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

Tester 3.0

Heyhey,

Just recently my colleagues presented this idea about Tester 2.0. Tapani Aaltio even gave an interview about the subject in EuroStar TV. Go Tapsa!

In short Tester 2.0 integrates itself more deeply into the SDLC, understands it better and creates more value this way while Tester 1.0 just does it's job, doesn't collaborate, pretty much stays put and tests. On this level I'm all for Tester 2.0, but what worries me the most is that in the dark side of all this lies the will to make us all developers...

So let's talk about Tester 3.0.

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.

Status update

Heyhey!

I'm still here. In an assignment. Not able to... um... think... and... um... write blog. But things are picking up. I'm starting to shift my role from operative to strategic i.e. I start to train/coach, develop processes, support, mentor, be more visible in testing community, social media, etc. and all in all be more than just a battle monkey. A natural shift towards what I love to do.

That means more blog time too, yey! This post is just an update on the things yet to come. I have 34 articles under work, holding about 200 book pages worth of thoughts about testing:

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 Peaceful Retrospective

Hi,

I've been working.

And to work is to not write blog.

With this foreword I'll get to my next subject: retrospective. The word "retrospective" comes from latin word "retrospectare", which means to look back. It is the most important thing in becoming better on what you do. To become an expert one has to reflect experiences to teachings, measure what has been learnt, contemplate what should be kept or avoided and how to proceed to upcoming challenges. That and more is what we do in retrospective mode.

Test Planning - Granularity

Hi,

I received feedback from my previous post and unfortunately there was too much tl;dr. The blog loses it's purpose if no one's reading, so I'll try to write more concisely or if the writing flow takes me, to divide the post into different subposts. And this is one of those.

Test planning as a whole is just too big to be fitted into one post so I just write about one of my favourite portions of it, the granularity. As Wikipedia puts it

"Granularity is the extent to which a system is broken down into small parts, either the system itself or its description or observation."