The Curious Behaviour: Devious by Design or a Tester's Best Friend?

You can check out my latest blog piece on this subject, examining the relationship of curiosity with testing and what impact it can have on a tester and their behaviour too when they behave in a curious fashion!

Click the following link to view the article via the Ministry of Testing's website… The Curious Behaviour

Let's Test 2013: Sweden - Experience Report

This year I had the opportunity to attend the Let’s Test testing conference in a location not too far from Stockholm in Sweden. The idyllic Scandinavian backdrop for this conference assisted with creating the kind of environment that other testers have told me is unique to Let’s Test, one in which there seems to be a conspicuous absence of cliques and ego that I had been told is often quite present at some of the other bigger test conferences throughout the globe, resultantly creating an environment that seemed both friendly and laid back.

This friendly environment that I experienced definitely provided the event with more of a community-driven feel, with many a tester that I encountered more than happy to just have a chat or just hang out. This same more inclusive nature is reflected in the talks themselves, where every talk included the requirement for an ‘open’ part. These open sessions required the presenters for each talk to put aside a specific period of time with each talk that invited an open discussion from those attending, but they also often contained friendly banter and related conversations which sprung up from these open sessions too.

This more open environment though was hardly the only merit of this conference, more importantly, and what brought many of the people (and even speakers) there was the more progressive nature of the talks themselves. Rather than just having talks that got lost in academics, technicalities or discussions about specific practices there were a significant number of talks that focused on ideas and perspectives. More specifically, and where I felt there was the greatest value to be found, was the re-framing of specific ideas and perspectives.

Various of the talks that I attended brought up subjects that reflected ideas of my own but presented those ideas in a new light, re-framing those same ideas. The power of re-framing is a skill that has great value to the craft of testing (but is also a skill that has value that extends way beyond the craft too). The reason for this is that the ability to appropriately frame an idea or perspective can be the distinctions between the ability to successfully advocate / sell an idea or have it fall on deaf ears. 

So much of the effectiveness of the testing craft can be measured by our ability to communicate ideas and have those ideas understood. Given this, having a new way to frame an existing idea provides the tester with another potential approach for sharing the idea with others. In addition to this, an idea that has been re-framed in a way that connects with other testers has a greater potential to spread and be adopted by those testers.

Whilst the conference did have a focus on the ideas from the Context Driven Community, I found that numerous of the ideas aligned with my own ideas or presented variations of my own ideas, ideas that I had independently developed, yet I still found common grounds here.

The conference also held Test Labs sessions run by James Lyndsay that provided a fun hands on way to do some actual testing, without any real formalities and in an environment that was not too serious, but gave testers an opportunity to flex their skill without having to burn too many brain cells in the process!

For any tester looking for a conference with some progressive ideas on testing, an opportunity for an honest and open dialogue on the subject and a pretty sweet location I’d definitely recommend checking it out next year either in Australia (for the first time) or back over in Europe.

The Assumption Bias and Testing: How Does It Influence You?

When testing a product, I aim to perform the kind of testing that will cover all of the areas that I believe are of value to the business. There have been times in my own testing where I have discovered only later in the piece additional areas to cover, areas that I had not originally thought to scope in due to assumptions of my own. Whilst I have been grateful to pick up on such things before the product ships, there always remained the risk that should there be a failure to do so, or should there be issues which arise around it later in the piece, this may impact the ability to deliver the product on time and to the expected specification.

Contrary to what some might assume, this is not a product of inexperience, but is instead a product of becoming so familiar with something you are testing, often based on extensive experience with testing similar things (and where the tester holds an extensive level of domain knowledge), that this increased level of confidence can impact our perspectives with the testing that we perform.

We can try and shape our perspectives by taking a focus on the bigger picture through asking questions, questions that guide the tester as to what knowledge about the product may offer the greatest value for the business. We can then use this information to help guide us with what areas to focus on when we are testing too.

This however still does not eliminate these assumptions we hold when performing this task. This is because it too remains an externally facing exercise, as we tend to not include ourselves as completely within the equation when performing such analysis.

The issues that stem from this are comparable to something that is labelled tacit knowledge. Tacit knowledge represents knowledge that is shared on a social level, but has not yet been documented so as to exist, at least on some level, in an explicit form.

Like tacit knowledge there exists an undocumented aspect, an aspect that can equally be influenced by the social, but in this case is much more centric to the individual. In these circumstances it relates to the absence of an evaluation of the biases and the assumptions that we bring to the table when performing test design and evaluating what we feel to be relevant test coverage.

If we take the time to first analyse and document these biases and assumptions before launching in and evaluating what testing we are looking to perform, we can use this knowledge to help shape our testing, so that what is and is not covered is no longer as influenced by such factors.

Such information gives us an opportunity to identify additional areas where test coverage might have otherwise been missed, and it becomes an additional source that we can utilise for future test planning too. In addition it serves as an opportunity to gain a greater awareness and understanding of these influences that we hold too.

Taking this very human element and being mindful of it and its influences, when creating test plans, can assist with giving us greater confidence that the testing we perform will be less likely to fall short due to such influences. This then helps us achieve the kind of coverage that can better assist with the delivery of a quality product.