How Pradeep teaches software testing - Part 1

I'd like to spill the beans here. I want to tell you how I teach people to test software and my journey of it. I have also written about it in the past here , here and here. In this post, I'd like to tell you about finer details of my teaching style and how I got them. If you would read all the parts I am about to publish, you'd know more about my teaching than you ever did or you ever wanted to :)

How my speaking style evolved

The influence of James Bach & Michael Bolton

The first time I ever witnessed someone teaching software testing was when I got coached by James Bach and Michael Bolton. I had also witnessed people who, in the context of teaching software testing, were reading slides. I don't consider what they are doing as "teaching software testing" but I consider them as "slide runners".

The way James and Michael coach are two diverse powerful approaches to teaching testing. There are things in common but there is James specific and Michael specific signatures in their respective styles.While I was working on the exercises they gave me, I was also observing how they teach me. That was the most important step for me to think about teaching other testers.

I was curious to find out how James or Michael feels when they coach testers. What goes on in their mind? What is the thought process? How could I experience what they are experiencing?

A way I could do it, was to start coaching a few testers aping the styles of James and Michael. I remember my first class, I cracked the same jokes that I had heard from Michael Bolton and copied the body language of James Bach. Did it go well? Fortunate for me, that audience hadn't seen J & M in action. It appeared to be good. I had watched James Bach's Becoming a Software Testing Expert video at least a 100 times to try copying his style. I practiced and practiced. The bathroom and toilet was the best place for me to do so. Most people are bathroom singers and I had turned myself to be a bathroom presenter. Over the last few years, those who have seen James or Michael in action come to me after my talk and have said, "There is so much of James or Michael in you". Not surprising.

Moving away from being an ape to developing my own style


The best part about trying to ape James & Michael was, I failed to do so, in many occasions. There was someone else in me by the name of Pradeep who was constantly bringing himself out. He used to sometimes take over James Bach and Michael Bolton. I was very afraid of that. I didn't know if people are going to like Pradeep as compared to James or Michael.

At times the Pradeep in me took over for a longer duration as I couldn't hide him too long and people weren't disappointed about that. Slowly, the Pradeep in me started gaining confidence that he could do it all alone without the help of James & Michael styles he was trying to ape.

It happened that my English accent got into a spin and I was neither speaking the Indian English accent nor Americans would consider that I belong there. So, many Indian testers have thought I was trying to fake my accent to sound more like an American. I had a tough time explaining to them that I was not and then gave up. I guess I was paying the price for admiring and communicating a lot with James and Michael :)

I began focusing more on my skills to teach than to be worried if people are thinking that I fake my accent. Today I connect my audience with good content and humor that they almost seem to have forgotten making note of my accent. At least, I would like to think so :)

Today my talks and classes have lots of humor, not because Michael does it too but the Pradeep in me is a natural humorist. Today my talks are aggressive and I pump a lot of energy out, not because James does that but the Pradeep in me is highly energetic to talk about testing.

The legacy passed on

Just about few days back, Santhosh Tuppad's girl friend pinged me on Gmail Chat (that occasionally works after the launch of G+. I just hope Engineers in Google stop boasting about their innovative ideas of write hell lot of code to test code that intimidate the industry and focus on fixing issues that irritates the users they claim to care for) to tell me that she is seeing so much of me in him when he speaks. I helped her understand it shall go away after a while because the Santhosh in him won't allow Pradeep to dominate for long.

Two days after that Parimala told me that she surprised her husband by using some words which I use as frequently as I can and then realized "OMG, this is so much of Pradeep in me. How do I get rid of this guy?"

It looks like legacy passed on and soon they will recover and pass it on to someone.

Watch out for part 2

Bangalore Workshop on Software Testing - 3 on 6th August, 2011

This year, BWST 3 (#bwst3) is delayed by a couple of months and for all good reasons. We were busy with personal and professional stuff. So, here comes the details.

Personal excellence & skill development

We have been noticing over the last few years that those who can change things for the world are those who have been changing things for themselves. As people say revolution starts from within, our experience has been similar to agree with that.

In this year BWST 3,  we are focusing on interacting more on personal excellence and skill development. We want to hear stories (from all participants, not just the speakers) on how they have been working on their personal excellence. Are they being pushed to that? What is their motivation to do it? What is causing them to fail? What support they need and from whom? What kind of skills are they working on? What are the black swan skills that the world should know about? What kind of books they read and how has it helped them? What kind of changes are they making to themselves? What do they plan to change about testing in future?

Does this topic connect with you well? Would you like to present or participate in this? We have very limited seating of 25 this year and this is an invite only conference. You don't need to send us a Salsa dance video to get an invite but you could write down your story of how you built or have been building your skills to us at parimala hut moolya.com titled "BWST 3 speaker" / "BWST 3 participant".

For those who don't know what I am talking about: Please read this, this, this and this. Last year, we had Selim Mia from Bangladesh, Yeshwantrao from Madurai and Vasu from Chennai come all over to Bangalore to attend BWST 2. So, indirectly, I am telling, its open to the world.

Venue:

The venue is at a hotel located in Bannerghatta Road, Bangalore. We shall send the details of reaching the venue to all selected participants and speakers via email.

Time: 

• 8 30 AM to 6 PM - BWST 3 (Late comers will not get Red K card. That's unfair. They will get it but be on time)
• 6 PM till cops ask you to go home - Social gathering with testers

How do discussions happen in BWST?

We will be using K-cards and everybody gets to talk. As an organizer and a talkative person, I hate K-cards, so you can imagine that it gives all an equal chance. As it isn't rocket science to figure out how to use them, we will explain to you over there before we start.

For those who have attended BWST 1 or 1 and 2 or just 2 :) - This year, we have modified the 3 color K-card to just 2. We will have a Red card (High Priority Request - Limited use) and Green card ( Put me on the deck, I have something to say or ask - (Unlimited use)

Cost

As you all know this is a "pay for yourself" style conference and you'd need to pay 550 INR to cover your own expenses of food and refreshments during the day. At the hotel, we will have a complimentary wi-fi facility and power adaptors. So, bring on your tweeting machines and use #bwst3

It is a practice [ :) ] that we hang out in a pub after the conference and hence if you'd like to just join the evening pub meeting with all the testers of BWST 3, write to us separately with your mobile number. We shall SMS and tweet the location of the pub you need to come to. Of course, "pay for yourself".

This year, we have decided to provide T-shirts to all participants and speakers and we are looking forward to wearing one of our own sponsored by oh who else - Moolya

Hurry up! If you are too late, you get to wait list and you will have to pray someone drops out. Spread the word, use the #bwst3

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:)

My monopoly in teaching exploratory testing in India

This is a conversation I had with a good friend of mine. She is passionate about teaching testing and has changed her teaching style tremendously over the last couple of years.

I have changed a few words and broke down sentences from the conversation to make it more reading friendly. So, Mansi, when you read this and you spot anything that I have goofed up, please correct me.

Mansi: You are a monopoly for teaching exploratory testing in India.

Me: Yes, thank you. ( Of course, MB and JB visit India )

Mansi: How do you feel about it?

Me: I feel bad but also feel good.

Mansi: Good and bad?

Me: No, Bad and then Good.

Mansi: Why would you feel bad?

Me: I feel good because it helps me make money that gets me to feed my family and myself. I feel bad because being an evangelist of exploratory testing in India, I haven't seen people wanting to teach exploratory testing or even if I have seen, they aren't pursuing it.

Mansi: Oh, you know why people don't want to teach exploratory testing in India?

Me: That's what I have been trying to find out.

Mansi: Its because of you!

Me: You mean, I am the blocker for someone teaching exploratory testing in India? That's funny.

Mansi: You have set an entry barrier to them.

Me: What kind of an entry barrier have I set? I have been asking all my students to consider practicing to teach exploratory testing and I am willing to help them out. Why would I set entry barriers?

Mansi: Well, what I mean by entry barrier is, you would intimidate them with a lot of questions on their effectiveness to teach and all that.

Me: If I ask questions about how they plan to teach, why should they get intimidated by that? As a matter of fact, I would ask questions to them to see if I could help them not do the mistakes I did. I may learn to do a new exercise for my class from them.

Mansi: Because you are THE guy for exploratory testing in India.

Me: James Bach would hate to hear that. I am not an authority trying to prevent anyone from doing anything they want to. Look at you, Mansi, your class is filled with hands on exercises these days as opposed to your past of running through slides. I think I have helped you do what you love to.

Mansi: Yeah, thats all there but I am using exercises that I learnt from you for a class on testing. I don't teach exploratory testing per se.

Me: Oh, you mean, you don't teach exploratory testing by using the title exploratory testing?

Mansi: You play with words.

Me: I am just trying to understand.

Mansi: See, this is what I was telling.

Me: I intimidated you?

Mansi: No, your view of things are different.

Me: So, is yours and thats why we are friends and have a lot to talk to each other.

Mansi: OK, so tell me, why haven't testers in India want to teaching exploratory testing despite you doing so many workshops on it?

Me: Maybe because they enjoy doing exploratory testing than teaching it. Maybe they are working on the skills and one of them might start to do it. Or just as you are doing, "Not by that title".

Mansi: ... or maybe they are intimidated?

Me: You are free to think anything but here is what I can tell to all people. James Bach and Michael Bolton didn't teach me how to teach but they did teach me how to learn things. I carefully observed how they coach testers and tried to ape them initially. I must have failed aping them but in that process, I also found my own style of coaching that appears to be working for me. If I had thought that James & Michael has set an entry barrier for me to teach exploratory testing, I would have been stuck with that idea and wouldn't have progressed at all.

Mansi: I agree but its fun to have such conversations with you.

Me: Convert the fun of conversations with me to some action.

_ end of conversation with Mansi_

So, to any Indian tester reading this. I have been enjoying a beautiful monopoly of teaching exploratory testing in India. Look at my workshops and events page, you'd know I must have done lots of them. Going forward, I am going to be doing a lot, too. I think I am going to go out of India this year and do these workshops. I am enjoying this monopoly not because I am a bully and have intimidated people or set an entry barrier for someone nor I am an approving authority. There is no certified exploratory testing coach certification that you should get to be able to do it. I am enjoying this monopoly because of people like you not seizing the opportunities dancing in front of you.

Here's how I started: I announced free 2 hour talk on exploratory testing on my blog and a couple of organizations invited me to do it. I got free practice doing exercises for testers and developers as my audience and in turn I faced a number of questions. After doing enough talks, I got an idea of what would work for me and then graduated to announce my one day workshop. After doing that for enough number of times and most importantly by gaining experience doing one day workshop, I moved to doing two days. I tried doing Rapid Software Testing, Testing Skills Workshop and Exploratory Testing. Found my sweet spot, worked on a few exercises of my own + borrowed some from James & Michael (with their permission) and tried things.

After a few months, my students started contributing exercises to my workshop. I started to recognize the problems that testers and managers face in India to get Exploratory testing mainstream into their projects and started to do "Accountable & Manageable Exploratory Testing workshop". Session Based Test Management got into mainstream of my workshop and this led to me consulting and helping organizations achieve this. Today, I have success stories with Indian testers, managers and most importantly organizations that beat the s*** out of all other testing training done in India. Again, its you, dear Indian testers, who make me feel like that. So, if you see me as a big ego out there, ask yourselves, "how have I contributed to it?". If you don't know the answer, then here it is, "You have contributed more to my success than what I have done to myself" although I appear to take complete credit. Jon Bach wrote a beautiful blog post on the testing moment around the same topic.

On the other side of my analysis is that more than 99% of Indian testers are not career risk takers. Most among them think, they have taken enough risk in their career by choosing testing.

So, someone coming out of their so called permanent job in India wanting to teach exploratory testing or becoming a consultant is so unlikely. It may happen but that would definitely be surprising to me. If you dare, get in touch with me, please.

While you would just continue to read or maybe enjoy my blog posts, I would continue to play a monopoly for exploratory testing in India. What a shame!

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.