Where I Have Changed

The Ministry of Testing Bloggers Club suggested that I write a post based on “In testing, I have changed my mind about ________”. As this blog dates back to 2012 with consistent (220) articles about testing, and my career in the field dates back to 2002 – it seems a 20-year experience should give me a few things. Testing is still not dead – and it’s still about the context (lower-case context, not CDT).

It’s not about: Testers being the only ones doing Testing

yeah, not so much these days. Testing is an act that any role can do in context. It’s about the testing – not so much the testers. And I have realized that even classic test management tasks can be done by someone else. Testing is not owned by the testers – it might be stewarded/facilitated by us, but it’s performed by a team member (who could be a tester).

It’s not about: Perfect Requirements

After decades in IT, it’s clear that even requirements are never perfect. When we look closer we see the business requirements can vary from a profound idea to a rudimentary feature of the system under test. Even in regulated industries requirements can be both about a specific configuration in a SaaS system or a loose idea of a relevant dashboard. Sometimes a requirement can be by design of an underlying commodity product – there doesn’t need to be a test case for everything.

The more rigor you add to the requirements management – the more fragile it becomes. It’s key to understand the risks and bets of the person paying for your solution. – in that lies the true borders of the delivery. Much can go informally along if it aligns with stakeholder values.

It’s not about: Defects

Back in the day defects needed to be accounted for, tracked, and distributed. Besides testing documents – defects were the only tangible delivery of the testers. The defects needed to be raised and closed. I recently wrote a guideline that stated that only observations that couldn’t be fixed within a day should be raised to the project manager for shared handling. In that context fixing things is within the same team. If it’s for another team to fix, defects are simply something communicated between the teams (check team topologies for team interactions). Sure you can still find a blocker or a P1 – what matters is how fast you can fix things.

It’s not about: Month-Long Testing Phases

The more time there is from idea to implementation – the more the requirement risks not addressing an up-to-date business objective. Timing is key. Some tools provide epics and user stories – but the structure is often misused to be a simple work aggregation – and not goal aligned.

The counter-intuitive trick is not to add formality, and more time between releases – but less. Less time between feedback between idea and implementation, and less time between implementation and test. Less time between the various forms of feedback adds to better results faster.

It still happens, I’m sure, that a business needs a month-long testing phase before a release; having a range of business staff to participate in testing the latest release of the enterprise ERP or CRM. More often the testing phase is one sprint behind the development activity. I have pondered this a lot.

At best testing is an integrated activity in the team and in the sprint. But if testing is a more separate activity – it can be both agile and context-relevant. So I have changed my mind about this anti-pattern.

It’s ok for testing to be in the next sprint –

if that adds consistency and less stress to the team*

* Seperate boards needed. Your Mileage Will Vary

Chess and Testing

[Originally on the Ministry of Testing, Jan 2014, now only on the Web Archives]: The Day Testing Died But Didn’t

In May 11 1997 a computer beat the world champion Kasparov in chess [1] – not convincingly, but still. From then on chess could be reduced to a set of scripts and the scripts automated so fast that it was comparable to the human mind [2]. But the human chess players continued to succeed – not by more rote memorisation, but by more intuition and feelings.

Imagine that – to play world champion chess and base your moves on feelings. This is what Magnus Carlsen does [3]. As of January 2014 they are the reigning World Chess Champion [4] and the no. 1 ranked player in the world [5] with the highest rating in history [6]. I must admit that I read about them in the paper [7][8] [9], but the story relates to how even one of the most complex brain games can be automated, and yet there are still moves to explore.

To play according to textbooks is fine, up to a certain level. Perhaps up to master level, but not to grandmasters. [10]

Originally chess was a game played on a board, but even more so in the brain of the players. Grand masters of the cold war super powers played each other with full focus on both the board moves and the body moves.

Encyclopaedias of chess moves have been written; 1700+ chess moves have been given mnemonics like “the Sicilian Defence”, “King Gambit” (SFDEPOT anyone?). And the chess masters have played and played and memorized and played (against) the computer again and again.

There are books, terminology, strategies and schools of chess [11]. To quote Wikipedia:

A school (of chess)means a (chess) player or group of players that share common ideas about the strategy (of the game). There have been several schools in the history (of modern chess). Today there is less dependence on schools – players draw on many sources and play according to their personal style.

After Kasparov there were other world chess champions [12] – and lately 23 year old Magnus Carlsen, as mentioned. Carlsen started playing chess in 1998; they played Kasparov [13] as a 13 year old for a draw and later had Kasparov and the Danish grand master Peter Heine Nielsen as a trainer. Heine Nielsen explains about Carlsen:

“While the existing World Champion Anand [14]’s strength was being able to prepare thoroughly and calculate moves very fast while playing, Carlsen is different – they thrives in the contexts that are not distilled by the computer or text books. When it’s man to man – then their the opposite of a computer; the one that often does the unexpected yet effectual play. They plays a variety of openings – making it really hard to prepare for.”

Carlsen can’t describe, what goes on in their brain, while they play chess. Some moves just feels good; and when the opponent play is somewhat based on computer calculations – that is maybe the best response. [15]

Chess didn’t die with the automation, chess didn’t die by being distilled in text books and templates and mnemonics – but chess evolved. The current unfair advantage for Carlsen is their irrationality and intuition – it’s what sets them apart from the scripts.

The day testing died – but didn’t, is another story Or is it?

References

1. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deep_Blue_versus_Garry_Kasparov
2. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turing_test
3. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magnus_Carlsen
4. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_Chess_Championship
5. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FIDE_World_Rankings
6. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_top_chess_players_throughout_history
7. The article is my inspiration – and will be paraphrased
8. Danish and pay-walled http://jyllands-posten.dk/eceRedirect?articleId=6190682
9. By the way, I don’t know much about chess
10. http://en.chessbase.com/post/vladimir-kramnik-che-is-so-deep-i-simply-feel-lost-
11. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/School_of_chess
12. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_Chess_Champion
13. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Garry_Kasparov
14. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Viswanathan_Anand
15. Quote from the Danish article, my translation

You don’t have to be a boss to be a leader

It’s really that simple, yet awesomely profound. And a typical Gerald Weinberg quote, like my other favorites of their points:

• No matter how it looks at first, it’s always a people problem (The second law of consulting)
• You’ll never accomplish anything if you care who gets the credit
• Things are the way they are because they got that way
• Quality is value to some person

Regarding the last quote; which was later extended with “who matters, at some time“. Once I had an argument about how to deliver quality. The other side held towards IEEE definition of delivering the expected. But even when they did, they failed to see that the unmeasured and irrational parts affected the value to the customer. I agree completely with The Cowboy Tester that knowing works of Weinberg is a measure of seriousness.

For many of us learning whether or not you know about @JerryWeinberg is a kpi for how serious you are about testing as a career and craft. You don’t have to agree with him, but you should know him.

— TheCowboyTester (@cowboytesting) August 8, 2018

Weinberg worked not only with testing, but among other things also consulting and organisational change management. I did not know that when reading “Making Sense of Change Management” (Cameron & Green 2012). I literally jumped up and started laughing while reading the quite serious elaborations to the Satir Change model – the authors found that Quality Software Management: Anticipating Change (1997) is a “masterly book on change, but with a title that might not appeal to everyone“. It might not appeal to change scholars, but definitely appealed indirectly to a lot of people in testing.

Recently (August 2018) Jerry died aged 84. Not a boss – yet a leader.

Many Bits under the Bridge

I’ve been in the testing business for 14 years – when I started in late 2002 it was all about using HP Test Director 7.6 – in a browser… There was only one model of testing, v-model, and only one book of testing the ISEB (later ISTQB) vocabulary. And only one expected output of testing: Testers designed test cases, executed and perhaps wrote both a test plan document and test report document. Test process improvement was a thing, but even so testing was often a pointy cog…  

Many Bits under the Bridge Later

It is not about the test cases any more, it’s about being part of a team – that delivers an IT solution to the business. First of all, if it’s just about the test cases then it is a race to the lowest paid off-shore location, a run to the bottom in repetitiveness and mechanic activity. Checking! with more focus on crossing the t’s and dotting the i’s. We have tools for that now – the plates are shifting.

When testing professionals puts “writing test cases” on their LinkedIn description. It seems to me that they are stuck in the testing world of 10 years ago. Standing still and not seeing that Testers are Knowledge Workers – not workers of producing artifacts. It is much more important to see beyond the visible, Uncovering better ways and seeing testing as an activity to provide information to the stakeholders, based on experiments and observations.

Skill up and be smarter! And don’t listen to old tapes – it’s not worth it :).

See also this from QA Symphony & Ministry of Testing:

The Software Tester: Modern vs. Traditional [Infographic]

Shift-Right, you wild one!

The Shift-Right label is that more and more testing (and checking) can happen on the live application in production. Some call it monitoring, some call it Testing in the Wild. It is a very wild idea for some people and some contexts #YMMV. It may very well be the best way of testing in some contexts.

Once I consulted on a network stabilization and delivery optimization project for a consumer bank. They had many issues in their production environment… I strongly advocated that they did test controlled and structured in production on the network changes and other operational activities. (I have talked about “How to Test in IT operations“ at Nordic Testing Days 2016). More on testing during IT deliveries in Shift-Deliver.

Shift-Right is trend that people have covered well before me, here are some pointers:

• Dan Ashby: Continuous Testing in DevOps
• Alan Page: Stop Writing Automation
• Laurent Py at Agile Testing Days 2015: SHIFT LEFT AND SHIFT RIGHT: THE TESTING SWING
• Lanette Creamer:
• 8 Reasons to Shift Testing Right
• Testing and monitoring in production – your QA is incomplete without it

The key is really as Alan puts it “testers should try to learn more from the product in use” and with that comes the tools of Google Canary builds, NetFlix Chaos Monkeys etc.

This trend goes along with Shift-Coach, Shift-Left and Shift-Deliver discussed separately. Initially I considered shift-right to be regarding consulting, but after hearing Declan O’Riordan at DSTB 2016 I realized that shift-right was the right label for test in production, testing in the wild etc.

Similar posts regarding things in the wild: Bugs Happens, The Kcal bug, Tradition is a choice and Can you see beyond the visible.

Trending: Shift-Left

TL;DR: Shift-Left is about testing early and automated. Shift technical with this trend or facilitate that testing happens.

Shift-Left is the label we apply when testing moves closer to development and integrated into the development activities. The concept is many IT years old, and there are already some excellent articles out there: What the Shift Left in Testing Means (Smart Bear, no date), “Shift left” has become “drop right” (Test Plant 2014), Shift Left QA. How to do it. Why it matters (Work Soft, 2015).

To me Shift-Left is still an active trend and change how to do testing. This goes along with Shift-Right, Shift-Coach and Shift-Deliver discussed separately. I discussed these trend labels at Nordic Testing Days 2016 during the talk “How to Test in IT operations“.

Here are some contexts where Shift-Left happens:

• Google have “Software Engineer in Test” as job title according to the book “How we Test Software at Google“.
• Microsoft have similar “Software Design Engineer in Test” as discussed by Alan Page in “The SDET Pendulum” and in the e-book “A-word“
• A project I was regarding pharmaceutical  Track and Trace, had no testers. I didn’t even test but did compliance documentation of test activities. The developers tested. First via peer review, then via peer execution of story tests and then validation activities. No testers, just the same team – for various reasons.
• A project I was in regarding a website and API for trading property information had no testers, but had continuous build and deploy with even more user oriented test cases that I could ever grab. (see: Fell in the trap of total coverage)

The general approach to Shift-Left is that “checking” moves earlier in the cycle in form of automation. More BDD, more TDD, more automated tests, continuous builds, frequent feedback and green bars. More based on “Test automation pyramid” (blog discussion, whiteboard testing video). Discussing the pyramid model reveals that testing and checking goes together in the lower levels too. I’m certain that (exploratory) testing happens among technicians and service-level developers; – usually not explicitly, but still.

To have “no QA” is not easy. Not easy on the testers because they need to shift and become more SET/SDET-like or shift something else (Shift-Right and Shift-Coach and Shift-Deliver). Neither is it easy on the team, as the team has to own the quality activities – as discussed in “So we’re going “No QA’s”. How do we get the devs to do enough testing?”

Testers and test managers cannot complain, when testing and checking is performed in new ways. When tool-supported testing take over the boring less-complex checks, we can either own these checks or  move to facilitate that these checks are in place. Similarly when the (exploratory) brain-based testing of the complex and unknown is being handed over to some other person. Come to think of it I always prefer testing done by subject matter experts in the project, be it users, clients, testers or other specialists.

We need to shift to adapt to new contexts and new ways of aiding in delivering working solutions to our clients.

Asking Open Questions

It has always been a good interview technique to ask open questions. Then the person being interviewed have to elaborate and talk in full sentences. In contrast to closed questions, that replied to in binary [1]: yes, no, 42 – the red pill [2]. Until now I really didn’t understand how simple yet powerful this questioning technique is in testing. I might have done it all along, for some time :-).

The primary eye opener was the Copenhagen Context 2015 [4] workshop on Exploration Under Pressure by Jon Bach. One of the treats was that they showed us a list of things to find on the ebay.com website. Not specific items, but information about the items. Finding the most expensive item, and by that stumbling over a live production bug in the max value field. Finding the number of blue shoes available etc. What a fun “online scavenger hunt” – we could battle to find the oldest, longest and most odd details etc.

Later the same week eBay Classified hosted a local meetup of “QA Aarhus” with a live demo of how they do testing sessions of their app. They had to host the session twice,  due to popular demand, and what we got was an intro to a setting of exploration, thinking loud and doing pair testing. And I got to try my new-found quest to ask open questions. To search for things – but look out of the corner of the eye for oddities and what-ifs.

But how could I apply this technique in my current testing project of migrating an HR solution for a large IT outsourcing company. I did today. A staff member allocated to the project to test during UAT [3] specifically the processes they use in the old system and to act distribute this knowledge back to the team. For reasons the testing scope in this are had yet not been established, so they didn’t really know where to start – but I did… open questions 

• What processes do you have?
• What kind of events do you need to register on an employee
• Tell me more about vacation calculation
• Where, if any, are your current processes described (I’m fallible)
• What has likely changed comparing the old and new solution

I asked them to go as deep until no new learning could be achieved, but not to detail it in scripts or discrete steps. Because from here we have test cases – test ideas – “a question that someone would like to ask (and presumably answer) about a program”

Eureka!

[1]: Binary replies can be checked, open questions are testing. Testing is “Testing is the process of evaluating a product by learning about it through exploration and experimentation, which includes: questioning, study, modeling, observation and inference, output checking, etc.” http://www.satisfice.com/blog/archives/1509

[2]: I have seen how deep the rabbit hole goes…

[3] Let’s pretend there is such a thing as a “user acceptance test”

[4]  Disclaimer: I was part of the program committee, and by chance most speakers hosts their own testing conferences. See more on http://copenhagencontext.com/blog/2015/01/meet-jesper-at-the-copenhagen-context-conference-venue/