thoughts from the test eye

Once again I have spent the weekend with members of the cream of Swedish testers. This time The Test Eye trio consisting of Henrik Emilsson, Martin Jansson and Rikard Edgren were the hosts.

The theme was Exploratory Testing and Planning and we managed to keep the discussions within that scope most of the scheduled sessions. The informal test talk, music and drinking session from 18.30 to 03.30 encompassed a rich variety of discussions mostly outside that theme. Robert brought a fantastic instrument called the beat box (I think?), Rikard the guitar and the rest of us had guitar picks, maracas and music talent to some degree. The starting act was “The  Spice Song” composed and performed by multi talented philosopher-baker Rikard. Other highlights were “My Sharona” performed by many of us, later followed by interpretations of Cornelis Vreswijk and early in the morning sometime a try at “Bark at the moon”. The barking was considerable but I prefer the original version with Ozzys falsetto. And let us not forget the African freedom and tribal songs performed by the “missionary men”. Music is so much fun! If we ever start a band it will be called the Testicles.

Johan

But let us start with the conference pass. First session was Johan Jonasson from House of Test. He told us of the success he had with two young girls from help desk. I bet that sentence caught your attention! Well it was just as exciting as it sounds – it is all about testing. Jonas’ task was to manage the testing of a consumer product application and the resources he was assigned was two support people. He pointed out that they lacked education in IT and testing but were very motivated. He had too little time in order to prepare any detailed instructions. Test instructions consisted of some form of user stories created by himself and scenarios built by these. They tested together following the instructions and were coached by himself at a couple of meeting each day. They turned out to be great at taking notes and very good at finding problems. In the following open season we concluded that they did not lack education at all. They were used to taking support calls and analysing the caller’s problems so they had both product knowledge and experience on analysing and describing problems in text. Some reflections was that motivation is a very important factor and that less detail control of curios and motivated testers made them perform better. I can think of at least one client that uses support personnel but detailed script that should try the approach with a more exploratory format of working. As first sessions often do, it lasted for almost four hours and the discussions were never once uninteresting.

Tobbe

Number two on the list was myself with an experience report of testing in a loosely controlled and volatile project. Given the role as tester on the project I gradually moved into project management, requirement elicitation at the expense of much less testing than planned. Some of the things I did was to create a product backlog, organise weekly scrum meetings, create an effect map and a status graph. My overarching goal was that we actually deliver something to the customer and whatever needs there were somebody needed to take care of them. Success factors was that I was not only allowed but encouraged to assume new responsibilities by the other project members and that I find it interesting to take on other tasks than testing. The downside was that I had less time testing and, to be honest, less motivation to test. Maybe I would have tested better if I was given full-time on the project but when that was not the case I prioritised other tasks in order to move forward. It should be the testers goal to do whatever is needed to bring the project forward. I see similarities with the Scrum thoughts that we have less specialised roles. We had discussion on whether the artifacts I created was testing or not but the question is if it matters as long as they are important and they get done?

Fredrik

Fredrik Scheja of Sogeti was the next presenter. He told us about his success with an exploratory testing approach on a large system with frequent releases. Every tester assumes responsibility for analysing, test planning and execution of one or more items at a time. One of the dominating discussion in open season was the fact that he claimed that he built this approach on TMAP. Since most of the participants claim to be members of the context-driven school this is quite a daring statement to make at a peer conference. TMAP is clearly factory school which is the opposite of the context-driven approach. While I think none of us doubt the success of the work process used, many of us claim that it is not really TMAP-based just because you pick some parts that you find usable and then tweek them to fit what you really want to do. I think it was Johan that used the metaphor “Picking very few raisins out of a very large cake”. James Bach tweeted that “If you take a nice cake and drop it in a mud puddle, don´t bother with the raisins”.  Henke Andersson attacked the claim that the 12 step checklist for test planning really was the best to use for all planning in all situations and wanted to see a local adaption for the project that was very unTMAP(is there such a word, well now there is!). The discussion continued for another hour on Sunday morning for all of us except Ola Hyltén that by mistake(?) forgot to set his alarm when he went to bed already at 3.30. We thank you Ola for giving us an opportunity to make fun of you J

Lightning Talks and Conference plans

Last session Saturday was a number of lightning talks that were entertaining but to be honest I don´t remember much of the ten five minute talks. If someone else has a record or want to say something about them – be my guest. I do remember the last one where Henke told me to remind the group of our idea to arrange a context-driven conference in Sweden within the next year. All said it was a great idea and many wanted to help out. Our first suggestions was that we need a year to plan and arrange, it should take place in a larger city – probably Stockholm. Size could be 300 participants. Goal is not to make a fortune but not loosing money. Planning for a small profit gives us some room for unexpected costs. We would like to really focus on the context-driven community, only context-driven talks and not being sponsored by any certification organisation. We want to have some key players from the USA and certainly from the rest of the world as well. We may want to consider some tracks only in English and some in Swedish. All thoughts welcome.

Dinner

Dinner was a seafood buffet at the toll house by the sea. Since three of our four vegetarians have redefined fish and shellfish as vegetables they happily dug into the buckets of crabs, shrimp and langoustes (or whatever the English name for havskräfta is).

Martin said he was disappointed there was not a pool and agreed that he could possibly assume some responsibility for that fact since he was the one that booked. We focused on the music part instead as told before.

Saam

Sunday morning started out with another hour of open season on Fredrik followed by Saam that explained his goals to change testing and reporting on the large company where he works. We spent a couple of hours discussing green/yellow/red versus 1-5 versus happy faces and sad faces. The goal was to move from numbers – which say very little – to a more qualitative approach. This can be quite a challenge in an international and global organisation. We all look forward to learn about the results of Saams intentions in the future.

The happy ending

After some hugging, handshaking and some tears we left for the mainland. Yeah, cause I forgot to tell you we stayed at Chicken Island outside Gothenburg.

Henke Andersson has promised to arrange SWET3 in Malmö this fall. He mentioned that it will focus on ET standards and the need for ET certification…or maybe not. One subject that I would like to discuss more is teaching testing.

Additional info on Twitter #SWET2

The delegates were: Christin Wiedemann, Torbjörn Ryber, Azin Bergman, Fredrik Scheja, Henrik Andersson, Johan Jonasson, Ola Hyltén, Sigge Birgisson, Simon Morley, Rikard Edgren, Henrik Emilsson, Martin Jansson, Steve Öberg, Robert Bergqvist, Saam Koroorian.