Book/Reading suggestions ...

Few days ago - a tester friend of mine approached with a request to suggest him for some books to read. I responded him with a small list that on the face of it - looked unlikely for a software tester.

I thought I would share the list with you folks ...

Here is it is 

1. Introduction to General Systems Thinking - Gerald Weinberg

This book introduces the idea of "systems thinking" and To a tester - I think it is most important to know and engage in general systems thinking as we engage in solving problems.

2. Surely You're Joking Mr. Feynman by Ralph Leighton and others

Richard Feynman is hero of testers in my opinion. This nobel prize winning American physicist lived life of a curious child all his life exploring  the world and never turned away from learning new things. He questioned things around him like a true tester. The encounters described in this book by him explain what it means to be a curious thinker. Although he openly hated philosophy and made fun of philosophers - we can forgive him for the enthusiasm he showed and examples he left through his life to demonstrate a human's thrust for knowledge and learning.

You can see his interview that he gave for horizon BBC "Fun to imagine" - look up in youtube.

3. Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell - This is not a book for testers in direct sense but a fascinating book that illustrates systems thinking that Jerry's book (as indicated above #1). This is one book that read from start to end. Each chapter is illustration of how to look at information that is publicly available and create a whole new interpretation of it.

Other books from same author that are worth reading are - "Tipping Point", "What the dog saw", "Turning point (this is a science book).

4. God Particle by Leon Lederman

This is again not a testing book - not a systems thinking book not a book about software. It is about amazing journey of science of understanding building blocks of our universe. I liked the narration of how to express and articulate heavy scientific stuff through metaphors and examples so that even a 7th grader can understand. What this has to do with testing ? Understanding tough subject and explaining in easy language - something that tester do all the time - find tough bugs and demystify them for our stakeholders including developers.

4. "How to think about science" - A CBC series of 14 interviews with scientists, philosophers, Writers - about emerging form of science. If we reckon testing as multidisciplinary - Look no beyond this. Download the series of interviews (mp3) and listen/absorb. These interviews left a long lasting impression on me about how think about an intellectual pursuit like science or software development or testing.

Shrini

Making a food item vs Solving a Puzzle - An attempt to characterize Testing Mindset

A Disclaimer: I am going to make some sweeping generalizations about how testers and developers (generic name including programmers, designers and business analysts) think and work. This is an attempt to characterize a /typical/ testing (or tester) mindset - a set of dominant thinking patterns, attitudes, biases, choices and behaviors.

I was reading out a bedtime story to my 9 year old daughter - I was holding a book of "Akbar-Birbal" stories. In one story - King Akbar asks Birbal, narrating how typically "giving" works. Under what circumstances - giver's hand is at bottom and receiver's hand is at the top - was Akbar's Puzzle. Under normal circumstances - giver's hand would be at top and reciever's hand below that of givers. How do you solve this puzzle? What goes on in your mind when you encounter stuff like this?

This got me into thinking how in general solving such puzzles/riddles work. When you start solving puzzles like the one above - your mind would be like water gushing out of a pipe - divergent thinking. You need to work towards solving the puzzle from definition of the problem out into vast open exploration.

Different types of puzzle require different approaches to solution - in some cases you know the answer and in some other cases you don't.

1. Math problem - Solve a simultaneous algebraic equation or solve a differential equation
2. Solve Sudoku
3. Play Chess - from initial state to win.
4. Play Scramble - how many words you can make from sets of jumbled letters?

Contrast solving puzzles to say cooking (or making) a food item from a recipe or with someone's help. Here you have more or less definitive, probably seen previously end state when you know you are done. You work with mostly known steps or incremental activities from start to end. In other words you do convergent thinking. Many acts of "construction" go from some known set of conditions and some known end state - you go from say "requirements" to "working software"

Contrast that to a testing problem or solving a riddle.

Extending these two activities - cooking a food item and solving a puzzle - I think former describes how developers work/think where as later characterizes typical testers way of thinking.

What do you think?

Support Keith - Find answers for questions about ISTQB and more....

Keith Klain is stirring the world of testing through some smart and witty comments about testing on twitter. I enjoyed his discussions with Rex Black and others related to ISTQB and other topics that are close the hearts of testers - especially context driven ones.

Here is what makes Keith a special mention - he is a Business/Technology leader (not a consultant) of a Bank and heads a software testing group. Unlike other testing leader, he talks more like a practitioner who does testing day in out (not someone manages someone who manages a team few of which are testers). It is a quite welcome change in the world of business leaders we see around.

Two things I want to bring to your attention about what Keith is doing.

1. Watch him debate with others on twitter and notice how gets people talking. In one of the tweet discussing about testing and confidence with Rex Black, Michael Bolton and others - Keith says (paraphrase) "For a change let us change our positions - how about you (Rex Black) arguing in favour of us (testing does not build confidence) !!!!

In a debate - can you take a stand that is totally opposite to what you have believed all in your life and see the world from that angle ? Confirmation Bias - No 1 Enemy for testers or that matter any intellectual - can be beaten by hanging around with folks that think differently. Well said Keith !!!!

2. Sign the petition that Keith has setup questioning some basic ideas about how ISTQB goes about doing its ("Non profitable") business. First of all read the petition and see if it makes sense - if does - please sign up.

Follow Keith (@KeithKlain) on twitter and watch out interesting debates he kicks off ...

Shrini

Should Automation that runs slower than human test execution speed - be dumped?

I am working on a piece of automation using java and some commercial tool to drive a test scenario on AN iPad App. This scenario involved entering multiple pages of information and hundreds of fields of data. This automation script runs this scenario for say 1 hr where as a tester that exercises same scenario on the app “manually” - claims that it takes only about 30 minutes.

I was asked – if automation script runs slower than human test execution (however dumb) – what is the use of this automation?  What do you think? 

Here are my ideas around this situation/challenge:

Mobile Automation might not ALWAYS run faster than human test execution -

Many of us in IT, have this QTP-Winrunner way of seeing testing as bunch of keyboard strokes and mouse clicks and automation is a film that runs like a dream at super fast speed.  GUI automation tools that drive Windows desktop application GUI or Web GUI have consistently demonstrated that it is always possible to run sequence of keyboard and mouse click events at higher speed than human.  Enter mobile world – we have 3-4 dominant platforms – Andriod, iOS, Blackberry and Windows Mobile. GUI Automation when enters the world of mobile – mainly runs on some windows desktop that communicates with app (native or web) on the phone that is connected to the desktop through, say USB port.  The familiar paradigm of all automation and AUT running on the same machine/hardware breaks down and so would be our expectations on speed of test execution. iOS platform specifically (in non-jail broken mode) presents several challenges for automation tool while android is programmer friendly. As technology around automation tools on mobile devices and associated platforms (desktop and mobile), evolves – we need to be willing to let go some of our strongly held beliefs of GUI automation that happens on web and windows desktop applications.

Man vs. Machine – items that might make machine/program slow

When you see a button on the screen – you know it is there and you touch it (similar to click on non touch phones) – as a human tester you can regulate the speed of your response depending upon how app is responding. Thus, sync with app, checking if the right object is the view and operate the object – all of this happens very natural to human. When it comes to automation tools (mobile tools especially) – all of this has to be programmatically controlled. We would have function calls like “WaitForObject” and some “Wait” calls to sync the speed of automation with speed of app responses. The whole programmatic control of slowing down or speeding up of the automation in relation with app response and checks to make sure automation does not throw exceptions – many times automation programmers need to favor robust but slower automation code that is almost guaranteed to run against all app speeds. This is one of several reasons why automation might run slower than human execution. You might ask how do likes of QTP handle this situation – even tools like of QTP need to deal with these issues. Given the state of technology – the problem is somewhat acute in mobile automation space.

Imagine long, large and highly repeated testing cycles – a human tester would lose out on 2^nd or 3^rd iteration due to fatigue and boredom. Consider current case of multipage and entering 100’s fields – how long do you think a human tester can focus on doing the data entry.  Here is where our “tortoise” (slow but steady) automation still adds value. This slow program does not mind working 100 times over and again with different data combinations – frees up human tester time and effort for you.

Remember – automation and skilled human tester both have their inherent positives and shortcomings. A clever test strategy would combine (mix and match) human and automation modes of exercising tests to get maximum output – information about issues, bugs and how value of the product be threatened.

Also note - A good manual test cannot be automated – if you claim that you could automated one,then it could not have been a  good manual test.

If automation runs unattended well – why bother about execution time?

Many of us are used to sitting for hours staring at automation running to see if it works, pass or fails. If fails – check, correct and rerun. If automation is robust and runs unattended – why have someone looking at screen – watching automation running. Why not run it at non working hours? Why not schedule it to run at certain time. This will free up human resources that can be deployed at other areas requiring focused human testing. Isn’t this a value provided by a slow running automation – free up human testers? A well designed but slow running automation can still justify investment as it can run without bothering you.

How you can get best out of slow running automation?

• Optimize automation to see if speed can be improved – remove sync/waits, “object exists” checks (not compromising on robustness of automation)
• Identify bottlenecks in tool and fix them
• Identify environmental and data related slowness in automation and fix them
• Schedule automation at non working hours and save human effort

Have you come across automation that runs slower than human test execution speed? What did you do with automation? Dumped it? Want to hear about your experiences

Where do you stand in this debate?

Inspired by Elisabeth Hendrikson's blog post 

[Updated 25th Jan 2013]
I am disappointed to see no responses to this post. While I expected some responses in agreeing or disagreeing. Whenever I see such condition where my post does not get any comments - I think of following possibilities (thanks to Michael Bolton)

1. The post is not very engaging - there is way too much information there. Everyone and every thing is seeking attention. This post simply failed to get any
2. Its dumb idea - completely useless
3. Post is simply a question which either is too simple to answer (so no one would like to feel insulted by answering) or something deep and intriguing (why bother answering)
4. Why Author is not saying anything? Trick to get some free survey done for some homework?
5. No comments

I will attempt to expand on this topic sometime in the future. This situation made me to learn something - no comments - will make you think.

Dear readers - thanks for not commenting and teaching me something.

Shrini

A bizarre idea called "Software testing factory"

"Persistence in the face of a skeptical authority figure is priceless" - Seth Godin

Paul Holland (twitter handle @PaulHolland_TWN) shared this amazing video of Seth Godin on education systems. As I listened to Mr Godin talking about how present system of schools evolved from schools churning about labors for factories. Alas - even in our software testing "industry", we still need laborers as testers and companies take pride in setting up software testing factories. This post is about how bad and dangerous is the idea of "software testing factory"

According to Godin, about 100-150 years ago - schools used to be for a different purpose. He says - large-scale education was not developed to motivate kids or to create scholars. It was invented to churn out adults who worked well within the system. Scale was more important than quality, just as it was for most industrialists. A day in school started with "good morning" represented the notion of respect and obedience that was injected into students as a virtue. School was about teaching compliance, fitting in for the students into larger social context when pass out. Schools, according to Godin were established as public education to produce people who could work in factories - create set of people who can comply, fit-in and follow the orders of the supervisor.  

Emerging industrialization brought the focus on profitable factories - Godin points out. Factory owners thought "there aren't enough people, if we get more, we can pay them less - if we can pay less we can make more profits. When we put kids into factory that is called as school - we indoctrinate them into compliance.  Godin points out another key feature of factories - idea of interchangeable parts - when translated to schools - it meant producing people who are replaceable just as "standard part" of a machine.  When it comes to work - if you do more - there is always "ask" for little more. This is because - we are products of industrial age. The term productivity was brought the center of the things.

Key idea that I was attracted in this talk was about "Factory and how factory worked". I strongly believe that software and software testing work is "knowledge work" in contrast to "factory work". Here, thinking humans, in collaboration with humans assisted by computers create stuff that we call software that has changed and continues to change our life.  Wholesale lifting of idea of factory - thanks to strong association of "quality" to likes of toyota and promotion of idea of  "sick-sigma" (Cem Kaner used this phrase first, I think) - we have indoctrinated software people as factory workers.

I am troubled by this. When I ask people  - "does it what we deal in factory - machines/concrete things vs abstract ideas and machine instructions - matter? Should or is software produced like a machine in assembly line",  I get no clear response. Many simply think since our industry (Software) is immature and nascent - we must learn from engineering disciplines like manufacturing.

I am fine with learning from other disciplines as  I believe software testing is multi disciplinary - we constantly import ideas from multiple fields such as natural sciences, maths and statistics, behavioral economics, neuro sciences, cognitive psychology, philosophy, epistemology and list continues. I am against  wholesale and mind less import of ideas from the areas where we deal with a totally different type of things and we must exercise caution.

Coming back to factory - many IT services companies take pride in saying "we have successfully implemented software testing factory for a client" or "software testing is now commoditized" - what a shame !!! What happens in a software testing factory? There are dozens of "brain dead" people called software test engineers whose job is to produce test cases, bugs, test results, automation code (sorry popular word is "script"), metrics and tones of reports.  The intellectual pursuit of software testing that seeks to discover, investigate and report interesting and strange problems in software that requires - thinking, skeptic and open mind - has been reduced to "mindless" factory work. As a passionate tester, I would never want to associated with this deadly idea.

Am I biased as tester about my profession as some highly complex rocket science? Is my rational mind blocked or misdirected by confirmation bias? I think that is possible. If I am thinking about software testing as a business - like any other business say hotel, garments, manufacturing or engineering hardware - I would love the idea of factories. I would want to maximize my profits per dollar of investment. I would want to train cheap labour - teach them how to write test cases, report bugs and automate test scripts. I would then deploy them in "mass" to a client and charge handsome money in the name of testing. This business apparently works and it is perfectly legal, by and large ethical.

If I imagine myself as a tester in such factories (flip my context from factor owner to a factor worker or a supervisor) - I see a dark future for myself.  Just as factory works are expected to "comply" and follow a set pattern of work - when factor owner does not need me - I don't have any skills that I can trade outside factory. Over a period of brain dead work - I have lost my thinking and questioning mind. Unless I gain skills in becoming factory owner myself (that is a business development and management skill) - I must leave the factory quickly and move to an environment where I can grow my skills as tester  as a thinking individual.

In short - if you are managing software testing as a business - software testing factory is good for you. If you are a software tester working in a software factory - get out of the place fast or change the career to become factory owner or supervisor.

As a  tester in me roares - I wish for "End of compliance as an outcome - it is too boring for a curious, skeptic mind to simply fall in line".

Additional Notes: 

Following are few statements - that I liked that strikes chord with my belief in "software (testing)" as a knowledge work as opposed to factory work

• Why we would not want to have our kids to figure it out and go do something interesting
• Are we asking our kids to "connect dots" or "collect  dots"
• We are good at measuring how many dots we collect - how many boxes are collected, how many facts memorized, 
• we don't not teach kids how to connect the dots. You cannot teach connecting dots in dummies guide, text books. By putting kids in to situations where they can fail, experiment
• Grades are an illusion - passion and insight are realities
• Your work is more imp than your answer in congruence to answer key
• "Fitting in" is a short term strategy to go no where.

Do not forget to read this pdf "stop stealing dreams" by Seth Godin.

Divisions in Testing, Slotting People - How bad is idea of schools?

This post is an offshoot of discussion with friends Rahul Verma and Vipul Kochar on twitter. It started off from a blog post from Rahul on "exploratory testing" - one approach to testing that many in context driven testing community are working hard to be be good at.  When Vipul joined the debate - to me, two key things stood out as following "long" tweet of viper suggests - http://www.twitlonger.com/show/jm95dm

" ...classification, definitions are good. When one starts to use them to divide and slot people, it becomes counter-productive."

Vipul followed up with a detailed post here

Divisions amongst people

Take for example - the idea of schools in software testing by Bret Pettichord.

Rahul wrote a good summary and analysis of schools of testing way back in 2007.  Rahul's main complaint was schools concept divides people.  My view is different. To me, idea of schools has been very helpful to identify myself and my approach to testing distinct from others I see around. It helped me to develop my skills in the framework of context driven testing school. I think, testing as a multidisciplinary field was (will always be) divided. It is just that few refused to recognize the differences. Still worse, some insisted that their's is some sort of universally agreed way of doing testing.

What Bret did is phenomenal but at the core he simply named the groups/schools that he saw. In other words - schools of testing idea did not divide people - it gave "names" to different sets of practices "using" the name of testing. Having names to things arounds us helps to talk about the things, debate about them, understand them and improve them. That is exactly what Bret's idea of schools - did to some of us.

If you disagree with idea of schools - you might be saying one of these

"There is one universal way of doing testing hence idea of schools is absurd"

"I do not agree with Bret's classification - here is mine"

"I refuse the idea that there are patterns in testing that are distinct"

So - it would be not be correct to put the blame on idea of schools in testing to "division" in our industry - divisions always existed, we now have one model in which these differences can be named. I also argued with Rahul that "divisions" are good for our craft - they work like having multiple political parties in a democratic setup. With divisions we can have multiple, diverse ideas to co-exist. I am in favor of division in testing community as we need diverse mindsets, ideas and philosophies each offering solution to unique situations.

Vipul's post on "religions" and his apparent suggestion on being like "water" - indeed is a support of view of "divisions" are good.  If there are differences and divisions - cherish in diversity instead of trying to bring unification.

Slotting people, calling people by names

As strong supporter of schools concept - what I condemn is slotting people where they don't want to belong or identify with. There are factory or analytical school practices not factory or analytical school testers. Likewise there is Agile Testing (some form of testing that happens in Agile projects) but there are no Agile testers. There is exploratory testing and testers can chose to be good at it - but when they master it - they don't become exploratory testers - but testers with mastery over the approach of exploratory testing.

When people get slotted in groups/labels (for example if we call someone as factory tester) - for few it sounds "offensive". Personally, I am proud to be context driven tester. I don't have problems of me getting slotted in a category that Bret proposed. But that is me only speaking. By speaking of me as a context driven tester - I will let others know my testing philosophy and to some extent help others what to expect from me. This label for me is helpful to identify my approach and grow it in a framework driven by the principles of my school. 

Vipul approaches this from a different direction - he talks about dangers and obsession of belonging to a school (akin to type of fundamentalism that we see in religion). He says "Test matters and the test result matters not the division" - Well - I say - how does one test? what principles and values one approach the act of testing? The values, beliefs and approaches that one uses in testing define what Bret called as school. These elements of school are not independent and separate parts of a testers life and work. When we become conscious of them - we can work to improve them,  add few, modify few and delete few. How can one chase objectives and goals of testing without having a value system of individual about testing? If you think young testers struggle to define terms like of GUI testing or agile testing etc or struggle to belong or not belong to any school - it is sign of they trying to find their value system.

While a person can be FREE thinking person to choose and adapt - I can always see in the person - a subtle value and belief system about world, work (testing) - a view. Even choices of Free thinker are subtly guided by these values and beliefs. Instead of trying to deny the existence of these values and beliefs (in involuntary pretext of freedom to chose and adapt) - I urge likes of Vipul and Rahul to explore to find these subtle values that drive them. Bret's idea of schools and influences of James Bach, Cem Kaner and Michael Bolton - personally helped me to find my values or to be precise - they shaped up my fluidic and rather vaguely defined testing philosophies, values and beliefs.

I am proud to stand up as a context driven tester - I can talk about my values and beliefs about testing. While I do this - one thing that these great teachers (James, Cem, Michael) taught me is - not to get biased by one unilateral thinking. I constantly question my beliefs and values - I try to hang around with people who think and work differently than me. I train to be critical and rational thinker - constantly look to beat "confirmation bias".

I am reminded of this famous quote of Bertand Russel "Do not absolutely be certain of anything" - So…as a tester - I keep doubting my own ideas and that of others - that keeps me learning.

Shrini

How different Software Industry segments see Testing ...

Consider these views expressed by few real people about testing - cutting across the software industry segments. You (a tester) might be surprised by few of these comments - but take it from me - these reflect true state of how stakeholders see testing as.

A manager from a Software Product Company : "We follow Agile model - every team member in the team is responsible for quality and will do a bit about testing. We believe in Agile practices like test driven development, continuous integration, automated unit testing - our code is naturally comes out with good quality. We do not employ any "plain vanilla" black box testers. That is waste of our time. We would get all our testing done by developers mostly or in some cases - testers cover the rest through automated testing. We dont have anything called "testing" phase in our process. We hire testers that are capable of writing production level code - as most of their time will be spent in writing unit tests and automation to help developers.

A manager from IT/Captive Unit : "We believe in providing agility and value to our customers. Testing is one small bit in that whole process. We don't actually worry about how testing is done as long as it aligns to our business purpose. Bulk of testing that happens is done by our partners. We constantly seek to commoditize testing and aggressively deskill so that - we can gain the cost efficiencies in testing. More than testing skills - we value business domain skills. Testers eventually either become managers (and manage customers, IT services deliver/management and other stakeholders) or become business analysts.

A manager/consultant from IT services Industry: Testing is all about assuring quality and process improvement. We constantly develop tools and frameworks to help our customers to do testing efficiently and cheaply. We provide value driven testing services based our process maturity and experience in setting up large scale test factories. Our number 1 aim  is to reduce cost of quality - we do it by focussing in tools, processes and domain skills.

A consultant from Software Tools Company: Testing is an essential part of SDLC that can gain significantly from Tools - Automation tools. Usage of Automation aggressively can help reduce cost of testing. Software Testing tools help in implementing Software Test factory so that non technical and business users can use them and achieve faster cycle time and enhanced quality. Not to forget our strength in terms of Six Sigma, CMMi and other Software Quality models. We endorse software quality management through rigorous metrics and quantitative measures.

Now - dear tester - identify yourself where are you working and how are you improving skills in testing to suite the industry segment you work now or hope to work in the future. Does this sound similar to the view of testing that you read in text books or conferences ? Did you know software industry sees testing in such variety of perspectives?

Shrini

A brief introduction of Test Automation...

I was asked by a blog reader to give a quick introduction of how automation helps in testing. Here is how I replied. I thought this might kick off some interesting off shoots...

"Certain portions of testing such data validation etc can be efficiently verified by automation programs than humans in repeated way (humans make mistakes and often are terrible at repeated executions). By carefully identifying portions of application under test that could be "safely" checked (validated) by automation - you can speed up testing (you can run many test cases in parallel, in the night etc) through automation. 

But beware - automation is a dumb and (humble?) servant - will do exactly what you ask it to do million times without cribbing - it does not have intelligence. A good tester can recognize something that is not in test script and looks like a problem. Automation cannot do this."

Do you like it?

One offshoot I am reminded of when wrote this piece - Automation is like people trying to losing weight. It requires patience, discipline and dedication. There are many quacks that operate in both automation and "weight loss" industry that promise "over-night" benefits.

If you are aware of how weight loss works or does not work - you can safely extend the analogy to benefits of automation.

Do not expect your testing or your application to become slim and trim with automation - overnight and most importantly - do not expect it remain so with no investment on ongoing basis. The later part - neither automation consultants (especially those who sell tools) nor those folks that run weight-loss industry - will tell you.

Shrini