Can do!

Heyhey!

I watched Apollo 13 for the Nth time yesterday. There's a lot to like in that movie. Good script, great acting, memorable characters, etc. Also the original story is highly appealing. I think the movie manages to capture it quite nicely, but it's still quite impossible for us common people to really understand what happened during that mission. The amazing feats the astronauts and the mission control managed to conjure under the crisis go beyond imagination.

One of the most remarkable things was the spacecraft. The product that was designed to successfully transport three people to the moon and back, and that could do so much more. It inspired me to think, write this post and tweet too... :)

Breaking the boundaries of familiar

Heyhey!

It's about time I wrote a blog post. :) Once again there has been a turmoil of everything and this blog has gotten unfortunately low priority among this everything.

But enough about that. I'm boiling with ideas. One of them being the idea behind a tweet I wrote just a moment ago:

This pretty much culminates my values in testing at this moment. But I agree, it requires some explaining. So let's get to that explanation part then.

Mging ET w/ QC, LOL!!1

Heyhey!

Ok, tons of thoughts and ideas swimming in my head again. I've written lengthy texts about building trust, product risk analysis, cool heuristics like FPS Nausea, test cases, how to gain by losing, gaming testers, etc. All at alpha level still. All complete s**t still. The highest priority is however the recap about my experiences at recent Rapid Testing Intensive / Critical Thinking courses, held none other than the almighty James Bach himself.

Well, the highest priority was that. Namely somehow my approach on managing exploratory testing with QC has gotten some attention lately. Perhaps it's because I'm actually training it now, finally. Perhaps it's because I've ranted about it more in Twitter and other mediums. Or perhaps it's because factory schoolers have grown tired of me ranting about borderline philosophical things about testing and thinking like a tester, and are finally demanding something tangible to mimic.

I don't know.

The actual reason I'm writing this is firstly the interest of some of the testers I greatly respect namely Maaret Pyhäjärvi, Aleksis Tulonen, Huib Schoots and Paul Carvalho. I've managed ET and teams doing ET with QC for some time now, but I've never actually gotten any peer reviews of my actions. I've roamed relatively blindly and I hope this blog post cures that.

But secondly and no less importantly I'm hoping others will get ideas how to manage ET either with QC or with other tools as well. The idea is basically the same with every tool.

So let's get crackin'!

Note: I made a summary paragraph and it can be found at the very end of this post. So if you're a member of the sales division or otherwise suffer from attention deficiencies, you can skip right into it... ;)

NTD2012 roundup - day 2

Heyhey!

Day 2 round up of one of the warmest and friendliest conferences I've ever been in. Nordic Testing Days 2012, baby!

As I stated in my previous post, I missed the beginning of the day 2. Good company and alcoholic beverages are just something that makes me want to press snooze button few more times than usual in the next morning. Plus that breakfast was something else! Kudos, Meriton Grand Hotel!

Mr. Nice Guy in action ;)

Ok, I missed "only" the keynote of Rex Black, but as we seem to believe in different things professionally, I guess it's ok... ;) I had a chance to talk with Rex off-duty and it seems that he's a really nice guy with fashinating stories about his career and personal life. We chatted about testing, economics and even jujutsu. I'm quite bewildered that he travels that much; Over 250 000 miles per year!! What?! On top of everything else, he oozes character. I bet if he chooses to say I'm a girl, I will belive him. I quess you kinda have to have character if you're selling ISTQB... :D

But let's get cracking. Time dig into the presentations/workshops I eventually did participate. Same rules as before; Lightning style, headlines hold the slides, stories are my thoughts about the subject, etc.

Go!

NTD2012 roundup - day 1

Heyhey!

It's been awhile. Again. Even though I'm working on three assignments and haven't got the time to write down all the ideas that are swarming in my mind, things are pretty awsome right now. Namely all of these assignments offer intellectual challenges I've been yearning for so long now; Quality management with some of the most brilliant developers I've ever worked with, testing center of excellence handyman activities in super friendly and responsive environment and a pretty sweet exploratory testing gig for even sweeter product...

Plus I'm getting married soon! Exciting times! \o/

But enough about the hype. Topic of today is Nordic Testing Days 2012 roundup, which unfortunately has been delayed due to the before mentioned reasons. I'm tackling these lightning style i.e. a very short summary about the subjects that touched my heart and mind, divided in two days as the conference itself. This lightning style is of course because of the latency, which have made me to forget things. Very familiar situation in software testing too... ;)

So, time to get tackling (click the headlines for presentation material)!

Never stop exploring

Heyhey,

Went hiking today. 10km of ramming through thigh-high snow might not be the ultimate hiking experience for many, but I loved it. Took some photos too. Tried to find something to shoot, tried to get interested, but nothing really caught my eye. Had a pause, took my shoes off and... bingo!

I didn't remember my hiking shoes had this vital piece of motivational text written on them; Never stop exploring! That pretty much culminates the whole idea of what we should do when testing. Wonderful!! \o/

That's all for now. :)

Yours truly,

Sami "I Should Get Myself Some Snowshoes" Söderblom

Exploratory Testing Hands-On - Part III

Heyhey!

In my previous post about Exploratory Testing Hands-On I even more deepened the thought process around ET and introduced some ways of testing that go very well with ET. And now it's time to get down to brass tacks, namely introduce the actual way I manage ET with the help of management tools.

It's quite irrelevant which tools to use, but in almost every assignment I've been in HP Quality Center has been the tool of choice for the organization, and this of course has an influence on my output. In my first post of this series I stated that that many consider QC be the worst thing ever happened to a field of software testing. Of course it's extremely bloated, heavy and cumbersome to use, but even it can be used in lightweight fashion that suits ET. Those complaining that QC cannot be used in ET, don't know how to use it. Period.

Ok, time to stand behind my words then.

Exploratory Testing Hands-On - Part II

Heyhey!

In my previous post about Exploratory Testing Hands-On I wrote about thinking and how I set myself into a certain mental state which helps me to do ET. It grew some discussion and even a vision for business. Nice!

And now it's time to go deeper, namely contemplate some of the actual methods and tricks that are often used when doing ET, even by me. Please however note that - as Cem Kaner and James Bach have said - exploratory testing is more a mindset or a way of thinking about testing than a methodology. So session based testing, pair wise testing, Whittaker's touring analogy, etc. aren't ET per se, but just means that are often useful when doing ET.

So let's get at them then!

Exploratory Testing Hands-On - Part I

Heyhey!

Back in business and I have tons of stuff to write about! But with what should I start? Why not the subject that is dearest to me, namely Exploratory Testing? There are many interpretations of what ET is, different entities have written tons of articles, blog posts and even books what it is and what it is not, gurus are battling it out in seminars... all done to a point of nitpickering. All this just confuses me and I've decided not to bother myself with that nonsense. Of course I still read everything and try to learn about ET, but only to aim for results and become better at it.

So, it's time for my first hands-on blog post. I usually encourage people to think for themselves by not giving them everything to complete what I'm wishing them to complete. I will continue on that path, but now I try to give a bit more; I try to give a real life example of how I do Exploratory Testing AND with a system that many consider to be the worst thing ever happened to a field of software testing; That is of course HP Quality Center.

We Like To Think

Hey hey!

Ok, my original start could have caused unnecessary trouble, in the worst case gotten me to lose my job so I have to keep my openness in check. It was just a whine about how good people are kept from being good testers. With some flavour of course... :)

Even now in this assignment I'm surrounded by very smart people, capable of doing great things, but incapacitated by all the waste. And I hope I could help them as Michael Bolton (not the singer!) helped me in his Rapid Software Testing (RST) course...

And that, ladies and gentlement, is our wobbly donkey bridge to today's topic: heuristics!

The World Divided

Hi,

So. As I promised, here's some more concrete stuff. Not rock solid, but at least something to hold and hug. I'll write about a subject that has been close to my heart for quite some time; The World Divided. It is of course the war between the people representing the traditional way and the new way of doing testing. Ok, those who do testing in more traditional way might not know the difference, so I'll shine a light to this...

Community Service

Hi,

I've stumbled across a familiar problem. I've started to write about several subjects. I've been writing with pure joy, from the heart, but when it comes to the the actual professional stuff, the boring stuff, the joy stopped. And so did the writing. According to Belbin Team Inventory assessment, I have very strong tendency towards Resource Investigator and Plant, with a hint of other roles, but no Completer/Finisher. Not even a single bit. Ok, Wikipedia puts Completers/Finishers to be quite anal characters, but it see them as people who get things done, which is an admirable quality. And I lack that, dammit!

And there I go again with the jibberjabber! To dodge this issue, instead of sticking with the original plan, starting with the basics of testing, I'll just write about this happening I participated and how it grew thoughts in my mind...