Lessons of Learning : from leaves of experience

I intend to start writing a series of posts that will be in the tag line "Lessons of Learning - My learning #".
These will mainly be focused around my experience in life as I have evolved through my journey of testing experiences.
These will primarily be short notes to start with and will slowly grow into bigger writing pieces.
Will look forward to comments from you to add on your experience leaves to the same :)

Experiential Learning

I picked up a new mobile handset some weeks back but did not have time to configure it up due to free time unavailability ........ started to do it in bits and pieces....managed to set up a few basic accesses.... finally realized that there is an issue when I try to access mails. It just refused to open up any of my mbox ..... tried many approaches, mobile store and googling too but was just NOT getting the appropriate info to set it right..... I was so irritated at the user unfriendliness and was wondering if it was worth spending the bomb of currency notes on it ....

Then I remembered that AJ had a older version of a similar handset, and this weekend (14 May 2011) when I pinged him, I asked him if he could help me on....... and there started our virtual paired testing :)

We set onto identifying what he had on his handset over skype chat and I tried to see if I could replicate or find some near about alternative to what he was suggesting ........ he built up scenarios for me based on his user experience and I tried to see if I could replicate it over my new handset with new functionalities and modules..... visa-versa I told him of my user needs and he tried to initiate it on his cell and tell me the scenario which I again tried to replicate.
The first trap I unearthed was that I cannot access coz the software's pre-installed on my handset are old ones and the new apps don't support them any more. AJ suggested that I needed to set up an application that will help me access all that I needed from a single screen. AJ further suggested I use snaptu for it as he found that very comfortable. He sent me a link and I downloaded and installed it up.......it was an older version and after installation, I had to again upgrade it up...... but then started my series of unearthing multiple user unfriendly scenarios and setting each one of them up as per my need......

The worst of all traps was that my logical thinking and the way the mobile functionalities are mapped had no sync. For example : I assume gmail to be a social networking, but the system accepts it as 'utilities'.... with this experience, I expected  hotmail also to be 'utilities'..... but found it is under 'entertainment' .....yahoo mail and You Tube was also found there .....
Also found that Yahoo and Hotmail were listed under 'news' too :(

Long and short of it ... had to really spend time looking for navigations that were not so logical in approach ....

And finally after 3 weeks of buying the handset I am operational in mobile over my required net access on the move :)

Does it help being / (posing) as ignorant ?

Surprised to see the title ??

 

......the truth is "YES" it helps ...at least my experience says "YES" for me.....

 

Learning :

 

As I started growing up the career ladder, my responsibilities started to take new dimensions professionally..... and a very important lesson I learnt with this progression was to retain my urge to learn and learn more.

 

The day ego takes a higher place and you think that now you know most of all ....... you start your down fall on learning..... this also impacts on you holistically as a person as you are closed towards imbibing anything new coming your way.

 

One of the key approaches I take today towards new projects coming on my plate is to reuse my existing knowledge and experiential learning. The second is to improve on my existing knowledge.

Traps :

 

But much before I took to these approaches as practice, there were some attitudinal traps that I fell into. Some of them were 

1. I know it all :
2. What new can I learn beyond this ?
3. Everything is similar in this field, what will be the new challenge ?
4. If I can do it one way, I can do the other too

 Relating it practically as -

• As soon as I see a work item-I think this is easy job and 'X' # of artifacts and learning's from my last project can be reused here. No considerable thought at start point was given to the rework involved in customization of these reusable artifacts
• Oh! this is so easy and similar to what has been handled earlier by me
• This is the same old technology what can be the challenge here ?

Believe me ...... once the project started and we started to get deep into work ...was when I realized that though things are similar; use same old technology but the implementation and the legacy system handling always makes it different. To add to the complexity is the system architecture which will define the complexity in its own way.
Many a times I also realized that reuse was futile and total waste of effort trying to re-engineer. Ultimately it was only my learning that helped me craft and structure things better in the new environment.

An approach of playing "ignorant" also helped me ask most of the wrong questions at the right places and hence helped me identify my roadblocks much in advance than I actually would have.

Now ....big or small ...new or old ......each time I get something on my plate.....
My approach is the same ......
Oh!! new work..........Let's EXPLORE !!


..............and I am still improving and working on sharpening my skill sets.

The Pear Tree & Testing !!

An interesting story I read recently and it relates so much to the testing .........
If you are passionate about testing ....you can relate every word to some activity you do as a tester ....including the lessons learnt !!

The Pear tree!!


There was a man who had four sons. He wanted his sons to learn not to judge things too quickly. So he sent them each on a quest, in turn, to go and look at a pear tree that was a great distance away.

The first son went in the winter, the second in the spring, the third in summer, and the youngest son in the fall.

When they had all gone and come back, he called them together to describe what they had seen.
The first son said that the tree was ugly, bent, and twisted.
The second son said no it was covered with green buds and full of promise.
The third son disagreed; he said it was laden with blossoms that smelled so sweet and looked so beautiful, it was the most graceful thing he had ever seen.
The last son disagreed with all of them; he said it was ripe and drooping with fruit, full of life and fulfillment.

The man then explained to his sons that they were all right, because they had each seen but only one season in the tree's life.

He told them that you cannot judge a tree, or a person, by only one season, and that the essence of who they are and the pleasure, joy, and love that come from that life can only be Measured at the end,when all the seasons are up.

Lessons learnt :
If you give up when it's winter, you will miss the promise of your spring, the beauty of your summer, fulfillment of your fall!!

Don't let the pain of one season destroy the joy of all the rest!!

Don't judge life by one difficult season… don’t judge a person by one single incident!!

Managing Traceability - yes / no ?

In my opinion, managing traceability is difficult especially if the product is very complex in architecture.


Though it is tough, I do not perceive it as impossible.

The only place this falls through the cracks is when the product starts to grow and people do not have time to maintain or reuse it efficiently and effectively.

One of the easiest ways to maintain it for the benefit of all groups in SDLC is to maintain it centrally. Have a few people team working very closely with architects who track each and every impact.

The methods to track can be either through something as simple as an xls or through various tools available in the market. BPM and BPT(Business Process Modeling and testing) can be one option.

A small tracker will need to be maintained further as a subset of traceability tracker to know proper coverage of: Positive tests, Negative Tests, Performance/Load/Stress, usability... etc ..etc based on your needs.

Learning's from Interview Board

Read an interesting post from Pari http://curioustester.blogspot.com/2010_07_01_archive.html
it reminded me of many interview panels that I have been part of ........
It is always so easy to be on the other side of the table ....you can ask anything and pass off with it.......and that is the imagination with which many an interviewee walk in ....... (BTW - I usually interview people with 8+ yrs of experience only)

Just like Pari resorted to asking a potential employee (I prefer referring them so till I do not reject them officially post an interview :)) if he could test a marker ....... I have used many similar simple examples like a coffee vending machine; swipe in/out machines; login on a home page;  etc

People are usually caught by surprise coz they come prepared for heavy questions with equally weighty answers :)

Where does it helps me ?

• To identify a genuine testers and ensure not a checker is hired
• Identify the concepts of the person
• Identify the gaps that he brings to table as a heavy weight in his thought process

Few easy areas (read traps) where people get confused and easily get caught are -

• Metrics and Measures - What are they collecting and reason to have them ?
• Software Testability and Usability
• Test Scenario and Test cases
• Test Oracle and Test Heuristic
• Why Automation ? - When and where to use it ? What is the thumb rule to decide on automation ?
• What are they doing now in their current job profile and why are they doing so ? Why did they not use an 'XYZ' approach ?
• Reliability of their test cases 
•  ..........

[You thought I'll leak my complete questioning skill here ;) ...who knows when I'll interview you next !!]

Long and short of it .......we seriously lack thinking testers amongst the community .......... there are also people who have achieved a lot but will still struggle when subjected to such questions ....

The testing community needs a lot of change in thought process and we need to be the change .....

Negative and Positive Test Cases

It was interesting conversation between James Bach and Michael Bolton last week over twitter where the topic was focused around - Negative and Positive Test Cases.

One of Michael's comment "When you read a newspaper, do you *count* the stories? Count good news stories vs. bad news stories?" ....made me think why we as testers get swayed to the thought of classifying our test cases in such a  manner .......

Yes, when I read a news paper ...I do not classify my stories nor count them but then what becomes so different when I write test cases ???

Putting my test manager's cap, the few immediate things / reasons that came up -

1. How do you ensure that you have your test scenarios totally covered ?
2. Can you maintain an exhaustive checklist ?
3. Or is it easier to classify them as negative and positive for the team to build easier understandability around what is expected from them ?
4. Does it take me away from micro management ?

In my opinion the completeness of test cases covering a scenario is bound by both the negative and positive aspects required to test. So based on my experience and assumptions I feel that it is the ease of tracking that has got these terms of negative and positive in the scene and somewhere the thought process got lost and it started to become more of a process meant for tracking and keeping a count rather than measuring the value add in totality.