Questioning The Premise Of Testing

Hi all,

I'll go straight to business. Not long did the 2016 last before another round of questioning testing started. This time however it was started by someone who I thought to be knowledgeable about the premise of testing and the relevance of it. Here's the tweet:

I fail to understand the purpose of this kind of tweet, but at least it stirred some thoughts.

"So you think you can test?"

Heyhey, the bear has awaken!

It's been too long and I don't want to bore you with stories about diapers and work, even though they are plentiful. Well, something about work. This is a testing blog and I'm a tester after all.

Two things ignited my resolve to write something for your pleasure, dear reader. Firstly, Eeva Pursula gave me an inspiration with her blog. Secondly, I read Simon Knight's Linkedin article about challenging interview questions for people in testing and QA and felt like saying something more than what would fit into a comment field. Don't get me wrong: There was nothing wrong in Simon's article, but one of the replies caught my attention...

From space to happiness

Dear simians,

Many have wondered what's going in my life. I haven't been blogging and even my Twitter and Facebook feeds have been quieter than usual. Well, I've been a bit busy. The best year of my life is closing to its end and I wanted to finally recap what really has happened. So fasten your seatbelts, people. It's going to be a wild ride. :)

It all started on January. Well, the year usually does. The momentum that separated me from Sogeti Finland. I have my personal and professional values, and while they have usually fitted wonderfully into surrounding environments, they never quite fitted into Sogeti. I tried. I really tried. At times I even questioned my integrity while trying to adapt to the world of Sogeti, but ultimately I started separating myself mentally from it. And finally, after four years of trying, also physically.

Some have said that I should've stayed, because Sogeti can be changed only from within. I agree, but I believe the majority: I've appeared much happier after leaving. And I actually AM much happier now. One of the reasons might however be that I'm a father now...

It's ok to be wrong

Heyhey!

I had an interesting chat with my wife just a moment ago about whether the school kills creativity or not. The discussion was a bit biased because a lot of her professional success is because of her education while I find only little or no connection between my professional success and my education. Ultimately the situation passed the threshold of me writing a blog post about it.

Cynefin

Heyhey!

Belgium Testing Days 2014 took place a couple of months ago. Again, it was a heart-warming experience filled with good times among the best in our industry. Lots of old friends, some new ones and loads of knowledge shared. I think it's safe to say that I loved every second of my stay in beautiful Brugge.

One of the absolute highlights was Lisa Crispin's workshop about changing testing mindset. There's too much to recap from that workshop so I'll just concentrate to one of the subjects that has become increasingly popular among my colleagues, especially in Agile and Lean circles: namely Cynefin.

RIMGEA

Heyhey!

Last November I took the BBST Bug Advocacy course and even though it was quite a lot more demanding than Foundations, somehow I managed to pull it off. Unfortunately I don't have the time to write full recap of it. Instead I'll concentrate to one of the best mnemonics since SFDIPOT, namely RIMGEA.

Bugs are an integral part of testers' work and the information we produce, and RIMGEA is a kick-ass heuristic of how to communicate bug related information to stakeholders. It's copyrighted by Cem Kaner and dissected as follows:

• Replicate it
• Isolate it
• Maximize it
• Generalize it
• Externalize it
• And say it cleary and dispassionately

There are some blog posts about this subject, but I wanted to present my take on it. So let's get to it then.

Christmas arithmetics

Ho-ho-ho!

Christmas is almost here and I'm feeling all Christmasy! People start to wind down, christmas lights spread calm ambience, the smell of hyacinths and swastika pastries fill the air... This is my 36th Christmas and I'm still getting my kicks out of it. I love joining with my friends and family, talking with them in peace, having nice meals with them, enjoying few cold ones in sauna with them, and ultimately just being with them longer than just the short weekend. It's safe to say I love Christmas.

One imporant part of this social event are the presents. I love giving them to those I care about, and of course I love receiving them at least as much. The anticipation before receiving them and the joy of opening them is something that brings me back into childhood. The theme of my presents may have changed (except for the Star Wars part), but the childish joy is still there. If you pay attention you might catch some real emotions, perhaps a tiny giggle too when I'm opening presents. That's rare in a Finn. Catch that s**t and put it in a bottle. ;)

Christmas presents lead us to our topic of the day: Christmas arithmetics.

FIT(Q)CODES

Heyhey!

I've been designing my new heuristic test strategy model. Mary Gorman's keynote in Agile Testing Days 2013 gave me some ideas on how to develop the viewpoint on product elements. For a long time I've been using James Bach's SFDIPOT and it has served me wonderfully, but I think I need to try something different. I need to evolve.

It's time for FIT(Q)CODES!!

Agile Testing Days 2013 highlights

Heyhey!

Agile Testing Days 2013 ended a week ago. I have some time between BBST Bug Advocacy assignments so let's get to recap before I forget what I experienced in this wonderful conference. So much awesomeness happened that I'll have to sample a bit.

Let's get to it then!

The Tao of Testing

Heyhey!

Yin and Yang, the symbol of Taoism

For some time now I have had a constantly growing interest in Taoism. Don't get me wrong; I'm not in it for religious reasons. It's not about higher powers or entities that should be followed or even worshipped. It's just something that resonates with the values that I have and the way I see the world. In work, freetime, jujutsu, etc. I constantly see connections and analogies to Taoism.

How Taoism turns into testing is a fascinating mind game. Let's play some of that, shall we... ;)

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... :)

Harder or smarter?

Heyhey!

We Finns are a nation of hard workers. Since childhood we've been taught that it's the hard work that pays off. Our Lutheran heritage, wartime hardships and long periods of darkness are just a number of reasons why we think through is the only way "past the grey rock" (Finnish saying).

The problem is that we're no longer grinding ship axles, cutting wood or even building mobile phones. It's not about muscle and punch clocks anymore. It's about brain and around the clock now.

If we fail to understand this, we'll work ourselves to death.

Refining history

Heyhey!

I love Hannibal TV series. It's something you don't want to watch while in delicate mental state or eating, but other than that I think it's finally something that meets the level of quality that the legacy of Hannibal Lecter deserves and raises the bar (almost) to the height where it was after Silence of the Lambs.

Speaking of quality, in one the latest episodes of Hannibal Dr. Lecter stated: "It's the distinction that adds an expectation of quality." This is something that attracted my attention to the extent of writing this blog post.

Test management for Lean extremists

Heyhey!

I get grey hairs with Lean enthusiasts, or better yet extremists. I'm concerned about their obsession to see "waste" everywhere and remove it, "waste" being any goal other than the creation of value for the end customer. Quite often these people target testing activities too. By over-simplifying these activities Lean extremists justify the elimination of them.

Usually they do a half-ass job. So I, or actually Michael Bolton has created a test management process for these poor people.

BBST Foundations 2.0 recap

Heyhey!

So, I hopped to the BBST bandwagon and attended Foundations 2.0 certification program. The four week course was an eye-opening trip I will never forget. And now, few days after finalizing the course, I'd like to reflect on what happened. With the intent of not revealing too much to those who are about to take the course, of course. ;)

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.

Fortune cookie about test cases

Heyhey!

In my desperate quest for releasing blog content I came up with this idea; Fortune cookies that tell words of wisdom, vague prophecies, mystic "truths" and even best practices to those who don't know better.

An omen

The reason why I'm not putting these solely on Twitter is because I want to ponder the meaning of these fortunes, with only just few phrases to keep the mystic vibe on. And of course I want to provoke discussion. Twitter is wonderful medium for releasing fortunes themselves, but for ponderment, discussion and other lenghty activities it's just too limited.

So get your zen and milk ready! It's fortune cookie time!

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... ;)

It's judgment time!

Heyhey!

I came to wonder about oracles in testing. Or more likely got bewildered. You see, I read Cem Kaner's article about this subject and was totally lost when I hit the paragraph "Oracles are Heuristics".

Oracles and heuristics started to blur! I started this post as an attempt to cure my bewilderment via deeper analysis about the article and the thinking behind it, but then shifted to my focus on something much more interesting, namely passing judgment on people.

It's a dangerous path to take, but I took it. Let's see how it went...

Managing Expectations

Heyhey!

I've started several posts, six to be exact, one being a follow-up to my first episode of Building A Tester series, but I cannot complete any of them. My Achilles' Heel.

So I started a new one! :D

It's about an epiphany of what Jon Bach tweeted about the deeper meaning of Pass/Fail testing and how it's tied to one of the three phrases a Sogeti consultant should always remember. It's about promises, wishes and fulfillment their of. It's about managing expectations.