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

Test coverage : Life beyond functionality

At a class recently 

Scene 1:

"What have you all been doing for the last few years in this organization?"

Chorus: "We test for functionality of the software?"

"That's nice! Why do you think it is called /functionality/?"

Silence

"OK, what is a function?"

Silence

"No problem. Let's fix it. Where else have you heard the word /function/? Math? So we all might have studied f(x) = y and that could have been our introduction to working with functions. Later we moved on to parabolas and hyperbolas which had functions of different behavior and complexity. So what we are doing when we say /functional testing/ is, we provide inputs X to a function f(X) and monitor Y. We claim to know that f(X) should be Y and we also claim to know the range of Y. So, that forms our oracle to find bugs with functional testing. /Y/ doesn't necessarily need to be a numeric value in functional software testing".

Scene 2:

"So, what else do you test beyond functionality?"

• "Our bug reports get rejected if we report non functional bugs so we don't test for it", 
• "There is a team in US who is supposed to do it"
• "When we find a non functional bug and report it, we are asked why did we spend time deviating from the scope given to us"
• "We have enough test cases in functional testing that we don't have time for other kinds of testing"

"Are you doing Quality Assurance or Software Testing?"

"What?"

"Let me explain. In Software Testing, you provide quality related information to help the management take better informed decisions. I think in Quality Assurance, you claim to provide confidence to the management that you have checked and tested a lot of things (not just software) and things didn't change after your checks and hence its OK to use the word /assure/ with another word /quality/."

• "I think we do a mix of both"
• "Our designation is Software Tester but we are internally called QA"
• "I don't know. I am doing my job and earning my paycheck"
• "Yikes, this is confusing"
• "I thought Testing == QA" 

 Scene 3:

 "I appreciate the diversity. Tying it back to our previous topic, irrespective of what you do (Functional Testing or Functional QA, the information you provide to your management is so weak as compared to what you were supposed to be doing."

"How is that?"

"Test coverage is the extent to which we have modeled and tested the system -- Michael Bolton. You appear to have modeled the system for functionality and you could model your system in more ways within and beyond the scope of functionality to learn more about the product and to be of more value to your management. Assuming you are interested to do that. Here is a list of thing that you might want to focus on:

Product Elements Coverage

• Data
• Platforms
• Operations
• Time
• Structure
• Functions

Quality Criteria Coverage

• Capability
• Reliability
• Usability
• Scalability
• Performance
• Installability
• Compatibility
• Supportability
• Testability
• Maintainability
• Portability
• Localizability

Technique Coverage

• Scenario based
• Claims based
• User based
• Flow based

( refer to Rapid Software Testing slides for more )


"That looks like a lot of thing to do and I know these are important for quality. We don't have time for functionality and how can we think about all these things?"

That's a nice thing that you realize you don't have time even for functional testing to be done. How about asking the management to re design and re think about the time that is given to you and the value you can deliver?

Scene 4:


"I know for sure. They won't allow us to do all this"

"Interesting. Is that your assumption or a fact?"


"That's what is going to happen if we ask and we know that."

"Have you tried it?"


"No, but we know them very well."

"How much do you think they know about you and your skills?"

"They hardly know about me and my skills."

"So do you about them. If they assume you are not skilled to do other kinds of testing and also assume you heard them say /We are sure, they don't know to test beyond functionality/, how would you react to it?"

"I would show to them that I can"

"How about giving them a chance to show that they too can change?"

Silence

Two things:

• Give each of your colleague a chance, explain to them your problem.
• Give yourself a chance, focus on your test coverage and explore a life beyond functionality.

Progress Report 2009 : Pradeep Soundararajan

On clicking that image, the progress report should download. Hate that idea? You can download the same file by clicking on this link, too. 

Other updates: 

• There is a public workshop on Skilled Exploratory Testing planned in Chennai on Saturday, March 27th, interested testers send an e-mail to me at pradeep.srajan@gmail.com OR if you know of any testers in Chennai who want to attend this please pass them on the information. The fees are very nominal but please don't ask for Ranganthan Street rates!

• I am releasing a book this year. No, not the interviews book. Not that you have to pay for it. I am going to make it available online for free. I am tired of the process of getting it published. Maybe if it does well, some publisher would volunteer to slow down the process. Sharath Byregowda knows what book I am talking about. Hard bound printed versions shall also be available on demand. I need someone with real good English to help me copy edit the draft I have. 

Oh, don't forget to checkout 2009 Progress Report. It is a PDF file for sure. Thank you all.

E go U go I go of U and I

I have no control over your thought process to restrict you to not read the title as Ego You Go and I go of testers.

Here is what I think about my ego:

• I am egoistic but not at contexts and situations where the ego could kill the possibility of me doing a good testing.
• I am not egoistic because I am so curious that I don't care from whom I learn something that can help me do a good testing.

Which of the above two statements could be true in your case, too?

The passion to become good at the craft we are living in makes us better person, too, and the evidence is from my incomplete research on ego and testers.

In my experience, so far, I have had an opportunity to work with testers from various backgrounds (education, culture, native place, language, the way they were brought up ...) , experience ( in terms of number of years , non testing field experience ), skills ( whatever they think their skills are, whatever I think their skills are), knowledge (domain, craft specific ), interests ( curious to explore testing or curious to explore something else), passion (testing or money or both [ certification - if you like it] ) ... and infer that one of the most common thing amidst this diversity is ego.

People (who think they don't have ego) think those who have ego are the ones who are bad professionals. I ( who is sure that I have ego ) think it is not that bad for people to be egoistic as long as they achieve the mission they have in hand without spoiling opportunities to succeed in future missions with the same team.

I think I have not anything different and I am happy to have identified it.

I am going to discuss 3 cases ( the most common and uncommon ones, in my opinion ) that can help me ( or not help you) to understand what I inferred from what I witnessed, experienced, heard and saw.

Case 1: From Lead to Seed

A senior tester (by designation) got promoted to a Test Lead and thought he'd be no longer expected to execute tests. He is moved to a new product based on a requirement of a Test Lead and finds himself in tough situations where people who report to him aren't respecting his views. What he fails to identify is the need to build credibility by executing tests and understanding the product.

The ego of being a test lead and yet not respected by people who report to him ends up in clashes about ideas to proceed with testing. The manager identifies that it would be a good idea for him to learn the product, execute tests for a while, understand the testing complexity and challenges and then play a role of a Test Lead ( as per what he thinks ) ends up in he taking up test execution. During the process of test execution, the ego is still alive and he is hesitant to ask questions that he thinks his team members would laugh at and finally ends up in not knowing the product well and failing to execute tests in a manner that someone thought it as a right way.

On the other side, the team members who report to him do have an ego that built up during the process of knowing that their team lead knows little about what they are doing.

So the Lead and the team members never get a chance to respect each other. Not to forget is a point that there are similar ego issues between the team members.

I guess that leads to bad testing!

Case 2: Buddy testing and then Bloody testing

A company enjoyed having 2 senior testers (senior by designation and lets call them Shyam and Jagan) who were passionate about testing and their work competed against each other's work output and was a healthy competition, of course. Shyam and Jagan worked on the same product but for different customers. Both of them were known to be good at meeting the mission in hand and the important point to note is: both were thick good friends for over 3 years.

Unfortunately, one fine day Shyam's work is applauded by the management. This act of appreciation hit Jagan hard enough to start building up an ego with Shyam. Poor Shyam, not being aware of this ego that Jagan is building cracks jokes ( as both used to ) on Jagan's work and this hits him more hard.

Shyam who cared for his friend Jagan was left disappointed when he did come to know about the multi storied ego that was building. Shyam eventually found it tough to continue working as he too started building his own version of ego. The ego got translated into an unhealthy competition that ended Jagan to look out for a job where he feels safe to work without such unhealthy competition. Shyam and Jagan still thought alike as they used to and both ended up looking for a job without each other's knowledge.

Both quit the company and moved to different ones more or less at the same time without realizing. Here comes the crux of the story: Shyam and Jagan never felt happy with their work thereafter despite working away from each other because what motivated them to succeed in the past was the healthy competition.

I guess that lead to bad testing - for Shyam, Jagan and to the company they earlier worked together.


All it takes is one second...

It takes just one second to feel egoistic and not do something that you too are aware should be done but that one second might result in making you and others around you as bad testers.

It takes one second for those who stole my posts to admit they stole but makes them feel better forever that I appreciated them.

It takes one second to feel egoistic ....
Case 3: From Manager to Damager

Wait a second, let me write the Case 3 a little later because, I got a mail from a team member who thinks he is too smart because he was appreciated for finding a lot of bugs and is a better tester than me. He is challenging my decision. How can he do that when he is reporting to me? I am going to fire him right away and shall update this post later.


-- Pradeep Soundararajan - http://testertested.blogspot.com - +91-98451-76817 - pradeep.srajan@gmail.com

"Pradeep's first language is not English--his first language appears to be testing." -- Michael Bolton

Some good testers don't blog and so I think the testing community is unfortunate that they have limited opportunities to learn from them. Some bad testers steal others post and so I think the testing community is unfortunate to fear the fact of why some good testers don't blog. Willingness to learn is a skill that a tester *must* possess in my opinion - which also helps in having a lack of ego. I guess that's how good testing begins.