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

Low-code – the Bigger Picture

Low-code test automation is part of a bigger trend in IT. Forresters and Gartner call it the “Citizen Developer” – the general idea that many business activities can be achieved by business users and citizens directly without the need for big IT projects… initially.

We Have Outsmarted Ourselves Again

For the last 10 years we have mockingly called Robot Process Automation (RPA) a “poor man’s integration”, in the sense that instead of building sic “real” integration, we build an RPA robot to handle the interface. But it’s equally low-code when your Apple Shortcuts trigger application events or you use Airtables or SmartSheets instead of MS Office tools.

No-code is the new spreadsheet.

One way to find problems to solve with a SaaS is to build something that is currently done in a spreadsheet.

Another way to find these problems to solve is to find out what people are building with no-code.

— Rosie Sherry (@rosiesherry) November 3, 2021

In the mocking from IT teams, we do tend to forget that low-code tools are a short-term efficient and user-friendly way for organizations without a big IT budget to solve some common problems. That it can very well make business sense to RPA data between systems until the last silo has been cemented over.

There is a clear trend that the business units of large enterprises are getting more tech-savvy and can do more IT things on their own: order a new OS, configure a new form, populate tables, and configure collaborative work products. Previously these actions would have mockingly been called “shadow IT” when outside the realm of the IT units. Now it’s more out in the open – and where the IT spend money is.

Low code is, when you squint at it, all about the visualization and abstraction of something that previously took coding in IDEs, tinkering in Excel sheets, and similarly skilled IT labor to configure. It’s really nothing new in the history of IT. For large global enterprise companies, it has always been about consolidating business IT systems and redefining new coherent ways of working.

Replace the existing system suite of 10+ tools with one Software-as-a-Service Solution to create and maintain product information, so that it can be kept in one place and inspire additional digital transformation.

The strategic objective for a large global company in 2022

The current journey for these global enterprises is to move the IT savvy-ness into the business units and make the business units more autonomous in their IT spending. There’s no need to hire an external outsourcing company to maintain the IT operations when most can be done by a few internal staff inside the cloud dashboards or similar admin modules of Salesforce and ServiceNow.

Give it some time, though.

While low-code and RPA can in some cases be effectively coded by business experts – they will soon need some good old computer science techniques to maintain the RPA and low-code shoe strings. At the end of the day, visual code is still code. And low-code test automation is just part of a bigger picture.

#268 – Who Brings in New Knowledge?

Well, if you are reading this – there’s a good chance it’s you. Especially if you read this with the intention of sharing this with your team. I hope you do, obviously 😊. But perhaps it’s unclear whose responsibility it is, to bring new knowledge to the team. Is it always the team manager job – or is it a dedicated person that by role, or by habit, that bring in new knowledge?

Photo by William Fortunato on Pexels.com

Trends for the Tester Role

YMWV – this is a model for reflection not to a 1:1 scale of everything in the universe. It might be useful.

The space for the testing professional is under pressure – for my own role and even more for the “traditional” testing professional. At least since 2017 there has been a shift and ongoing disruption. I finally have a form to visualize some of the trends that puts the role of the tester under pressure:

• SIT / UAT debate
• Low-code trend
• Modern Testing
• Quality Engineering and whole team approach

I still see two key areas (stars below) for the classic tester to move into: exploratory testing based on weak signals and supporting the end-users low-code activities (test tool smith). For the more managerial and coordinating role I will have to get back to you in a future blog post.

Someone else will do it

The testing activity has been under change for long. And it’s clear that the testing activity has shifted. Even the test managers have to re-calibrate – as other roles will be doing the test management activity. Be prepared, as someone else will do your testing job. Work on building self-reliance in others and be prepared to hand-over what you can do.

There is more to testing than testing specialists punching test cases. The testing activity as such, has shifted (both left and right), and testing is being done by more roles than “testing people”. Depending on the context, the explicit testing activity is done by a mix of developers, testing specialists, end users and others.

I often find myself as the only testing person on the project. The testing activity is done by automation specialists and end users in one project, and by technical operations staff and end users in another. In these projects either the technology or the business knowledge is paramount, and not so much exploration, flaws and edge cases for specialized testers to explore.

me, 2020. YMMV

Similarly for the test managers – there’s a trend/shift, that sometimes the test management activity is shifting away from the test managers. Even to me – even if I’m sometimes more an a “project manager of the testing activity“, a “Test coach” or similar. The trend is already there – coined sometimes as “whole team approach to quality“. Yes, most of the test management activity can be done by scrum masters, Release Train Engineers and even project managers ….

Recently I was asked to assist a large transition project for a holding company with many brands. Each brand had their own applications and technology stack, but the holding company had decided to move the hosting. So the holding company’s Project Management Office (PMO) was put in charge of facilitating the brand’s testing activities – an activity they had never considered nor done before. My role would only be to provide guidance, not do the actual facilitation.

Which got me thinking….

What if the testers, are not testers
– but other "titles" doing testing.
And what if the facilitation of this activity is done by
– others than test managers

then – then what do YOU do. pic.twitter.com/471AcRiFru

— Jesper (@jlottosen) May 15, 2020

And after some deep thinking. – I do have the privilege to be able to adapt. I don’t need to hoard knowledge or make power moves (anymore) or worry about health-coverage or any of the lower Maslow pyramid terms (anymore).

It’s very natural for me to hand over project approaches to my co-workers. I’m often on the “blue team” to outline the strategy, My best field of work is to bring clarity and consistency, not scalability or repeatability to the practise.

I naturally hand over learning anyways, so why not re-calibrate when the thing I do has reached a stage, where it’s repeatable. And then focus on building the skills in others, work myself out of the test management role as we know it.

And don’t worry that someone else will eventually do my (testing and test management) job. The first step is to acknowledge the trend/pattern, second to redefine and bring clarity! Let’s explore and see what we find!

Someone else will do the building, not Emmet. Their task is repeatable.

No Code, No Test?

If the testing activity can be integrated into the coding activity, who tests if there is no code involved? Does there have to be code in order for there to be a test activity – and when does the scale tip for testing to happen?

There is a new type of business applications emerging – the “Low Code / No Code” products. The WordPress platform like this one I’m writing from now could be one example. AirTable could be another example of a higher order solution, that enables some user to quickly and without code organize and automate information. What we see in the testing tools space with Cypress and Mabl, is similarly a trend, where the test cases and scripts are directly linked to the end-2-end business purpose, not the underlying technologies. Low Code tools has emerged as yet another type of “customization” and “configuration” business solution.

Evolution line and groups of products (Wardley Maps X-axis)

The trend is clear and has been on the horizon for a while.

Low-Code/No-Code will disrupt this entire pattern, as enterprises realize they can be even more successful with their digital transformations if they do away with hand-coding altogether, adopting Low-Code/No-Code across their organizations instead. “No-Code is here, and it doesn’t care about making your IT organization more efficient,” explains E. Scott Menter, Chief Strategy Officer at BP Logix. “Its only purpose is to turn your business into a digitally integrated, audit-defying, silo-resistant object of their customers’ desire.”

The Low-Code/No-Code Movement: More Disruptive Than You Realize

If a consultant can automate their unique process into a tool in hours, they can solve customer’s problem faster and show the value of their efforts. If a small business owner can build an app for their needs, they can increase business efficiency with automation and save valuable time to expand their business.

No-code Revolution. Why Now?

Wardley Mapping y-axis: User proximity / Code needed

To me there is a direct correlation between amounts of code required and business needs and end user visibility. The less “scripting” a business end user needs to do and “scripting languages” to understand the better. Airtable, as mentioned above, wins over spreadsheets in the end.

Similarly the faster cycles and feedback of Low Code tools is more attractive to the business than having “code high” teams develop applications. The “slow and high” code projects are never realized.

Wardley map: Low code evolves and outmaneuvers “high code”

One way to see this trends, is that while “Robot Framework” and other web-based open source “RPA like” frameworks exist, the emerging approach for testing standard software solutions trends towards Low Code:

• Automating Complex End-to-End Tests (SalesForce / Testim)
• What to look for in a SAP test automation tool (SAP / LeapWork)

Perhaps RPA tools and similar Low-Code tools can be compared to the macros of If This Then That, where you can automate tedious repetitive tasks – also among your business tools. But even with low-code tools the complexity of the scripts can make it a mess, and the visual scripts needing coding practices.

Similarly, the need for explicit testing of the business functionality emerges at some point in the evolution of the “low code” solutions. Every solution moves from Experiment to emerging practice and end as a standard/best-practice. The explicit testing need emerges along the way but becomes less visible on the left-side products/commodities.

Yet to me – testing happens everywhere. Testing is key to the experiments of the pioneer, testing is key for the settler bundling solutions and testing is key for the town planner to secure stable operations.

Simple illustration of the Pioneers, Settlers & Town Planners Model.

Be aware that while testing is happening, it is not necessary by the tester. Don’t hawk the testing activity, let the experts play their part , have testers for the remaining exploration and have tools for the rest. The trend of less testers and more testing is still active and testing is shifting to the future even faster these days. A test happens every time a person doing something thinks and ask questions like: let me try this, could you test this, what happens if?

There doesn’t have to be code for testing to happen.

Go read Accelerate!

ACCELERATE – The Science of Lean Software and DevOps: Building and Scaling High Performing Technology Organizations

by NICOLE FORSGREN, JEZ HUMBLE, GENE KIM

The authors have “multiple examples of applying these practices within mainframe environments, traditional packaged software application delivery teams, and product teams“. It’s not just for business-to-consumer web-based organizations.

The book is a tour the force into software delivery performance – the research and statistics shows a clear correlation from DevOps and Lean principles to high achieving organisations. Every arrow on the below model is backed with research. Read the arrow clearly as “drives”, “improves” and “lead to”. E.g. Continuous Delivery leads to Less Burn out.

Saved you a click: https://itrevolution.com/book/accelerate/

A last thing to highlight: High performing organisations have lower manual work percentages in areas like: configuration management, testing, deployments and in the (ITIL) change approval process.

So – if you want to increase the boxes on the right, go do the stuff on the left.

Read the book and act on it.

On Medium regarding Testing, AI, ML etc

I’m writing on Medium regarding Testing, Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning etc:

More to testing than AI and ML can solve

Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning (ML) can perhaps solve some testing challenges, but not all testing. The testing vs. checking debateand all the shift-left of checking, have revealed that some of testing is about critical thinking and some…

 See also

• Automation, AI and ML doesn’t kill good testing
• “If we try to dissect software testing processes today, we can argue that is hasn’t changed tremendously in the last 20 years.” – oh. I don’t thing you have been looking…

Similar posts: Testing is wicked, Test all the things,

OpsDev – more dev work by ops

The hyped mnemonic “DevOps” is equally true the other way around: OpsDev – that is, more and more work in the operations and infrastructure departments happens as development activities with scripts, code repositories and build managers. OpsDev is as tool-heavy as DevOps, and test involvement similarly pipeline focussed.

Guest blog post at http://www.plutora.com/blog/opsdev-test-environments-management 

Less Test Managers, More Test Coaches

One of the trends/shifts I experience in testing & test management in particular is the Test Coach as discussed initially here: The Shift-Coach Testing Trend (Oct, 2016). Recently (Aug 2017) it came up again in a Twitter thread, where Stephen Janaway stated the inspiration to the title of this blog post.

Less Test Managers and more coaches. That’s how I see it going.

Fittingly as they inspired the first post with the talk “How I Lost My Job As a Test Manager” presented at Test Bash 2015. This post is a further elaboration of the Shift-Coach test management trend. Here are some of my experiences:

• I have been assigned to an agile development team to introduce them to 3 Amigos, Test data driven test automation and such things. The purpose of my involvement was to enable the team to continue the practices without me, and without testers besides the business analyst / product owner (See The domain expert is the tester) as they are doing Shift-left. Similar to an agile or scrum coach, my approach was to look at it as a change in the way of working.
• Another project is an infrastructure project, there are no testers only technicians configuring Cisco routers that by software can replace firewalls, iron ports, VM servers and other network equipment. The project has to implement 80+ of these, so I setup both a test process and an ITIL change request process acting as a test and release manager – another quite frequent trend. I could continue in the project for the duration, but instead I setup guidance and leave when it’s sufficiently in place.

This might be similar to a test architect, a (internal) test consultant activity. It has nothing to do with diminishing testing. Rather I see it as more testing happening, something that would not have been done without the coaching from a test manager. It’s all about finding a test approach that is fit for the context.

Here are some things others have written:

• Katrina has written an excellent article on Test Manager vs. Test Coach that compares the traditional hierarchical test manager with a test coach of agile practices.
• “Gus” Evangelisti: writes about Test coach versus test specialist, impact on queues  comparing the differences in work output based on either a test coach guiding the team or a test specialist in the team
•  Paul Gerrard | Will The Test Leaders Stand Up (2013) pointed out that a future for the test manager could be in Help agile projects to recognize and react to risks, coach and mentor and manage testing (See Wither the test manager)
• Alan Page writes about having only feature teams, and no practice teams in The matrix organisation

The competence of the test coach is to have enough change management expertise (people skills) and test management expertise (domain skills) to know how to coach and facilitate the change. Should test coaches test too, perhaps when required, but not necessarily. The activity is primarily to up-skill the team to continue on their own.

The “Test Coach” is a trend similar to “shift-left” and all the other shifts in testing and test management. I see it as a pattern, and what I read from the threads and discussions is that many test managers gradually shift towards test coaches.