Jul 07

We Don’t Break Things – They’re Already Broken

Fellow Software Tester and President of the Association for Software Testing, Ben Yaroch posted a tweet earlier today (which I later re-tweeted) that highlighted something I’ve encountered a few times in my career – you can view his tweet here.

The content of the tweet and the picture that goes with it say it all.  This misconception, this misbelief, this misunderstanding – illustrated in the photo,  is something I’ve seen many professionals, some of whom are highly respected within the scope of the project requiring testing support, unknowingly fall victim too.

The Software Testing group (or QA group as it’s called in many companies) are not breaking the software we’re asked to test – us skilled testers (and I can’t speak for all of us) are discovering things in the software that we are assigned to test (often using specific skills relevant to testing such as heuristics) to help discover and identify problems in the software.

Now what happens, and what we Software Testers do once we’ve discovered things about the software – information about the quality of the software, can vary depending on the company, and even different projects within the same company.  What I mean by this is that at certain companies or projects, the Software Testers may have to spend a great deal of time and effort advocating for what we’ve discovered.  At other companies & projects the Software Testers may need to identify whom the “correct” stakeholders are, before these important pieces of information can eve be presented to them. Now the last statement can veer into at least two different posts, but for this post I’d like to remain on topic and to remind, or bring to the attention of stakeholders & active members of a given project (and those looking to learn more about me) that the goal, purpose and mission (yes this is a broad mission/statement) of testing is to find & provide information about the software – including things that are already broken that we discover while testing. Despite what people may believe, or have been led to believe … No, we don’t break things – they’re already broken.

 

 

May 31

My Recent Visit to a SQDG event in Calgary

I was recently in Calgary for a work related kick-off project.  Each day was filled with work related activities and each evening I found myself exploring the city with a great team member (also a Software Tester) of mine.  During my final evening in Calgary, I was able to attend the SQDG’s event on May 14.

I met one or two Software Testers whom I had previously met and was able to catch up and chat with them. I also met a lot of new, interested, and passionate Testers from Calgary. It was great being around these types of testers, great conversations, and awesome energy filled the location we gathered at.  From what I understand, the format for this particular event, titled Speed Geeking was slightly different than the format of most SQDG events.

We spent the first 30 minutes or so chatting amongst ourselves in an open, non-formal manner. I was introduced to many new faces, had some great conversations about testing and met some great individuals from PQA.  We then split into different groups (randomly assembled) and brainstormed our ideas and answers to a series of questions. We were free to move from one group to another for different questions which bought forth different views and perspectives and helped kick-off different types of discussions, different answers and people’s reasoning for them, often based on their own personal experiences.

I found it to be a good, fun, and engaging atmosphere to talk testing with Software Testers and those involved with the craft in some form.  If I am ever in Calgary at the same time as an another SQDG event, I’ll be sure to attend again.

Mar 27

Good News From Afar

A few weeks ago I received an email from a Business Analyst with whom I worked with on a project at a former workplace (which I left to pursue another opportunity).  He informed me that he and a few other BA’s at the company had been recounting some of the best Testers that had worked at the company and that my name had come up (it’s always nice to be mentioned in good company).

He went on to inform me that a portion of a particular project on which I worked (I was the Software Tester for that portion), along with him and a few other individuals was one that turned out to be very successful – the application (as well as the portion of it that I tested) was running smoothly in the production environment and the application users were very happy with it.

I kindly thanked him for sharing the good news, and told him that everybody’s contribution to the project is what made it successful and that it was important to keep that in mind, as quality is everybody’s responsibility.  My job, and responsibility as the Software Tester, was to test application as I did, and find good, valuable information about the quality of the application just as I did, so that the business stakeholders were able to use the information that I discovered and use it to make good business decisions about the application.

Happy to hear things have gone well so far.

Jan 27

MOIIST2014

Two weekends ago the first ever MOIIST (MOntreal Insights Into Software Testing) peer conference & workshop took place in my hometown of Montreal, Canada.  Based on the energy in the room, my observations, and the passionate & positive feedback I received from the participants – I’m happy to say that it was a success!

Rob Sabourin, Stephanie Ripeau, and myself worked together to help organize the workshop, getting together throughout the year to help put the bits and pieces together.  I put in a good amount of time and effort (as did Rob and Stephanie) and we really had an interest in not only seeing the workshop take place, but having the workshop generate interest and attract intelligent, passionate Software Testers – which I’m happy to say it did!

A few of us got together on the eve of the workshop (Friday evening) to chat and have a bite. It was nice to meet some new Tester’s whom I’ve never met before, as well as catch up and chat with the Testers I had met before.

The official workshop took place Saturday and Sunday.  MOIIST2014 was facilitated (as will future iterations ) in the style of LAWST workshops.  We had Scott Barber join us from Florida to help facilitate the workshop. Now if you’ve never seen Scott facilitate, or been in a room with Scott facilitating, I’ll say this – he’s an awesome facilitator!  There were 12 of us in the room who took part in the workshop.  We had participants join us from out of town (Calgary and Portland, plus Scott from Florida) as well as participants from in and around the Montreal area. It was also great to have my team members (from Calgary) Nancy Kelln and Lona Vanberg attend and participate, as well as for their support!

I was the second to present on Saturday.  My story was that of my collaboration with the R&D team (a team that I worked with a few years ago).  Now I have presented before, at lunch & learn sessions, at tutorials, even in school but it was my first presentation at a Software Testing workshop.  It went well, I was confident up there. I knew the theme of the conference, was well aware of the focusing questions and geared my story towards the confines of those focusing questions.  I was happy to have some of the participants approach me after my presentation and tell me that they enjoyed hearing my story and could appreciate all the effort put forth, and how I went about collaborating with my team members on the R&D team. It was great to have that type of feedback from peers, and I really did (and still do) appreciate it. After my presentation, I knew ways I wanted to improve it, and also how I wanted to improve my presentation skills overall. In addition to my self realizations, Rob was kind enough to give me a few additional suggestions over breakfast the following day.

The energy in the room was great both days, with everybody participating, asking questions, creating discussions. We went out to lunch together, a few of us went to dinner together where we continued offline testing discussions. Every collaboration story was different (some had a few similarities but in different contexts), and we each focused on collaboration skills that we got out of each person’s story.  There were a few group exercises where we split up into groups which was fun and at the same time turned out to be a great learning experience. I find that great learning often happens when working with intelligent, thinking Software Testers in the type of group exercises that Rob had us work on.  I’m also happy having had the chance to talk to and hang out with Scott over the course of the 3 days.  I have been following Scott’s work and learning from it for many years now. I met Scott before at CAST2013 where we spoke briefly, but it was awesome to spend more time chatting, joking around, and talking about serious testing topics with Scott this time around.  He was also kind enough to offer me some great insights before we finished up for the day on Sunday evening, which I greatly appreciate.

So what’s next? We had some great feedback at the end of the workshop from all of the participants with a lot of interest in the next one. I’ve had some of the participants offer their help in setting up the next one. I’ve received some other emails on how we can publicize our group more, to a wider audience.  The interest is evident, as is the passion of the Testers who are interested in helping building a community of smart, thinking, skilled, passionate Software Testers.  I’d like to thank everybody that helped out with and participated in the first ever MOIIST workshop!

Stay tuned for more information for MOIIST2015!

 

 

Nov 28

Montreal Insights Into Software Testing

I’ve been working with Rob Sabourin (whom I consider a friend, mentor, and a great mind in Software Engineering) and Stephanie R. to organize a Software Testing peer conference and workshop called MOIIST (which stands for MOntreal Insights Into Software Testing) in Montreal, Canada.  We’ve been working together and collaborating since early this year – in person over lunches, via phone, and Skype. This will be the first MOIIST peer conference & workshop and this year’s them is Collaboration.  More information can be found on the MOIIST website.

There will be presenters from Montreal as well as presenters from out of town.  I’ve seen the accepted submissions and the collaboration topics look interesting. I’m looking forward to all of the presentations especially those that caught my attention because I am interested in learning more about those specific topics and the presenter’s experience report about it.

I am looking forward to the presentations, the questions, the learning, all the testing discussions & conversations, meeting passionate like-minded software testing professionals and everything else that comes with a conference with passionate, intelligent software testers!  MOIIST will be held in January – it will likely be cold, there will likely be snow, there will likely be a windchill factor making it even more cold. Good thing we’ll have the option of plenty of great food choices to keep us warm!  Oh yes – I will be presenting as well.

Stay tuned for more.

Apr 25

A Day Full of Errors & Crashes

Yesterday was an extremely productive day for me – I got a lot done. A lot of work involving a lot of effort, considerable time and a good amount of thinking (most of the things I put my energy and effort towards require thinking).  It was a good day in terms of productivity.  I also encountered a lot of errors & crashes – but I wasn’t testing.

Now let me explain – as a Software Tester I encounter (and generate) a lot of errors, crashes, undesirable/inconsistent/unpredictable behaviours during my investigation of an application.  The errors & crashes I encountered yesterday happened while I wasn’t testing.  They happend while I was using different software applications to complete or perform some tasks – this type of thing isn’t rare for me. What is rare is that the errors & crashes I encountered yesterday happened while I was using different software applications to complete or perform tasks on all 3 of my devices.

A software application I had been using on my laptop as a project and test management tool generated an error and crashed 3 different times – first generating an error message and then ending abruptly seconds later. The error message generated was displayed on the screen for barely a second – I had no time to even read a word it said.  The first time it happend the processes “crippled” my entire machine and I had to restart it.

A few hours later after I had completed my “priority tasks” for the day, I was in relaxation mode. I thought I’d search for an action movie to rent or possibly purchase on my tablet. For some reason every time I filtered the movie selection by action movies the app would crash on my tablet.  After 3 times I gave up – wasn’t my night to watch a movie.

A few hours after that I wasn’t asleep as I should’ve been (I guess the 80km/h winds outside had something to do with it) I decided to reactivate the iMessage service on my phone. I had turned it off earlier in the day for a particular reason.  I was prompted to entered my password to activate it and for some reason I just wasn’t able to activate it. After a few tries (I think it was about 3) I decided to give up and leave it alone until the following morning.  This morning I entered the password once and I was able to reactivate it within seconds.

I guess there will be days like that – I just didn’t foresee it happening while I wasn’t officially testing, and on all 3 devices.