Testers & their passion for test automation

Once a group of software testers were traveling on a plane to attend a test automation conference. Their plane was hijacked by terrorists and all people on board, including the testers were held hostages.

The situation was grim as terrorists appeared to be dangerous with AK-56 strapped across their chests. The terrorists demanded a lot of things that the government couldn’t meet. After seven hours of flying, the plane was running out of fuel. The only demand government could meet was to refuel the plane.

Terrorists chose an airport to land and the plane was refueled enough to fly for 12 more hours. The terrorists threatened to kill a hostage every one hour if their demands were not met.They demanded the release of a terrorist who was captured by the government last month during an operation. The government had only three options: a) to release the terrorist b) to ignore the threat and get all people on board killed c) to perform a surgical strike during the next refueling session.

The government opted for option c. The surgical strike team consisted of highly skilled commandos who were trained in such rescue missions. The commandos pretending to be refueling the plane stormed into the plane and had concealed the latest FMG (Folding Machine Gun) which they unleashed to kill all eleven terrorists on board with minor bullet injuries to hostages.

After the strike was over, all passengers including the software testers on board stood up and clapped for quite sometime while commandos were preparing to off board the passengers. The news had become viral across the world and there were a lot of people waiting to receive the passengers. The conference organizers felt proud to receive the software testers who were on board this flight that had been rescued.

On the request of the conference organizers, those software testers decided to talk on what lessons can be learnt from the experience to software testing. With a huge round of applause, one of them came on stage, held the microphones and in a bold voice said, “Those commandos used a fully automatic machine gun to kill all the terrorists. That indicates that we should make our testing fully automatic to find all bugs”. Every tester in the hall clapped for the great lesson they learnt. 

Moral of the story: Testers and Test management have forgotten to appreciate their own colleagues and consider processes and tools help them achieve their goals.  Update: Also quoting Julian Harty : "Automation should be a servant, not master of our Software delivery"

If you have a colleague whom you want to appreciate and don't mind doing that in the comments section here, just go for it. Let me start.

A letter from the worst Agile Tester in India

Dear Blog Reader,

Greetings!

Hope you all are doing something in life and I don't care about it. I would like to introduce myself to you. I guess you don't know about my split personality disorder. My name is Pradeep Soundararajan too. No, not the guy you know but this is his split personality. The split personality is - I am the worst Agile tester from India. Yet, I am smart enough to be able to survive in this industry because the industry is structured to pose challenges to good testers and not for people like me.

What makes me qualify to be the worst tester is I don't squeeze my brain to test, don't care about the project success or what happens to my employer because I can always find another one who can hire me. Thanks to the most advanced interviewing techniques for a tester that ensures people like me get jobs.

As a matter of fact, I wasn't as confident as I am today about my survival in IT industry a couple of years ago. Ever since my management went to attend a conference where lots of people spoke about Agile, we were given a goal to ensure that even we become Agile. Thankfully, it didn't matter what Agile means or what Agile Manifesto says. What my management got about Agile is - to be calling ourselves as Agile, we need a stand up, a scrum, a sprint, some tests called as acceptance tests, developers and testers working together and oh business analysts writing bed time stories for us.

If our context demands to change the stand up to sit down, we won't because you see, we are AGILE and Agile to people like us means - don't change anything that will prevent people from recognizing that we are not Agile. Simple.

Our Agile coach and certified scrum master, in order to retain their jobs, appear to read a lot of blogs where people post their Agile experiences. Without probing if it suits our context or not they bring in best practices which are ideally ideas shared on blogs. Bloggers do a fantastic job of posting things that appears to work for them or in simpler words - pretending to work for them.

Once there was a white board added to our work place and a few sticky notes on our desks. We just thought we had to use these new tools to continue being called as Agile and we started writing down tweets (as twitter was blocked) on sticky post it notes and pasted it on the white board. It delighted our scrum master and agile coach. They even blogged about it.

Early days, the industry was wrong about making the tester sole responsibility for quality. These days they are saying quality is everybody's responsibility and that's a huge relief for people like me who are pathetic testers. All hiring that happens and the interviewing mechanisms ensure irresponsible people like me are favored for the job.

The industry will never learn that quality can never become responsibility of all irresponsible people of the project. However, by having said quality is everybody's responsibility, my burden has come down. I now share the blame well with all other people on the project even when I know my job was mediocre.

I have figured out a formula to make my life smoother than how it was earlier. I am presented with stories about the changes to the product or new additions and I need to write tests that meet the acceptance criteria. Business Analysts test for the acceptance criteria at the end of the sprint before signing off to push a build into production. So, my job is to sit with the BA's at the start of the sprint and figure out what their acceptance tests are and that's it. I mean it. That's the formula.

Do my developers care about TDD, Unit Testing their code or anything of that sort? No!  I don't bother to ask them those questions because if I ask, they would also ask questions on my work and I don't want that to happen. My organization posted millions of dollars of profit, it could have actually been billions of dollars but hey only if people like me were out of job. As an organization posts profits, the management is fooled to believe that they have the right people with them. They hardly know anything about their customers. Today's customers are so ignorant to software quality that they would figure out a work around than yelling at the company. They love the "Don't send" button.

The IT industry in India thrives on "head count" and not brain count and I am a billable "head" to my organization. As long as I am a billable head, my job is never going to be threatened. Do you think the US companies will pull out of India? No, they want cheap stuff and that's why they come to India. How does India deliver cheap stuff then? Its by hiring people like me who don't mind not doing great stuff as long as I am paid just enough to keep running my home loan, car loan and my wife's shopping expenses. If converted to dollars, that's still way short of what a US fella would get. There are some expensive folks in India but they talk a language that people in US think as not scalable.

Most Americans themselves don't appear to get Agile and asking Indians to do something good that they haven't got is super fun. They won't know how to track and we won't know how to produce and it works out as a perfect job saving combo for all of us. Unfortunately for those who have put in their money, the cost of pulling out is so much that they are stuck to indirectly beg us to do something to make things work. I once went to an Agile conference in the west and found that the leading agilists are complaining about their own countrymen for being bad Agile folks. I returned with confidence that we are just aping the major population of Agilists of the west and to an Indian, it is perfect to ape the Americans way of producing software.

When things go haywire, we bring in some consultants who are so passionate about agile (notice the small "a"?) that they wouldn't know they are shifting their role from a consultant to a contractor. They would do the "just enough" needed to make our biggest release, clean some of our mess and then go away. While they are here, we will treat them well and make them feel so good that they think they have got a great client and when they go away, we don't bother about what they did till our next major release.

The sprints are so beautifully positioned and the activities are so amazingly structured that I can easily blame the sprint for not being able to learn anything new or add any skills to what I might currently possess.

Every now and then, I pick up new terms that western folks talk about just to ensure I don't get intimidated in interviews. Be it Scrumban, Lean-Kanban or Lean Scrumban. If some interview questions are too intimidating then I simply remind myself of having read Brian Marick's Artisanal Retro-Futurism crossed with Team-Scale Anarcho-Syndicalism. I don't get a head or tail of it and I don't care either as long as I can tell my interviewers that's what I do. If asked to explain, I know how to obfuscate it further.

Good testers don't get the point of life and that is - some people have money and others need to extract it from them without needing to work hard. Good testers are specialists, they only specialize in how to test well. There is a need for generalists in this world, who can learn how to make money while not testing well mixed with not knowing how to code.

My life moves on but the good testers appear to be stuck trying to explain guys like me what should be done. Note, you can't move an inch out of us and we outnumber you so much that your life is as painful as having cancer all over your brain.

I am starting a new certification program - CTBCIA.  "Certified to be certified in Agile". This is skill based. I will test how long you can stand up, how you hurry up when a sprint is about to finish,... If you are from any other country, please email me, we shall expand our certification business aping the success of ISTQB all over the world. Once we have a local chapter in your country, we can make more money through conferences and selling our training programs which are feeders to our certification program. Don't worry about marketing, leading agile consultants of the world will talk so much bad about our certification that they will attract our target customers to approach us.

If you want to be a successful Agile tester, trust me, you don't need to know anything about it. Mostly because the people running the project themselves have no clue. Learning about being agile can damage your brain cells and your career.

I really don't care whatever you choose to do because you don't care for me. Humanity and software are two opposite terms.

Regardless,

-- Pradeep Soundararajan ( The split personality guy, not the one you know)

Testers Monthly Meet across India

Hey folks. As I wrote in my previous post on future of Indian testing the thing that seems to be making a lot of testers talk to each other is Testers Monthly Meet and now its organizing a low cost ( 500 rupees for one full day ) conference in NCR.

Adobe India is the venue host and they already seem to have more companies wanting to send their testers out for this event. The speaker line up looks very good ( ahem, not necessarily because of I am one of the speaker ). Forget the speakers, none of us cant match the wisdom of the combined audience. Vipul Gupta and Ajoy have been putting up a good show so far and knowing those guys I think this is going to rock. Vipul Kocher has been extending a lot of his time to support and facilitate this whole thing across India to an extent that his kids ask him, "Why are you at home today?"

I am so excited. Register today for the NCRTMM conference and lets meet and talk about testing. I am going to spend the whole evening with testers at NCR and I am so super excited about it. Joining me from Bangalore would be my testing pals Rahul Verma and Narayan Raman.

Hey, if you are from Bangalore, you could probably make it to the Bangalore Testers Monthly Meet. If you are in Pune, Chennai, Hyderabad, note that there are chapters for you too. Go India, Go. After the cricket worldcup, we need the testing world cup (hope there exists one:)

Why fake pilots scam is headlines in India while fake testers scam is not?

At home, while the whole family was watching a reality show, I happened to take the liberty of changing the channel to NDTV 24x7, a leading news channel. A news that had been making headlines over the last couple of days was a prime time discussion.

The issue is this. A pilot produced fake document to get and got to fly a commercial airliner. Once /a/ pilot was identified to be faking, the investigation began to check if there could be more. Eventually, a flying training school was identified to be helping pilots who wanted to fake their number of hours of flying experience in trade of money. It appears that the norms of the civil aviation mandate at least 250 hours of flying + a simulator test before a pilot is inducted. Turns out that those pilots who faked hardly clocked 40 hours.

An experienced pilot was invited on prime time to talk to share his views and he shared something like this, "I am more surprised how these pilots got through the simulator test. If someone fakes the flying hours, they should have been caught at the simulator test. So, there needs to be a scrutiny into how the simulator tests are conducted".

I listened to that and started laughing. People at my home for a moment shifted their focus from the television to me. This is not the first time they are seeing me react to something in a different way than what they thought someone would. Yes, I was definitely thinking about software testing and those who fake their experience. I guess, people at my home know why I laugh.

As you know, I am a strong advocate against faking. I have written a blog post against faking experience and also do have a podcast on it. If you go through the comments section of the blog post, you'd know how people have tried using all F words, B words and A words against me. What you don't know is that, there have been people who have written emails to me abusing me for not understanding why they faked. Most of these people were hoping the world would sympathize against them but they saw me helping them learn that they are spoiling the craft I respect so much. They couldn't tolerate me as much as I couldn't tolerate them.

I was laughing after I heard the news because a thought crossed my mind. I imagined a situation where all testers who have faked their testing experience are put on a flight where both pilots have faked their experience and then there is a thunderstorm and there is an engine failure mid flight. Pam Pam Pam!

Wow! I love to put a camera over there and watch how those fake testers are reacting to such a situation. Now, am I such a sadist to watch people cry out for their life? Not at all. I want to let these people know I care for them but how? It may appear from my previous blog post about faking that I have behaved like an aggressive pitbull and they reciprocate the same when we have bumped into each other.

After a couple of years of writing that post, I see that my focus has shifted from those who fake from those who facilitate people to fake.

Here is a story : Srividya (name changed) sent an email to me telling that she completed a testing course in an institute in Bangalore and she felt they were unethical. She also mentioned that the institute had provided certificates to a lot of testers in her batch and she suspected the same might have happened to hundreds of batches they churned out and to all future batches. Now, every student of that institute didn't buy the idea of faking immediately but to convince them, the institute organized a meet with their alumni (who had faked and got a job in top companies in India). I was so excited to be interacting with a person like her and then she invited me over coffee to talk more details.

On meeting her I discovered her story to be inspiring to a lot of people who would fake their experience as a tester. Most often, it is the desperateness to get a job that drives people to fake. She was the only earning member of her family and she had two brothers studying college. She was working in a BPO after completing her engineering degree and found out that she wanted to get into IT (a typical story). However, what she told me was, "Its easy for a person like me to give in to faking experience and getting a job but I don't want to do that because I have personal ethics that don't allow me to do. I would get in touch with all my friends over the next couple of months who may help me financially, till I get a job as a tester without the fake one".

I was so happy to meet such people. It also made me realize the fact that all these years my focus was on people who end up faking but not on those who opposed it and didn't give in to it. I would definitely want to hire such people for Moolya and I bet these testers would shine and help the company shine.

What I find funny is that NASSCOM is aware of such things or if they are not aware, its a bigger sin. They don't appear to have been bold enough to make a statement as beautiful as the one I am going to make, "All fakers, beware, if you are caught, you can never work in IT".

I see a chemical equation and I am going to help you see it. I have heard from sources who don't want to be quoted at all that faking happens not just by candidates seeking job but also by services companies. So, there goes the balance of the equation. Some clients insist that they need someone with some kinda tool experience for a specific number of years, irrespective of whether the tool exists that many years.

I guess it was Michael Bolton who once pointed out in twitter that he saw a job ad asking potential candidates to have experience in a specific tool for many years while the tool just was introduced a couple of years ago. I wouldn't be surprised if someone applied to the job and got it because their resume' did show the experience asked for.

I am asking the same question, "Why didn't the simulator tests (interview) catch the fake pilots (testers)?"
Time and again, we have been debating a more stringent way of determining experience and what you might be seeing in STC Job board is a change I am happy to be seeing. If I were to write from the influence of the book Outliers ( Malcom Gladwell ), I would have to say, "I am so glad I was born at the right time to see the most important transition happening in testing".

So, coming to the question of why fake pilots scam makes headlines in our country while fake testers scam is not, is because most people in our so called industry think its not as risky as hiring fake pilots to hire testers who have faked their experience. I think its equally dangerous. It may not directly result in loss of lives but it definitely results in loss of a lot of business and hence a lot of jobs and hence a lot of lives are impacted.

Now, someone from NASSCOM is going to say, "Hey, Pradeep doesn't know anything.We have National Skills Registry in place". I don't know why such a powerful organization as NASSCOM isn't putting the red hot iron on such institutes who don't fear to announce in their class, "Students, go fake. You will still get a good life". Oh, by the way, some of the fakers I know got into some of leading companies registered under NASSCOM. So, dear NASSCOM, who is using your National Skills Registry and why don't you publish how many fakers are prevented from getting a job?

Once in a while companies like Wipro, Infosys, TCS announce they have caught the fakers and have removed them from their jobs. Don't believe? Read it here. OK, I appreciate it and what next? Has it stopped? I bet not.

Now, there is another pattern you notice. It's the Indian IT services companies that have caught a few fakers. What about the product organizations? Having worked at product companies (of whom some don't do any background checks) I know their interview process is stringent as compared to the IT services. Also, they don't hire in bulk as much the Indian IT services do. So, there you go. However, I know a few fakers who got through some product firms but I guess, they deserved it for the kind of interview process they had.

As you see from the news, it is a civil offence and I guess an organization like NASSCOM should make a press release. Well, well, well. Who wants to admit that our IT industry lacks a lot of ethics?

Almost everyone in the IT industry and a couple of years of experience on their belt earn sufficient money to make themselves look clean and good. There are definitely a lot of real good people but what's the use. They don't fight against the bad. I guess, the problem is that they are good but not good enough.

I had a false dream a couple of years ago that I could change this whole faking thing happening in India. I walked into a training center pretending to be a person who wants a fake certificate and recorded the conversation I had with the institute as a proof I could show it to the world. I then was advised to focus on people who deserve my time. I have been trying to do that but often realize that the institutes who promote fake experience also deserve my time and attention. I just lack the support I would have needed.

The students in such institutes have already demonstrated by being silent to the bad advice that they don't care . So is NASSCOM, appearing to me as ignorant in bringing a permanent solution to this.

If someone from NASSCOM is going to read this post (which is so unlikely) and is at least as bold as me, I want you to know that if there is one person in India who can help NASSCOM identify and put a permanent stop to this solution, its me. Do you care? I bet not. Will I continue to care? I bet yes.

I am not trying to project, "I am a hero, don't you see that" kind of an image through this blog post but I am trying to project an image that, "You may be a hero and if you are one, speak out. Most importantly, do in your own ways something to prevent the faking thing to grow bigger by each day. At Moolya, our hiring process doesn't ask for someone's CV in the first place. Its their skills and then more skills and then much more skills that matter. The world doesn't listen to small time businessman like me. I need to be an Azim Premji or Narayana Murthy. If I become one, I shall eradicate this whole faking business in testing.

We need to figure out a way to rehabilitate those who have succumbed to the need to fake. That's another thought which if new to me that I didn't have a couple of years ago.

This issue isn't headlines, yet. This shouldn't get to that point. That's all. 

Coaching testers how to email and influence stakeholders

One of the ways Moolya is going to become a great organization is by attracting, hiring and retaining good testers. Sreenuraj Varma who won our heart for this blog post asked us if he could work for Moolya. We got him to test things out and send us test reports.  We found that we liked him to work with us and he liked to work with us. So, we hired him a couple of weeks ago.


Before the project work kicks off, I asked him, what he'd like to develop himself on and he made a list of things that impressed me. I then sat with him to get more specific and identified "writing influentially" as one of the things he wanted to develop. I created an exercise and got him to work on it. I have done this before so I knew what to expect.


I wrote down the goal he had to accomplish:

You are hired as a tester in a team and in your first week you discover that there are many important tests that the team is missing. Your objective is to send a mail to all test team members pointing out the tests they are missing and the impact it has on the project.

To consider:

·         You are new to the team

·         The team has lot of experienced testers and they know about the project more than you

·         You don’t know how they would take your advice

·         If your English is bad some people may not take your advice seriously

·         This email can help you build or break your credibility with the team

So, he worked on it and got back with the following:

Dear All,

For the last week I was going through the application and the important bugs reported on each module. I feel like there is a lack of concentration on the issues related to security, which I feel important because the application is meant to be used by common people and also the modules are designed to be getting in-cooperated with the bank API’s where there is a possibility that we may lead our users to compromise their valuable details.

As we are in the stage of completion of second round of testing I would suggest that it will be good if we can do a quick analysis in the area of security were our application have to be  checked for most common security issues.

Looking forward for your suggestions

-- Sreenuraj


I then reviewed the above email with him stating things that is causing me to not think of it as an influential email and provided specific feedback and asked him to work on it. After a couple of hours, he came back with the following

Dear All,

Last week I was going through the application and was learning the work flow happening in the important modules. I have also gone through the first and second phase test reports we have for the modules. But I think we have not done a security testing for our application. I feel it is important because of the following reasons.

a)      Loss of customer confidence

b)      Can increase the web sites down time (reinstalling services, restoring from backups etc)

c)       Harm to our brand

When I was in module “A” which is the most important one, I found that some basic validations missing for the text fields. No checking was found for validating the special characters. This is found repeated in almost every module I have gone through. Below I am mentioning some of the issues I have came across.

a)      Cross site scripting is possible in almost every module

b)       Data tampering is allowed

c)       The cookies which are used in one session can be used again

As we are in the stage of completion of second round of testing I would suggest that it will be good if we can do a quick analysis in the area of security were our application have to be  checked for most common issues.

Looking forward for your suggestions

Thanks&Regards

Sreenuraj Varma M

Yo, I again sat with him for the next set of feedback about why I still think the email is not influential enough and pointed him to links such as An open letter to the Prime Minister of India by Rajdeep Sardesai.

He read through it, gained some ideas and started to work on the next version of it.

Hi Team,

This is Sreenuraj recently recruited for the position Software tester for the organization. My last week assignment was to learn the project work flow and to refer the available documents which QA holds against each modules of the project like test plans, reports, bug reports etc.

As we are in the completion of second phase I think we have covered almost all the important things in functionality testing. Most of the bugs are fixed and retesting for the same is also done. But some of the bugs reported against the security testing done in important modules are found to be in open state. I have also noted that some of the bugs were raised in the first stage of testing. Because of that I think the number of issues reported against security testing in the second phase have gone down. Also there is no status report available for those bugs from the development side.

Below mentioned are some of the important issues I have came across in the application which was not found in the bug reports may be not reported because of the above said reasons:

a)      The validations for text boxes in the Login screen and the home page for special characters were missing.

b)      User is allowed to insert html scripts into the text fields for the above said pages.

c)       The data which is submitted for the module “A” can be tampered and user is able to alter the data which is transferred .(Bypass the client side validations)

d)      Data tampering was also success in the module “B” where file type can be changed and user is able to include a file with unsupported extension (like exe .. )

Some of the points I would like to suggest are

1.       - Before the completion of phase 2 of testing we should conduct a security testing in the application for the important modules and report the issues found.

2.       - Discussion with the development team in regards with the Issues reported and which are still in open stage, also record the status before second phase of testing ends.

3.      -  It will be good if we can conduct a workshop/training session for both the development & testing team where importance of security related matters in the project can be discussed. Also we can emphasis on client’s expectation in the area of security which is described in the requirement document.

Looking forward for your suggestions

Thanks & Regards

Sreenuraj Varma M

Nah Nah! Not good enough for me. After having coached many testers, I have gained wisdom to understand the point at which I have to step in and do something different than saying, "Not good. I hope you work on these points". So, I decided to send him, my version of the same.

Dear Team,

Greetings!

It is a pleasure to be starting to work with you. In just a week, I was glad to discover that there is great energy you people are bringing in. Its motivating for me to work with you. As I see that a new team member brings in fresh and different value, I'd like to present some kind of value addition I could do.

In this email, I'd like to bring a few points to your notice that might interest you. I am aware that some of the points I am going to bring up here might already be known to you all but I felt it is my responsibility to let you know of what I found.

Security issues for NNNCC Web App (Just an example)

• I found that the directory listing is enabled. As we hold confidential information with us and not all pages are exposed to all users, we might be in a position of risking our customers data.
• I found that there are error messages that can be customized at the URL. For example, I can make an error message saying, "As Pradeep is on leave, we can't service this" to appear from the page by editing the URL.
• I also found that there is a way to bypass the security by storing and using cookies of previous session. When our customers use a public machine to access their data, we are risking the customers data to be known to others who may discover cookies.

Based on the above, I'd like to make a few humble suggestions:

• I understand that the focus is on getting our software functionally right but on the effort of trying to get that, we appear to be sacrificing security.
• I would love your opinions on budgeting for security testing for every release henceforth. As I am a new hire to this project, I would take up the responsibility for testing security for the next couple of releases till I ramp up on other things.
• I would be extremely delighted to meet with you all on this, so am planning to setup a meeting on Friday 24th Feb 3 PM. I have looked into your calendars and have chosen the mutual free time. I am open to suggestions of other date and time.

Thanks and Regards,


-- Pradeep Soundararajan

This time, he came back with the notes he made about this exercise while continuing to work on the skill of writing influential emails. This is going to go to a point where he would learn to practice on his own. He in on the third exercise with me working on test strategy. Our clients are going to be happy to have him on the team. He is showing lots of enthusiasm, hard work and effort. We are happy.

At Moolya, we are going to lay emphasis on how people write and communicate. We might sound stupid but we have realized that people who can write well, get things done quicker and better. In my own consulting experience, I took an email which had not received a favorable response from the management and helped the test team re-write it. We waited for a day and there came a response to it and things got moving.

Add "influential emailing" to your wanna have skills if you are a tester. There's a good example to it in Michael Bolton's blog as well. I am working on a tutorial to help testers write and communicate influentially to stakeholders. Maybe I will take it Star East or Star West. 

Manoj Nair's experience of adding great value as a tester

Manoj Nair is the co-founder of Weekend Testing and works for an organization that has a worldwide presence. The core business of the organization he works for, is to help people shop, online or at their stores. He functions as a Senior Tester for projects that are to be deployed in United Kingdom and Europe. 


An year ago, they decided to expand its presence in the United States of America and in the North American region. A lot of software had to be remodeled and developed to be able to deploy in USA. This was a strategic move by the organization to show its dominance in a market that their competitors had claimed to have conquered. Manoj Nair was chosen to play a role of Test Lead for the project despite being a newbie to the organization. It wasn't a lucky dip that helped the management choose Manoj to be the Test Lead for this important project but the passion and skills he demonstrated in the short period. They were convinced that bringing in Manoj would help them feel safe. Oh, by the way, he wasn't the domain expert.


Right to what they thought, Manoj ended up doing something so important for the project that literally saved the organization at least $6 million US dollars. Let me type that again, its Six Million US Dollars. If you think that was great, wait. He also prevented the company from being embarrassed in the global market and amongst its competitors.


So, what do you think? He found a bug and got it fixed that would have otherwise cost so many million dollars and embarrassment? That's what comes to mind when we talk about testers doing great work but here is a story that is different and demonstrates the great value testers like Manoj can bring in. I think he did things that most testers in that place might not have.


There's a large group of testers who have come to believe that functional testing is all what they need to do. If you don't believe that, you just might believe this - There's a large group of testers who know that other kinds of testing is equally important but they aren't skilled enough and powerful enough to convince the management and customers about it. That's where Manoj Nair differed and won.


In this new project that had to be deployed in the USA, he proposed quality criteria beyond just functionality and was seeking the time and budget approvals from the management to test for Usability, Accessibility, Reliability, Performance, Security and more. At this point, Manoj performed just like any other tester. Most of the test plan documents I saw during my first few years as a tester had all sorts of buzz words but people ended up just testing for functionality and I used to wonder why.


Manoj's test plan had an objection from someone in the senior executive team. The objection was, "About 70% of the code we are going to use is already deployed in other countries and hey its been working. Why do we need to test for all sorts of things again?" and then there could have been a chatter, "This guy is a newbie, so he probably doesn't know" and "Ah, he is relatively new to the domain".  What we are about to witness is that those domain experts were blinded by the fact that moving code from one country to another is like treating that if a software works on one machine, it would work everywhere else.


Manoj wanted to counter the objection. So, he decided to learn the impact of not doing certain things when moving code from one country to another. He found this link during his research : Target Settles Accessibility Lawsuit for $6 Million


Manoj drafted a response showing his respect to the objection and why he still continues to think that moving code from one country to another has to be treated like a fresh project in itself. He also shared with his management the link to how one of the organization had to suffer from lawsuits and a fine as big as $6 million.


The management was partially convinced but they needed more evidence before they could listen to this young chap advising them on what they should budget on. They consulted an attorney in the United States of America who was considered to be a specialist in laws of the US government pertaining to software quality and compliances. The attorney came back advising them to treat Accessibility and Usability as important as the payment and transactions through their website and did acknowledge that the information on Target was true and they had suffered $6 million and embarrassment.




Look at what happened after that. The senior management did listen to Manoj and treated this as a new project giving it the importance it needs. They came out of the bias that it was just re-use of code and started to treat this as a new application all together.


What did Manoj gain from it? As a tester he benefited a lot. He won so much credibility in the team that the next time he proposes something or reports a bug, a lot of people are eager to learn what he has to say. He has made himself influential in a short period of time in an organization. He is at least as equal as what the domain experts of the organization are. He has made people to believe that having a team with diversity is more important than having all domain experts agreeing to each other in what the other one says.


That's awesome!

Now you'd like to know that I wasn't surprised by what Manoj achieved because I know his background and education. He was constantly building skills that are important for a tester. I first met Manoj in Pune in 2008 although he had been reading my blog before that. We found a good synchronous between us. He relocated from Pune to Bangalore to work closely with me. That's when I introduced him to Parimala, Ajay, Sharath and Santhosh or should I say that I couldn't resist myself from getting these people to meet. This team craving for practice and learning set out to found Weekend Testing that today is considered as the revolution from India in the testing space. Manoj has attended my exploratory testing workshops (even the most recent ones) and is a BBST Foundations graduate. He has taught bug advocacy, exploratory testing, heuristics and oracles to wannabe and experienced testers in the past. He is well read (at least to the extent that he wouldn't feel intimidated when people are talking books) and networks with testers.

So, I am hoping that after you went through his background, it doesn't surprise that Manoj is adding great value to the project he is in. He practiced and was prepared for facing challenges even when his job in the past didn't demand all the skills he was learning. Today, he is skilled enough to handle most tough challenges in testing. He is inspiring his team members to surpass the boundaries.

If you find it tough to explain people what other kinds of value does a tester add to the project than just finding bugs, just get them to read this story. Also, if you find testers cursing themselves that they are not being treated well, get them to read this story and most importantly Manoj's background which is all about the quest for constant education and practice.

Kudos Manoj! You just did something that makes the country proud. Not just our country but people from United States of America, for the care you showed towards accessibility and usability for people with low vision and maybe other challenges.

On behalf of all testers who would love what you did, my little gift to you is this blog post. 

the 5 years of blogging as Tester Tested

I am a changed man today. I didn't know I would be here when I started this blog exactly 5 years ago. I want to thank you all. I don't know if this blog has influenced you in any way but it has definitely had a huge influence on one tester I know - me.

Thanks to all those who motivated me to reconsider blogging when I almost announced I will stop after a lot of plagiarizing incidents. Today, I am least bothered if someone plagiarizes. I have learnt sick people exist in this planet. Hey, it wasn't bad learning. It also told me that there were great people and I should care for them.

Instead of me doing my usual blah blah, why not you comment and tell me the posts you like from this blog and why? If you don't comment, I won't assume anything :)

Three new good things about Indian testers

Once upon a time, Bangalore was ahead in testing leadership compared to other cities in India. What I mean by that is, we did things and made it visible to the world. We did good things that helps us develop ourselves plus do something good to others.

I acted like a brand ambasdoor for Bangalore testing within India and used that opportunity to challenge testers outside Bangalore. In fact, looking at what was happening in Bangalore, my dear friend Manoj Nair relocated from Pune to Bangalore to later co-found the weekend testing. NCR also lost one of the passionate tester Mohit Verma to Bangalore. He relocated to Bangalore tired of seeing no action up there. I went to places like NCR, Chennai, Mumbai, Pune, Mysore... blah blah, I kept telling; explore or be the ash of our explosion. Maybe they thought Bangalore's explosion should be made to look small.

First good thing

NCR Testers led by Ajoy Singha, Vipul Kocher and Vipul Gupta have made it happen to an extent that we Bangaloreans are feeling the pressure to keep up to what we were doing.

First one is the NCR Testers Meet. For those who do not know what NCR means, it is, National Capital Region. It comprises of Gurgaon (which belongs to Haryana), Noida (which belongs to Uttar Pradesh) and Delhi (which belongs to Sonia G, oops, belongs to New Delhi)

NCR Testers Meet happened the 2nd consecutive time on 15th Jan and they seem to be doing very well. Tweets suggest to me that for the first time I am feeling bad for not being in the NCR Region. God give me enough money to travel to such meets in future.

NCR 1 : Bangalore 1

The second good thing

If that's one, the second one is Testing Circus Magazine led by Ajoy Singha. He is the editor of the magazine and with the help of other passionate people, has been spear heading this magazine for a couple of months now. You won't see a fancy looking magazine or a hyper stimulant content on all pages yet. It still is our own truly Indian testing magazine that is gaining consistency.

If these guys can keep it going and keep it going up, I bet we may see a migration of people from Bangalore to the happening place of NCR. Time for us, Bangalore testers, to think and try to stand up to the challenge. All these days, we were a monopoly and its nice to have a competition come in. We didn't expect a stiff competition upfront so testers at NCR, here goes a special thank you on behalf of testers in Bangalore.

We could still say, so what NCR Weekend Testing is not active enough? :)

NCR 2 : Bangalore 1

Now, what's the third thing?

Bharath from Chennai, the founder of co-founder of Weekend Testing Chennai chapter had attended my workshop about an year and a half back. I talked about the Bangalore Testers meetup and asked what's happening with Chennai testers? Why aren't they doing anything? Bharath stood up to the challenge and mingled with RIA-RUI folks and launched India's first truly low cost & highly affordable testing conference in Chennai. Its called the Bug-Debug.

I instantly agreed to be a speaker learning about the low cost highly affordable testing conference. This conference is a great challenge to all those hi fi commercial conferences who charge a lot both from the participants and the sponsors, making it unaffordable to many serious testers who have not yet started to earn good.

Looking at the speaker line up, Bug-Debug has a better speaker lineup than other conferences here in India to start with. Chennai, here I come.

Chennai 1 : Bangalore 0

Phew! Bangalore testers, are you reading this?

If you have read the book Outliers from Malcom Gladwell, you'd know that the best time to be a software tester in India, is from now on. I am going back to doing something credible in Moolya and continue to help Bangalore retain its status :)

Bangalore is hiring thought leaders, who is the next Sharath Byregowda and Parimala Shankaraiah?

Are there any software testing blogs from Indians that are really Indian?

हम क्यू नहीं अपने बाषा में टस्टिंग ब्लॉग नहीं लिक्थे? में जब रशियंस की ब्लॉग दुन्द्था हूँ तब मेरे को रशियंस बाषा की टेस्टिंग ब्लोग्स मिलता हैं. वैसे ही चिनेसे या जपनेसे या गेर्मान टेस्टिंग ब्लोग्स बी हैं. अबी थो जीमेल की गेनेराल सेत्तिंग्स में त्रन्स्लितेरतिओन आप्शन एनाबले किया थो सब भाषा. ( एक इंडियन की स्तिथि ऐसे हैं देखो, मुझे कोंफुसे हो रहा हैं "भाषा" कोर्रेक्ट हैं या "भाशा")

आप इंग्लिश में टाइप करो और औतोमटिक हिंदी त्रन्स्लतिओन मिल जाता हैं. उसमे आपको इन्तेरेस्तिंग बुग्स मिलेगा. अगर आपका मत्हरू भाशा हिंदी हैं, थो आप ही इसको टेस्ट कर सकते हैं. क्या आप सोच रहे हैं की चिनेसे वाले हिंदी भाशा को टेस्ट कर सकते हैं? 

मेरे इंडियन भायों और बहनों, मत भूलो की आपकी भाशा में सोचना और लिकना भूलना नहीं. शायद आप मेरा हिंदी में थोडा गलती होगा, थो क्या? में थो आज सें हमारा हिन्दुस्तानी भाशा में टेस्टिंग ब्लॉग ज़रूर लिकने वाला हूँ.  

ನನ್ನ ಪ್ರೀತಿಯ ಕನ್ನಡ ಬಂದುಗಳಿಗೆ, ನನ್ನ ಹೆಸರು ಪ್ರದೀಪ್ ಸೌಂದರ ರಾಜನ್ ಅಂದ ಮಾತ್ರಕ್ಕೆ ನಾನು ತಮಿಳಿಯನ್ ಅಲ್ಲ. ನಂಗೆ ಇಂಡಿಯಾ ಮುಖ್ಯ ಆದರೂ ನನ್ನ ಮಾತೃ ಭಾಷೆ ಕನ್ನಡ. ನಂಗೆ ಕನ್ನಡದಲ್ಲಿ ಮಾತನಾಡುವುದು ಬಹಳ ಇಷ್ಟ. ಆದರು ನೋಡಿ, ಇಂಗ್ಲಿಷ್ ನಲ್ಲಿ ಬರದು ಬರದು ನನ್ನ ಮಾತೃ ಭಾಷೇನೆ ಮರತ್ ಬಿಟ್ಟೆ. ಸಕ್ಕತ್ ಅವಮಾನ ಅಗುತ್ತೆ ನನಗೆ.  ಆದ್ರೆ ಇನ್ ಮುಂದೆ ನಿಮ್ಮ ಪ್ರದೀಪ್ ಕನ್ನಡದಲ್ಲಿ ಟೆಸ್ಟಿಂಗ್ ಪೋಸ್ಟ್ ಬರಿತಾನೆ. ಹಾಗೆ ನಿಮ್ಮನ್ನು ಕನ್ನಡದಲ್ಲಿ ಟೆಸ್ಟಿಂಗ್ ಬಗ್ಗೆ ಬರ್ಯೋಕೆ ಕೇಳುತಾ ಇದೀನಿ.

ಇನ್ನು ಕೆಲವೇ ವರ್ಷದಲ್ಲಿ, ನಾನು ಬಹಳ ಚೆನ್ನಾಗಿ ಕನ್ನಡದಲ್ಲಿ ಟೆಸ್ಟಿಂಗ್ ಪೋಸ್ಟನ್ನು ಬರಿತೀನಿ. ನೀವು ದಯವಿಟ್ಟು ಟ್ರೈ ಮಾಡಿ. ತಪ್ಪಾಗಿದ್ರೆ ಪರವಾಗಿಲ್ಲ ರಿ, ಬರಿಯಕ್ಕೆ  ಶುರು ಮಡುದ್ವಲ್ಲ ಅದೇ ಸಾಕು. ಬನ್ನಿ ನಮ್ಮ ಭಾಷಯಲ್ಲಿ ಟೆಸ್ಟಿಂಗ್ ಪೋಸ್ಟ್ ಬರಿಯೋಣ.

என் இனிய தமிழ் மக்களே, உங்கள் பாசத்துக்குரிய  பிரதீப் சௌந்தரராஜன் பேசுகிறேன் :) நான் பிறந்தது  ஒரு மாதவா கன்னட குடும்பத்தில். படித்ததெல்லாம் பெங்களூர் பள்ளி கூடத்தில். கன்னடம் தான்  படித்தேன் ஆனாலும் தமிழ் மீது ஒரு பற்று உள்ளது. பொறியியல் படித்து திருச்சியில் உள்ள மூகாம்பிகை கலூரியில். தமிழ் அப்பொழுது தான்  கற்றேன். சன் டிவி பார்த்து, சொல்லுவதை  கேட்டு  கேட்டு  படிக்க கற்றேன். இரண்டு சுழி "ண" மற்றும் ஒரு சுழி "ன" எங்கு  வரவேண்டும் என்று இன்னும் தெரியாது ஆனாலும், தமிழில் நான்  டெஸ்டிங் ப்ளாக் போஸ்ட் எழுதுவேன் . 

அது தமிழில் உள்ள பற்றுக்காவும் மற்றும் உங்க மாதிரி தமிழை நன்றாக கற்ற ஆட்களை தமிழில் டெஸ்டிங் ப்ளாக் எழுத ஊக்குவிப்பதற்காக. தமிழில் டெஸ்டிங் ப்ளாக் எழுதுங்க, தமிழையும், தமிழையே நம்பி இருக்கும் இளைஞர் பட்டாளத்துக்கு  வழி காட்டியாக இருங்க.  வாழ்க வளமுடன் .

For those who don't understand any of the above written languages (Hindi, Kannada & Tamil) and you want to know the meaning, just read the title and you'd get it.

I am asking, why aren't Indian testers writing blog posts in their own languages? I see people from Germany blogging about testing in German. I have come across Russian blogs ( Take both Alexei's for example), I also saw a few Chinese & Japanese testing blogs. Not to forget, Polish, Dutch and even more.

I haven't come across one testing blog that's truly Indian in the language. I have decided to occasionally try writing in the languages I know. Its shame but true that I have forgotten how to write well in Indian languages. I learnt Sanskrit, Hindi, Kannada, Tamil and a little bit of Telugu but can't write in any of them as fluent as I can do in English.  

If someone can write in any of the Indian languages and about testing, it would truly be the Indian testing blog. What I have been writing so far is an Indian's testing blog written in a foreign language. See the difference?

Help Chandru to live his testing dreams

I give myself opportunities to meet many different software testers from Bangalore or to the places I travel. One of the ways that's been successful for me is "Coffee with Pradeep". This has brought many testers to my lives who have had a good influence on me. Sharath Byregowda contacted me for a coffee and then we work closely. He is one of the good testers and thinkers I have met. He recently moved to UK and I am already missing him so much.

Meeting Chandrashekar 

On February 10th, this year, Chandrashekar B.N (Chandru) got in touch with me and asked if I would come to meet him over a coffee. I instantly agreed because his emails were showing the passion he had to test. He seemed to give importance to improving his skills. I met him around the third week of March and this guy was silent, taking notes. He and his friend Sunil had come to meet me. Both these guys were mostly silent but took notes of our conversation. Wouldn't be wrong if I say, I liked their seriousness.

When Chandru spoke

At last Chandru spoke. He narrated his story and it was an emotional moment for me. His father died while he was young. His mother, with two kids (Chandru and his younger brother) struggled very hard to get them a basic education. Chandru didn't grow up with any luxury. They lived in a small room for the last 20 years. Chandru got a job as a software tester after his Bachelors and was running test cases. He wasn't happy. He learnt that he has a passion to test and wanted to get skilled at it. He was earning just enough to get 3 meals a day for 3 of his family.

In his situation, someone would have said, "I want to get more money. How do I do that?" but instead he said, "I want to test better. How do I do that?". That was an amazing moment for me. I shall continue to be in India just to meet testers like Chandru who amidst several troubles in life want to test better.

I started to coach him. I got him to network with testers in Bangalore who are as serious as him. He came to Bangalore Workshop on Software Testing. He was enjoying this new found life. His friend Sunil was no less passionate. Both of them didn't stop there. They made a list of books they ought to be reading and went on a book hunt in Bangalore. Chandru quit his job and took up another job with no hike in pay, just to gain more freedom in testing.

When God decided to test Chandru


About 40 days back, I received a call from Sunil and I was shocked to learn that Chandru was diagnosed for Blood Cancer. To be specific it was Acute Lymphoblastic Leukemia - with Ph+ve - B cell - Blood Cancer. I was in Gurgaon when I got the call. I tried calling his mobile but couldn't speak to him as he was undergoing some tests. That night, I just couldn't sleep. I felt too bad for Chandru. Just when he was about to rise, he got this bloody cancer for no fault of his. I got up in the morning with the little sleep I had and then said to myself, "Should the people who care for him lose hope. Is that the way I should be? Not at all."

The next day, I was fortunate to be able to speak to him. He knew he had cancer. I didn't know how he would talk to me. I didn't allow him to speak much. I was shouting at the top of my voice, "You are a warrior and you will fight this out. You have a dream to be a good tester and you are not letting down yourself or others. That's the only thing that should be running in your mind"

When Chandru decided to take up the challenge


A few days back, I returned from Gurgaon and directly went to to the hospital. The confidence, the smile, the charm that Chandru had when he met me is one of the greatest things I have seen.

Today


He is fighting well. Doctors say he is doing well, except to the part of the bone marrow which he doesn't have a control over. His confidence is amazing. Its one of the most inspiring things for me. I love this guy and he is my hero. I have started to strongly believe that the mind can control the way body accepts and reacts to treatment. He makes me think of Andy Dufrense of Shawshank Redemption.

Where do you come in this story?


Chandru is the only earning member of his family. He being hospitalized and his medical insurance money long depleted, he has no source of income for his treatment. With his treatment cost estimated about 20 lakhs for Chemotherapy / 50 lakhs if bone marrow transplant has to be done to cure him, he has ran out of options.
So what, he has the testing community to help him. I hope I was right in making the statement.

Help, So far

• Parimala has donated 25,000 INR (I am so proud of her)
• Weekend Testing funds of 12,000 INR has been donated
• Mohan Panguluri has given a standing instruction to the bank to transfer a certain amount every month from his income to help Chandru other than sending a mailer to everybody in Test Republic.
• Couple of people have tweeted seeking support to help Chandru.
• Chandru's office colleagues have donated a part of their salary to Chandru
• Some testers who saw the mailer of Test Republic have donated a few thousands.
• Ajoy has featured this in his Testing Circus magazine
• STC 2010 conference has confirmed that they would be announcing it during the conference and make more testers aware of an opportunity to save a testers life.
• Dhanasekar S has come forward to help Chandru. 
• I am trying to do my bit to such a wonderful man who is brimming with confidence when others might have almost given up. Letting him down would be our biggest sin.
• Rahul Verma and I are going to be doing fund raising public workshops and donate the fund to Chandru's treatment. If you are from Bangalore / Chennai / Hyderabad interested to attend our workshops whose funds collected would be given to Chandru's treatment email me at my mail id which is pretty public.

Yet, we have fallen short of funds for the bone marrow transplant. So, I kindly request you to come forward and help Chandru. The best part is - he said he is going to treat every rupee that has flown in as an interest free loan and says, "I will get well, continue to work as a tester and pay back all money". For such a guy, I think, you should.

Go team up with all testers you know, talk about how you can help and get it going. The time is now.

Important links & details

Help Chandru Website : http://helpchandru.com ( Website not fully developed )

His reports: http://helpchandru.com/files/Chandru_Report_Detailed.pdf

Cancer Patients Aid Donation Page: https://donations.cpaaindia.org/?projects=For%20Chandrashekhar or http://www.cpaaindia.org/casefile/index.htm#chandrashekhar
Note: Income Tax concession for this mode of transfer / donation
Important note: While donating through CPAA website, please mention that the donation is for Chandrashekar BN in the projects section

Those of you who want to do a wire transfer from India to his bank account can:
Note: No Income Tax concession on this mode of transfer

Name:Chandrashekhar B N

Account Number:218010015960

Branch:Koramangala, Bangalore

Bank:ING Vysya Bank

IFSC Code No:VYSA0002180

Chandru's Paypal account email id: daysofchandru@gmail.com
Note: Income Tax concession subjected to approval in this mode. Approval pending 

Every little help you do, matters a lot. When you donate, please email sunilkumar56@gmail.com / hariprasad.email@gmail.com and let him know the details, so we could confirm on receiving the same. If you are in Bangalore and have O+ve blood and is willing to donate, please get in touch with Sunil or Hari whose numbers you can find in the website http://helpchandru.com

Please,  Help Chandru

The domain particle

The inspiration


The title is inspired from Angels & Demons where they talk about the "God particle". The topic is  inspired by so many testers asking or answering to, "How much important is domain knowledge?", "Can we test without domain knowledge?", "What happens if we test a product or technology without domain knowledge?" ... 


Every person who writes in public and in forums have been asked these questions about the importance of domain knowledge to test a product. Going through those forums, you'd know that there are answers like : Yes, domain knowledge is very important to test a product OR Oh yeah, you know without domain knowledge I couldn't have found the show stopper I found a few days back...and others saying, "I did manage to learn quickly, so it doesn't matter as long as you too can", "I think it depends on what you are testing"... 


Passing time by failing to respect others time


The question I have to most testers out there is. If we, who reply to all those questions of yours, say that it is very important that you should be an expert of the domain to test the product, are you really going to become one or even try to? 


You are aware that bug investigation skills are important, without we having to say that, what have you done about that? or would you go pick up the test framing skills?


I am convinced that there are many hundreds and thousands of testers who are a trap not just to themselves but to others wanting to help testers. Every testing related forum is infected with people asking questions who actually don't intend to do anything about it despite unintentionally (or maybe intentionally) wasting a lot of passionate testers time & energy. There are genuine people in there but in a rare occurrence. Most genuine people aren't asking questions but answering them and not all who answer questions are genuine. You may want to consider me among those who are answering questions but not genuine, if that pleases your ego.


I have respect for CDT mailing list and Software Testing Club. There are serious people, asking, answering and watching. I just hope there are a few more forums like that.


Why do we have labels?


Some testers are in a trap of calling themselves "Telecom testers", "BFSI testers", "Web App testers", "Mobile App Testers", and what not? The question I have is, should it matter? BTW, I call myself an exploratory tester because its an approach I follow to test any software & not a domain.


As how programming is a mindset and a good programmer wouldn't call themselves "Java only programmer", testing is a mindset too. Oh, there is a skillset along with the mindset.


Henrik Andersson of Sweden is going to do a Webinar on October 12 : Do we need labels? Are we all not testers? I read the abstract of the webinar and was excited. I envy Henrik a lot. He is the guy who is blessed to be in the happening places - be it PSL, AYE or CAST. Other than that he is the energetic test consultant & partner at a testing consulting firm based in Sweden. I think you all should register and listen to what Henrik has to say. 


Henrik made me ask these questions: Why am I calling myself an exploratory tester, rapid tester, and whatever fancy stuff I had been calling myself when I know all testing is to some degree exploratory? What is the need for me to do so?


I need a label to differentiate myself or to communicate to people what I specialize at. My label helps my potential clients to gain interest to check about my services based on their needs. My label acts as a filter. People know what questions to shoot me. So far I have received very few emails from people asking if I can help them record and play QTP scripts. Most emails are about seeking help on how to develop themselves, think & test. I love to talk to them because they teach me things I want to learn.


So, I see label as a filter but I am against the labels that filter my own opportunities to learn. For instance, if I call myself a "Multimedia Tester", I would have blocked my learning on many technologies and contexts that I have experienced. I am starting to use "Brainual tester" these days. I am also giving a lightning / lightening talk in GTAC this year about it. James calls it Sapient and I call it Brainual. We both worship the same God but we call them in different names. I prefer the word "Brainual" because it is quicker to replace the word "Manual" to those who see "Manual" as a hand activity of testers than brain. People are used to saying, "Lets automate those manual test cases" but I expect the reluctance to set it to say, "Lets automate the brainual work thats being done now".  Their own ego would hurt them. They don't want to be seen as a fool.




Filter-less


Being a consultant and added to that the twist and turns I have had in my testing life has got me to test software ranging from wireless, mobile applications, medical devices, multimedia, Retail, CRM, desktop applications, dating applications, billing solutions, video surveillance, stock market, auction systems, kiosks, cloud computing, testing tools, games and what not. I have never bothered what domain each of them belong to as long as I have 

• An understanding of general principles of how software works (which I constantly refine)
• A skill to quickly learn and convert the learning to tests & churn more learning out of it.
• Ability to build models of learning to speed up my learning.

I try understanding how people who invented things might have thought. I fancy thinking that all these technologies have emerged out of observing something. Some of the key observations about human being and living things have led to many inventions and discoveries. Should I tell you that birds were an inspiration for Wright Brothers?


The human connection to technology


# 1 DHCP as to how it has evolved out of human behavior : When we go to the theater to watch a movie, we ask the personnel at the ticket counter to check if there are tickets available for a specific movie (sending request from a client to the server) of what we want to watch and our preferred time (details about client to see if server has anything for us). 

The ticket counter personnel in the theater gives us a ticket based on availability (assigning an IP address from the available pool) with the seat numbers to watch the movie.

In the ticket, there exists a seat number ( IP address ), duration of validity ( lease period ). If you prefer to watch the movie again and in the same seats ( Static IP ) you need to advance book or renew your tickets  
( ipconfig / renew )


# 2 Why do connectors have a male pin & a female pin? How did gender come in to technology without having observed humans and how they interact?


I have a huge list of things that computers/ technologies do which are based on how humans communicate or how humans could have. Think of SIP protocol or a client server host architecture and relate it to human communication. You'd probably enjoy as much as I do.


Simplification


In Rapid Software Testing class of  Michael Bolton & James Bach, there is an interesting dice exercise. I didn't crack it the first time but on learning the meta pattern, I am likely to crack it for any pattern or will get closer to solving it.


I have my own version of the dice game but with a different learning objective - simplicity. Based on running the exercise on thousands of testers in India (and a few folks outside India), I am making a conjecture that I see people struggling to cope up with simplicity. 


The first set of thoughts that comes to a human mind is not necessarily simple and the next set of thoughts are usually more complex than the previous ones. So, I think humans keep building on the already existing complexity of their previous thought.


Unless you train your brain to think simple, you are unlikely to crack many things you can.


The reason I am telling this here is because those who set out to learn a new domain forget that there are simpler sub systems of the domain they already know either because they also exist in other domains they have tested or have used such products extensively. You may want to figure out the meta pattern of software & how they are supposed to work. 




Practice to be fit

Quoting Parimala, "What you know is not as important as what you can do with what you know". 

I run an exercise in my workshop in which I allow people to do freestyle exploratory testing. At the end I ask them the techniques they consciously used while testing. Although many of them know many techniques to test, at least the first 10 minutes of most testers freestyle exploratory testing is, "Clicking here and there to see if a bug dances out on the screen" If a few bugs do dance, "Wow, you see I did exploratory testing". I think of that as an inferior self standard setting to understanding exploratory testing.  


How do we use what we already know to achieve better results? PRACTICE!


The biggest shame for ISTQB / CSTE certification bodies doesn't come from those who oppose it but from those who are certified & don't show traces of having gained anything from it. I have consulted at least for a few organizations here in India who hire these certified testers. Not a single test case document that these certified testers have produced has anything related to what they might have learned from the certification. 


There is a scripted test design technique that is a best practice and the most widely used one although it doesn't have a name - copy paste a sentence of requirement document into expected results column and then write the test steps accordingly. This is the most successful trick ever invented in testing. 


As a side note: Do you play any outdoor sport? Have you taken a long break from it and then went back to it? You might have been good at it at some point but when you get back after a break, you no longer feel the same comfort you had. If I were to speak to Indian testers alone for a moment, how does it feel to hold a cricket bat and face a fast bowler after taking a break from cricket? 


Bits & Pieces


I admire ants. They have a way to deal with problems. They don't say, "Oh my God! That cake is about 1000 times bigger than my size. How can I eat it?". They break the huge cake into bits that they can process, carry it home and then come back for the next bit. Doing it bit by bit helps them to achieve the goal of moving the entire cake into their colony.


While testing a product whose domain / technology that I don't know, I try to remember the ants. I learn one bit, use that bit to frame tests. The tests I perform with the bit I learned, help me learn about more bits of the system and I choose to eat bit by bit or byte by byte if my mouth has got bigger.


I may know nothing about a system when I start but at the end I can learn so much about it that it would amaze me or my audience if I tell what I discovered going bit by bit. I demonstrated this in one of the workshops where I learnt the user base of the website, traced the kind of users, identified why those users might be coming to the site, what kind of problems such users might be facing, what kind of tests to be run, what could be the most important problems that is making the audience to not give more sales + found 14 issues + 10 questions to the developers - all in one hour. I had enough feedback to the development team that they got busy working on a few things that gave me the time I wanted to go learn what I wanted about the product.


Live oracles


What are the business analysts doing? Are your sales and marketing folks so busy that they don't have time for you? How much do you interact with them? Have you invited them for a paired testing? Have you talked to them about the importance of they being with you for an hour in a month while you are testing?


If that's one set of questions, here is another set: Why in the world do you want to know everything about a domain when you know its not possible for any human being to do that?


Fooled by foolishness


Some organizations who hire testers only because of their domain knowledge, are fooled in other ways such as, those testers probably know little about testing to be called as testers. Its opportunity cost. I have spent all my time trying to be a better tester, you ask me to troubleshoot a network router, I may end up testing it or learning about it by testing it. Ask a network admin to test a router, she may end up troubleshooting or reconfiguring it.


Some organizations who continue to think that domain knowledge is the most important skill for a tester to even apply or be interviewed by them are blind to the fact that most issues that their customers are reporting has probably got nothing to do with having testers with extreme domain knowledge in the team.


There are tons of testing problems these organizations are not paying attention to, while they see their problems are because they don't have enough testers with enough domain knowledge.

Everyone of us choose to be not fooled by something and that exposes us to be fooled by something else.

The domain particle


Do you have a domain particle that makes you think "domain knowledge" is the important thing for a tester to perform well? 


I don't want to take it out. I want it to be there so that I can help you mutate it. If you could help yourself mutate it, and make the domain "learning" instead of "BFSI", "Telecom", "Multimedia", "Whatever"... I think you would have cracked what you are likely to in 20 years from now. That's an opportunity to be wise without needing to age for that.


Did you say that?


Those who speak about exploratory testing are asked, "Are you saying there is no value for scripted testing?". Those who speak about using brains to test are asked, "Are you saying there is no value in automating tests?". Those who speak about Check Automation are asked, "Are you saying checks are not tests?" while the speaker/author didn't mean any of that. Those who speak against certification are asked, "Are you saying people shouldn't get certified at all?". Those who speak about wasteful documentation are asked, "Are you saying documenting is a bad idea?". Reading some of the above paragraphs, some of you might have had a question, "Are you saying all ISTQB/CSTE testers don't know test design?"


So, whatever anyone says, there is a group of testers aggressively waiting to ask such questions. They are not doing anything wrong. They are just being themselves. Some representatives of the group are likely to ask me, "Are you saying domain knowledge is not needed to test the product?" and I am going to punish them by asking them to re-read this big post.


BTW, I am looking to hire testers of Banking / Web Application domain testers. Please send me your resume as soon as possible. 


Also, if you are a tester from Hyderabad and want to meet Rahul Verma, Dhanshekar and yours truly on 27th evening, email me. We wont mutate your particles! We will be attending Google Test Automation Conference in Hyderabad. 


Post bio for my self reference: Took 5 days to write the first draft, changed the style and contents 3 times, 1 external review, 3 self review, 5 hours of editing and finally publishing it. Published from my cousin's place in Delhi. Laptop: IBM Thinkpad