Is this not similar to what we attempt to do when doing exploratory testing?  We try to learn about the product and what is working or not working by experiencing  it?

An interesting point made in the article is the following statement

Mixing the deliberate and the emergent strategies in some way will help the organization to control its course while encouraging the learning process.

This appears to link back to an  article I wrote about  hybrid testing and having a mixture of scripted checks and  exploratory tests.

So to go back to my first statement about the purpose of exploratory testing.  To me since we cannot predict everything that the software will do the only way to understand what it will do and to learn is to explore it and that is the purpose of exploratory testing.  To uncover information that may prove to be of value to someone who matters.

 I may need to look more into emergent strategy a little more.

Place your bets

Having recently completed reading the excellent book “The Click Moment” by  Franz Johansson (@Frans_Johansson).  I was amazed by how much of the material written in the book appears to relate to software testing.  The principles of the book are about creating opportunities in an unpredictable world and not about putting in hours and hours of practice.  The author explains that if there are fixed rules and these rules do not change too much then the 10000 hours rule of practice works  .  However the author points out we are living in a world in which the rules are always changing and unexpected (random) things can and do happen.

Some of the statements made in the book appear to have a correlation to the current state of software testing and the various “schools”.  (The scripted vs the exploratory debate).  The first thing that caused me to think was some of the comments on planning  and how this stifles opportunities for random events and for uncovering new and exciting things.  

For example Franz stated the following

…In fact, it might mean that the plan is outdated before you even start to execute it….”

I have often experienced this within companies that believe that we can plan upfront and know all we need to know to write scripts before we actually use the product.  I have seen test plans which when I start doing some testing are hopelessly out of date and then spend unnecessary time trying to retrofit what I am experiencing when testing with what the plan is saying.  Doing this makes me take my eye of the ball and miss chances to find out what could be important information.

Franz then makes a statement which could be taken directly from why we need to do exploratory testing.

“..As ironic as it may sound, it actually pays to schedule time to do something unscripted and unplanned. We need to leave enough room in our day to explore things that are not connected to our immediate goals. We need to free ourselves up to become aware of hidden opportunities and expose ourselves to significant click moments. Leave some flexibility in your schedule. Then, make sure you use the flexibility to explore something unrelated to what you are doing or to follow up on a curious idea you have been considering”

This offers so much potential for uncovering new and valuable information without the restrictions of following someone else’s thinking.  This way of testing in my world can lead to many serendipity moments.

So how can we help to make this happen in software testing?  Is there anything we can do to help create more of these moments of randomness?

Franz within the book gives 5 great tips which may encourage more serendipity.  I have listed the tips below and give a description of how this could apply to exploratory testing.

1. Place Many Bets 

Having a single exploratory testing mission which can consist of an infinite number of tests (bets) is surely much better than having a single scripted test in which you are only placing one bet.

2. Minimize the Size of the Bets

Instead of spending lots of time creating a test script based upon assumptions do the minimum required to do some actual testing and time box your testing sessions.

3. Take the Smallest Executable Step

Do the minimal amount of planning you can do to enable you to do some exploratory testing.  We need to stop thinking if we write detailed test scripts and plans before we really know anything that this will lead to us uncovering lots of information about the system.

4. Calculate Affordable Loss, Not ROI

We still believe that there is a justifiable, measurable cost in planning ahead and creating detailed test plans and scripts.  Which we then discover are outdated and very costly to maintain but we insist they are useful because someone else may use them in the future.  Instead look at creating lots of test ideals using test models and heuristics  which are cheap to create and if of no use can easily be discarded once we uncover more information when testing.  We should be looking at testing and its cost effectiveness from what can we afford to throw away if our assumptions are wrong.

5. Use Passion as Fuel

This is so important people with a passion for what they are doing are the drivers of opportunities.  This type of person is one where if they get stuck or falter they pick themselves back up, dust themselves off and look for ways around the problems.   These are innovators, the people who can radically change the market and improve what is already there.  There is a need to employ more of these passionate types of people in the world of software testing.  I am getting fed up of the 9-5 testers, the ones who have no desire to learn or improve themselves, the ones not reading this blog.

I do recommend that anyone involved in software development read this book it gives some great advice of how we can adapt what we do and how we think to improve our chances of delivering successful projects. 

PS No I am not being paid by Franz for writing this 

The Importance of Worth

I am going to start this article with a reflection of when we were children.

I want you to imagine that day in school when you was a very young child and you produced your first ever painting.  You took all day to produce it, making careful use of colour and getting exactly how you wanted it to look.  At the end of the day you took your painting home to show your parents.  You were so excited and full of joy and expectations of what your parents would say about all the hard work you had done.  You ran into the living room with your painting in your hand and shouted out “Look Look, what I have done today”.  Your parents come over and take great interest in what you have produced, commenting about how clever you are and how wonderful you are.  They say how proud they are of you and they place your artwork on the fridge in the kitchen where everyone can see it.

Now if you have recalled this scene in your mind and many of you will do so.  How are you feeling?  Did the thought make you happy?  Did you feel pride in what you did?  Are you smiling at this thought?

So now let us zoom toward to present date…

You spend days/weeks/months (Cross out which is applicable) creating test scripts based upon assumptions, writing them up in whatever test case management system you have been told to use.  You put all your effort and thinking into being creative creating these step by step instructions for ‘testing’ the system.

After you have done this you then get ready to start testing using the work you have spent so long creating.  Once you start testing you realise that most of what you have already done upfront, all that effort is not going to be used.   So all these test scripts which you sweated over creating and completing in step by step precise detail, get ignored, never see the light of day, the labour of your work, forgotten and not commented on.

How often when we are told we must follow a scripted testing approach does this happen?  If we are honest it does happen a lot, I know to me in the past over half the scripts I created never got reviewed or used.  Half of the work I did was just forgotten about and left to gather dust in the test case repository.  I should make it clear that I am not against test scripting and that with the correct context they have value but indiscriminatingly forcing people to do something without experiencing it is in my opinion is such a stupid and pointless exercise.

Let us step back to our story from earlier.

Now imagine as a child you rush home to your parents with your painting in hand and once at home your parents take your painting and without saying a word lock it in a drawer and carry on with what they were doing.  How would you feel now?  Place yourself into the mind of your child self and imagine how would you feel?  Upset?  Sad?  Hurt?  Worthless?

So why when we do something as creative as testing do we do this?  We create so much in the way of test scripts but never get the chance to be proud of what we have done, what we have achieved.  We lock it away never to be used again, never to be talked about.  Is it any wonder that so many testers feel sad, unhappy and worthless in what we are being asked to do.  It is a key aspect of human nature that we want to show people what we have done, what we feel proud about, we need feedback to know that the tasks we are performing are worthwhile.  We need confirmation that we are valuable, needed and wanted.  If we continue to carry on with this path of insisting on doing pointless and useless tasks in which we then ignore or and just throw it away then we deserve to feel the way we do.

There are alternatives, using the exploratory testing approach can help prevent this waste; based upon only doing what is necessary at that time, using context.  Session based testing can make sure feedback on what you are doing becomes a key element of the testing approach.

Let us start to feel that we are important to software development and that testers are a worthy addition to this.

Some useful reading:

Session Based Test Management

What is Exploratory Testing 

Exploratory Testing Resources

Principles of Context Driven

Apprenticeship schemes at Test Conferences

A quick blog on a thought I have had.

I read an article today about how we could try and fix the IT skills gap that exists within the UK, this may also apply around the world, by getting young adults into apprenticeships. I have a view that for some people academia study is not for them and they would better suited to a vocational training course instead of a university degree. I never went to university and as such I do not have a degree. Do I feel as if I have missed out? I do not think so but I have not experienced university life so cannot be sure if I missed out something I may have liked.

I think within our profession of testing we have an opportunity to mentor and help create the next generation of testers (not discounting coders, architects) and allowing them to build their skills and knowledge up by learning from experience rather than studying non relevant subjects at university (How many universities do testing as a degree?) As Nassim Nicholas Taleb has said we as human beings are far better at learning from doing rather than from books. I have over the past year been mentoring two people in our craft of testing one is still on-going the other has managed to secure a tester role within a company, neither have been involved in testing beforehand. I feel we within our community should be trying to do this and encourage young adults by maybe taking them under our tutorage, it does not require a large amount of personal investment, a few hours per week. Or maybe within our companies we should all start looking at trying to introduce apprenticeship schemes, let’s try to tap into this vast resource who in my opinion feels they have been abandoned by the educational system.

On the other side I want to call out to those who run conferences, EuroSTAR, CAST, Lets test, UNICOM and say let’s advertise for young adults who may have an interest to come along as an apprentice for the length of the conference. They would not pay a fee but would be expected to produce a report on their thoughts and what actions they intend to take away for the future. I am have not finalized these thoughts but it would give these young adults to get engagement in a craft which I myself feel very passionate about.

Maybe the organizations that run the conferences could look at running an apprenticeship competition, vetting process. I am sure there are many vocational colleges (Both UK and around the world) who would be willing to get involved in this. It has the added effect that it will start to raise in the minds of the next generation of influential people the value of testing and put testing out there as a forwarding thinking craft that people want to get involved with.

What do others think?

I would especially love some feedback from conference organizers to see how feasible these ideas are.

Professional Qualifications and Bodies

I saw an interesting tweet from James Bach (@jamesmarcusbach) the other day:

@testingclub What counts as certification? What's a "professional qualification?" Why is schooling confused with education?

Which was in reply to seeing the following post from the software testing club (@testingclub) about a survey of testers?

@jamesmarcusbach you may be interested in the Education for Testers survey results http://www.thetestingplanet.com/2011/07/infographic-education-for-testers/


Whilst the data within the survey may be of interest to some people what really got me thinking were the questions James was asking and within this blog article I am going to attempt and answer some of them from my perspective. It does not necessary mean that my view is correct and I encourage people to debate and correct points that I make, however it is important to remember that the context of this, it is my own personal view of the testing world.

One of the key points that James states to the testing community is that testing is context driven, I feel the answer to these questions are also dependant on context and as such the answers to the questions are context driven.

The first question I intend to try and answer is “What’s a professional qualification?”

The context I am using to answer this is within the UK and Europe where they appear to be very well defined.

Professional qualifications in the UK are generally awarded by professional bodies in line with their charters. These qualifications are subject to the European directives on professional qualifications. Most, but not all, professional qualifications are 'Chartered' qualifications, and follow on from having done a degree (or equivalent qualification).
(http://www.wordiq.com/definition/British_professional_qualifications)

However the important point to note here is the word ‘generally’ to me this does not mean all professional qualification are awarded by professional bodies.

So ‘generally’ professional qualifications are awarded by professional bodies – but what are professional bodies? How do you become a professional body? It appears that it is simple to set up a professional body, all you need to do is:

Get a group of people interested in the same subject

Produce a charter which describes your aims and ethos

Have regular meetings

One interesting point that is made about profession qualifications and bodies that I found was:

Membership of a professional body does not necessarily mean that a person possesses qualifications in the subject area, or that they are legally able to practice their profession.

Some professional bodies can be cartel in which anyone who is not a member cannot practice legally in that domain. Examples of this are within the field of Medicine doctors need to register with the BMA and nurses with the RCN to be able to practice.

So professional qualification in this context indicates that you are proficient in your field and some professional bodies only allow you to practice if you continue to keep up to date with current practices and methods and publish new findings for your peers to review. Without doing this you lose your right to practice. IMO this is the direction tester should be going in. We need to be continuing to learn, read articles, publish articles and enter into debates about the course we take.

ISEB and the other certification schemes are ok as a starting point but it is not the end of learning. We need to adapt these schemes so that they are not static and become out-dated as they currently are. The problem comes that for the people who run these schemes to do this would not make it cost effective and as such it is not in their interest to change. This goes against the reasoning for having these ‘professional qualifications’ the bodies that are saying they represent us on a professional level are not adhering to two KEY parts of being a professional body.

• Protecting its fellow professionals

• Looking after public interest by maintaining and enforcing standards of training and ethics

Without this happening I have little confidence in the current testing ‘professional qualifications’

Moving on to James question about confusing schooling and education

I find this interesting since seen both sides of the education system (formal schools) having been to school up to the age of 18 and from working within an education system. I think I see what James is getting at. Formal education worked and did not work for me, due to my circumstances up to a certain age I was away from school more than I was there by my own choice I just did not go. Once I did settle into going to school regularly I found it offered me some fantastic grounding in key subject skills (maths, science, history, English) – I really struggled with English and still do according to my wife! It also gave me social skills in being able to share, communicate, listening to others, letting others have their view point which may not agree with mine. I feel lucky in the schools I attended, they may not have been the highest achieving schools but they taught great life skills they I am always thankful for. (Pity think more about league tables than the students). So how does this differ from schooling? The confusion I think comes from the fact that most definitions of schooling see schooling as part of being at school and formal education.

http://www.yourdictionary.com/schooling
http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/schooling

I find this definition worrying since I see schooling as something slightly different. It can mean the education you get at school. However what about ‘home’ schooling, self-schooling? In which you embark on a different style of learning which is not institutional.

The other context here could be that James could be referring to the differing schools of testing. This does not sit right with me and I do have a problem with having different ‘schools’ of testing. I see testing as one big thing not lots of different fragmented schools. Since each school has some strong views and ideas that the others do not agree with we end up in heated debates in which no one side wishes to back down. I am not sure how that helps the testing profession, debates are ok, but constant fighting is not good and at some point a middle ground should be found even if it does not sit easy with all sides. Sometimes it is better for the good of the all rather than for the good of the individual.

My thoughts on these different schools and professional bodies etc. is that maybe just maybe all sides should come together and look at forming a learned society.

What is a learned society?

A learned society is an organization that exists to promote an academic discipline or group of disciplines

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Learned_society

I think this would be a wonderful way forward and maybe the software testing club could be (form) the society? I am not sure nor have I investigated what would be needed but it looks like that they do some of it already publication of articles etc. I would be most interested in what the people at the software testing club think of this and what the general community feels within all of the different schools.

Finally to answer the last question by James:

What counts as certification?

There are many definitions of certification the main being one in which an organization recognise individual/company etc. that meet certain criteria. These criteria could be passing exams, years of experience, publication of articles and so on.

However this really does not ask the question that James asked. Within the survey it shows how many people hold a certification. However as correctly noted by James it does not say which certification. I would have expected this to be much higher. I have many certificates, PAT testing, rugby coach and first aid. None of these are really relevant for my day to day job of testing so I still no sense in the results as they are displayed. However even if it said testing certification which would it mean? ISEB? AST? Etc etc. This one question really stumped me since I could not find an answer that sat easy with me. If I write regular testing article (blog, magazine) and publish should I be certified? If I get my work colleagues to write a report on how competent I am at testing would make me certified? I really do not have an answer for this one and as James did on twitter open up this question to the community.

So the challenge is set:

In your opinion:

What counts as certification?