PractiTest QA Blog

I just got back (alive) from CAST2009 in Colorado Springs, where I did a presentation on Testing Intelligence.
It was my first CAST and thus I wanted to share some of my observations and comments.

My presentation itself went pretty well (I think) and many people agreed with the TI approach, no surprises there.  But the real value for me came from the people who initially thought the method was not doable (or even realistic!) for their workplaces since it involved to many changes and education of their management on this new approach.

Reviewing the subject together with them I got to understand that the best approach for deploying TI on large organizations is to do it gradually and from within, based on a slowly-progressing plan that would allow the organization to learn and adapt to it, enhancing the chances for success in these environments.

The Testing Intelligence paper and the presentation I gave are posted on the CAST2009 site.
If you get to read them and have any comments, please make sure to send them to me.

I also wanted to talk about my CAST experience.
I have been in many conferences in the past (both as a presenter and an organizer) and so I can point to some stuff that really made a difference on the impact and the value I got from CAST. I invite the people organizing these types of conferences in the future to contact the CAST Team and try to learn from them.

1. Achieving real constructive criticism via facilitated sessions.
The methodology at CAST is that each session (from the largest keynote to the shortest presentation) are divided into 2 parts:
The frontal presentation – where the presenter talks about his subject.
and
The open season – where the audience asks questions, bring forward comments, and even refute the whole argument based on their experience and points of view.

The open season is made possible due to the active moderation of a “trained facilitator” who is constantly making sure the session is kept alive and on a positive and constructive note.

As a presenter, it is a bit scary at first.
Only after you understand that the audience doesn’t want to take you down but wants to help you out, can you participate from the interaction and even enjoy it.

2. Real eye-level interactions between all the participants (and I mean all the participants!!)
It doesn’t really matter if you are a junior tester or a published expert, it always felt right to approach a person and talk to him or to take part in an open discussion (with cups of coffee or bottles of beer!).

Some of the biggest names in the world of testing took part in the conference (Caner, Bach, Weinberg, etc) and at no time did you feel that any of them showed nothing but the most sincere sympathy (or at least respect!) for everyone else.
I don’t know if it was the blend of informal activities or simply the attitude of the organizers, but it was amazing.

3. The feeling of a peer-organized conference.
Again, this was a “feeling” more than something concrete, but at no time did you sensed any hidden agendas or sponsor oriented activities that made you feel someone was trying to sell something.

I don’t think I saw a single person in the conference that was not related in one way or another with the art of testing or at least teaching testing, and this made a whole lot of difference.
A conference from testers, by testers and to testers… what a refreshing idea

There were also the regular things you get from any “large” conference: a constant brainstorm of amazing ideas, camaraderie and genuine will to share and learn, and the chance to expand your circle of friends and colleagues.

One last thing to mention about this CAST was the fact that it was a relatively small conference, apparently affected by the “current economic crisis” that made an important number of people not to come to the conference.
I don’t know if this affected the conference itself, or if it actually helped to create an environment of a close and connected family of testing professionals that would not have been achieved by a group twice as big.

In any case I wanted to give my sincere thanks to the CAST Organization Committee who invited me to participate and allowed me to take part in the event.  Having had the experience of organizing similar events I can appreciate their work and performance.

I would start thanking by specific names but this will only make me leave out some people out, so as I already thanked each of you on the last day of the conference I wanted to thank you again as a group, for the great work and for the successful conference you allowed me to participate in.

I hope to see you all again in CAST2010!

This week I am in Colorado Springs in the Annual Conference of the Association of Software Testing.

I will be talking tomorrow (Tuesday) about Testing Intelligence.
They even published and interview about my and the topic, so if you are not attending and want to read about it you can check it out here.

I will also post a summary of the comments I get during the presentation.

Wish me luck since I am little nervous about it

A couple of weeks ago I had the chance to teach another Testing Certification Course in Tel Aviv.
The dynamic of this specific group together with the class discussions & exercises helped me to articulate some of the positive and negative aspects of all these certification courses & exams.

Rob Lambert made a nice classification of the testing world based on their stands with regards to certifications. He identified 3 camps:
1. Those who hate certifications.
2. Those who think some certifications are worthwhile (but they may also be dangerous).
3. Those who are all in favor of certifications, thinking they have the power to generate “Testing Superstars” over-night.

So it should be no surprise that I count myself in Camp number 2, thinking many of today’s Testing Certifications provide good value to the Testing Community.  But I also think there are misconceptions and dangers associated with testing certifications that need to be taken into account both by the people taking part of the courses (and the exams) and by the employers looking for certified testers.

The Good

1.  Certification courses can help testers who have not had the chance to formally learn testing in any other framework to go over all the basics and principles.  This is true for many courses and not necessarily for those related to certifications, but certifications provide a good excuse and incentive to take the course in the first place – something that may not take place otherwise.

2. Certification sillabi are a synthesized source of information prepared by knowledgeable professionals, and this can help engineers who want to get a lot of information in one place coming from a trustable source.  Just make sure to double check what certification you are taking and who composed the syllabus, lately there are many groups offering courses and diplomas that are not really what they promise up front.

3. Only once in a while we have the chance to learn theoretical tools that are not 100% linked to our day-to-day work.  This experience may help us in the future or even help us look at the things we do under a different light.  For me there is nothing like an intensive data transfer session to trigger out-of-the-box thinking.

4. Certifications are a great way of unifying terminology.  This may seem trivial or less important, but once you start communicating with people outside your organization terminology starts becoming a problem.  The fact that 2 people may be talking about the same thing under different names is sometimes the source of misunderstandings and even conflicts.

The Bad

1.  Some students think that theoretical knowledge alone will make them testing superstars and disregard the fact that testing is a discipline that takes time to master.  People who think they can learn all there is from a certification or course are like drivers who feel ready to enter the highway after learning to drive from a printed manual.

2. Teachers who don’t master the art of testing can hurt their students.  Certifications are nothing more than a syllabus, an exam and hopefully a diploma you can hang on the wall.  The real value comes from the training and this part can be jeopardized by a teacher who doesn’t really pass along the principles of testing to his students.  This becomes more acute as we see more and more institutes who are aiming at preparing their students to pass the exam and not to learn about testing.

3. We are starting to see employers who make certifications a blind prerequisite for testers to work in their company.  This is wrong since it closes the door on many good testers who either have not had the time or the money to take the certification, or who don’t need it since they already know all the *stuff* without having the diploma.
I want to share with these recruiters and managers something out of the ISTQB syllabus (not textual, but in essence): “Absence of bugs does not demonstrate the software has Good Quality”; under this same principle Absence of a Certification does not indicate the candidate is not qualified to be an excellent tester!!!

The Ugly

This is something that is starting to bother me more and more…  Some people demonize certifications and classify people who support them (like me!) as evil.

As I stated above, certifications are not magic wands and the most important assets of a tester are his skills, experience and approach to testing (things that cannot be thought on a course or measured by an exam!); but this is far from saying that certifications and their preparation courses are wrong or counter productive.

We need to look at certifications and their training courses as tools, and understand that tools can always be used for good and wrong purposes.  At the end of the day we are talking about humans, the same creatures who discovered fire and after creating civilization with it found a way to create bombs to erase it from the planet…