PractiTest QA Blog

My friend Rob – the Social Tester – came up with another idea for an ebook (Really! How does this guy come up with such cool ideas all the time – this is me jealous of Rob!).

Rob is asking testers to write up post it notes with why they like testing and send them to him – read more here.

So last night I spent about 45 minutes contemplating this question, and when I didn’t come up with anything useful I just went to see re-runs of Tourchwood…

But this morning I had one of those EUREKA moments, and all of a sudden every became clear once more.

I enjoy the interaction with all the project stakeholders, from customers and product owners and all the way to developers and project managers.  I like the fact that my job is to work real close with all of them and serve as a bridge that allows the project to get done correctly.

I also enjoy the hunt, and the adrenaline of the projects, etc.  But specifically about testing it is the pivotal role within the organization.

This means I can send my picture to Rob.  Now it’s your turn to think about it, write it down and send the picture to Rob too.
Why do you like Testing???

There’s a weird believe that we Testers need to be pessimistic in order to be good / professional / successful.

In a course I impart (where I am required to use slides made by a colleague) there is even a bullet saying that good testers require “professional pessimism” as one of our main traits.

I apologize to the person who came up with this notion, but what a bunch of crap!
Most of the greatest testers I know are Fearless Optimists, and I think this is actually one of the trait that makes them exceptional testers.

Testers need to be optimistic in order to be able to find a huge showstopper bug and instead of saying “This is it, this App is Busted!” and turn to another task, continue our testing task with even more strength to find additional issues that require fixing and make sure the App is released correctly.

A person needs to be first of all an optimist in order to be a dreamer, and only a dreamer can sit with a design document or a screen sketch and come up with user profiles and scenarios that will allow her to test the AUT realistically.

And maybe most importantly, only an optimist can come to work each day to find bugs and look for flaws in the work of others, and do this convinced that he is doing it for the greater good of his team, his friends, and his company.

So next time you hear someone saying that you need to be a pessimist in order to be a (good) tester do all of us a favor and correct this person, and remember to do it with a smile on your face

I beg forgiveness to all NBA fans, since this post relates mainly to all the rest of the basketball leagues (College-league, Euro-league, etc.) where most players are mere mortals

I read a comment on a newspaper this weekend saying that “Team X” had won a game due to its defense.  This reminded me of a game I saw last week while I was *running* in the gym where 2 college teams were playing and it was obvious that the team that was winning, and not by a short margin, did not really have a better percentage from the field but they were “kicking-ass” on Defense, specially winning almost every single defensive.

If you ever played basketball you know that you need to have talent to play good offense.  But in order to play defense you don’t need talent, you need physical endurance and most importantly you need DETERMINATION.  I learned this in my high-school basketball team where all my friends had talent and I decided I also wanted to be part of the team…

But what the heck has this to do with Software Testing???  Everything!

It is true that you can have a natural talent to “attract bugs to you” whenever you log into your Application Under Test, this will certainly not harm you as a tester.
But a great tester is the person who is 110% determined to do the best possible testing job all the time; who’ll work with all his heart even when the task may be less “glamorous” than the one being done by the developer sitting next to him; and who’ll play with his “eye on the ball” but with his head focused on the objectives and goals of the whole team all the time and specially during the hard times.

I think that in the same way as basketball games are won with points but lost with a bad defense, and the teams who succeed in the long run are those with a strong and stable defense; our companies and products sell in the short run with fast features and cool functionality, but in the long run the ones that succeed are those with a high quality and stable product.

So just like in basketball, you need to keep your eye on the ball but your head focused on the objective of the team; and…

DEFENSE – DEFENSE – DEFENSE!!!!

I started working on an automation project in a company where they recently adopted a strong and healthy agile development approach.  One of the first things they did was to distribute the once-unified testing team and incorporate the testers as part of the organic development teams; up to now all good and fine.

The VP R&D, who I know from a previous company we both worked together ages ago, brought me in to solve a problem that started when each of the teams began developing their test automation, all in their own separate ways, and each one started running into different issues halting their progress almost simultaneously.

I will be sincere and say that in my own egocentric way I thought the answer would be trivial and based on the models I had used in the past, where you create a central team in charge of automation and they provide services to the rest of the teams in the most professional and effective way.

Sounds logical, right?  At least it did to me.
So here is where I came (to save the day!?!?!).

The first thing I did was to set expectations.
I am only a Testing Guy with some experience, not a Magician, Miracle Worker, or a Messiah that will solve all the issues by imploring the help of any Testing Deity above (or even bellow).  The best I can do is try to use some of my experience and a lot of common sense (both mine and theirs) to find the way to work correctly.  I hope they understood this, if not the road is going to be really bumpy…

The second thing I did was to list the stakeholders within each team and across the company that I should talk to in order to get a good and balanced image of was is going on.

Here is where it started getting interesting, as things usually do when you start going deep into the bits and bites and asking some interesting questions.  BTW, for this I really recommend using an approach based on the 5 Y’s.

I quickly realized 2 main things, a bad one and a very good one, that were happening in the teams.

The bad thing(/s):
Since the automation had suddenly become a tasks of the Development Team Leaders, and since the Company did not have a single person who had ever been part of a Test Automation Process, they were running into all sorts of “rookie automation” issues.

• Wrong test organization
• Teams not sharing or even aware of the tests being developed by the other teams
• Lack of a proper test management or execution platform
• Lack of test development experience
• Tests that were not written in a modular way
• Tests that, when they fail, don’t give enough information about the nature of the error
• etc.

Just think about all the possible “simple” mistakes in the book, and most probably they were there in one team or another.

The (very) positive thing I saw was that the Team Leaders, who are all R&D managers in one way or another, really took ownership of the testing tasks and their automation.  Not only did they take ownership, but gave it a very high priority within the tasks of their teams, so much so that they were even giving automation development tasks to their brightest developers and team members.

Here is where I realized that I needed to let go of the traditional approach I had in mind.

Even though my initial feeling was to go by the traditional way and solve the issue by creating a centralized team to handle the test automation, I decided that this approach would very much eliminate the involvement of the Team Leaders who had really done the mental switch to adopt testing as part of their core responsibilities.

So, this week when I came back to the VP R&D with my analysis and recommendations I actually presented him a proposal that will take me out of my “known & comfort zone” but will allow us to leverage the great agile spirit currently present in the company.  Instead of creating a team that will develop automation, I will start working with each of the teams in order to solve their issues, and we will create an “informal” automation forum that will be in charge of correlating, sharing, and levering the automation process between the teams.

We will start working in the next 2 weeks so wish me luck!
I’ll keep posting updates and interesting stuff as they will surely become available.

For the last couple of months the SoftwareTestingClub has been working on its magazine and now it’s out!!!
You can download it here:

What we like most about the magazine is that it’s fresh, cool and different.  Starting from the large number of new names who published their articles and all the way to the fun stuff such as the tester cartoons by Andy Glover, the blogs and even the conversations that are included inside inside.

A lot of people worked hard to make it happen, from the authors who submitted the articles and the rest of the pieces, and all the way to Rosie and Rob who literally spent days and nights to get it published.

THANKS, YOU DID A GREAT JOB!

Now I can’t wait to see what will come out in the next edition…

I love making weird connections between apparently unrelated stuff.  This morning I was watching a Monty Python short in YouTube and it reminded me of one of the most important lessons in group communications.

So here is the short – http://bit.ly/daIENg

And for those who didn’t make the automatic connection, the important communication lesson is to understand how to pass along information to each of our Stakeholders based on their specific needs and communication channels.

In our case this means to know what information is useful (bugs, tests, coverage, risks, etc?) and in what format is the appropriate (graphs, tables, written reports, dashboards, etc) for each one of our Main Stakeholders.

And remember to always look on the bright side of life…