Adam White

Michael Hunter, of Braidy Tester fame, posted a challenge on his blog. He showed a parking sign photo and asked how many different ways it could be interpreted. I decided to take 45 minutes during one of our weekly test team meetings and try it out. What the hell does this have to do with testing you might ask? Well - thanks for asking. Here is how it relates for me

• Idea generation – we always need to generate new ideas for testing
• Clarification – requirements are mostly ambiguous and this was practice at clarifying them.
• Sharing and discussion of ideas – “It could be interpreted this way” which lead to someone else saying “Yes and this way too” - Team work, supportive attitude with a focus on sharing.
• Time boxing so we don’t get carried away - Important in testing and just about anything else
• Coming up with alternate solutions/problem solving – It’s good to be seen as a problem solver instead of “Bearer of Bad News”

Needless to say we had a great time doing this activity. I time boxed the idea generation to 15 minutes and then had about 15 minutes of discussion.  We used index cards to write down our ideas. We went around the room and each person read an idea from their card. We ran into some duplicate ideas but that was ok – we weren’t focused on having every idea be unique. The puprose was to put on our “thinking caps”

Now it’s easy to take an idea and tear it to shreds.  To quote Edward De Bono in The Thinking Course “..critical destuction of one hypothesis has never produced a better one. It is creativity that produce the better hypothesis.” As a follow up challenge I asked the team to come with a sign that wasn’t ambigous. We explored some great ideas and had a great discussion. A few of the ideas and designs came out to be really clear and (mostly) unambiguous (I’ll have to get them and post it with this article.) The discussion was going so well that it actually went over time and into lunch.

Here are the results which were summarized by Aqiqul Hoda and Michael Hetmanczuk. The participants were Adam White, Alan Walker, Ali Khan, Aqiqul Hoda, Christy Gnanapragasam, Herb Bal, Joseph Kubik, Michael Hetmanczuk, Mortaza Abhari, Thomas Yook and Zhe Chen

1. Can park for 2 hrs from Mon to Sat between 7AM to 6PM.
2. If you have Zone 4 Permit you could park as long as you want.
3. No Limits of parking on Sundays and Holidays.
4. No Parking for Zone 4 permit vehicles.
5. No parking on Sun and holidays.
6. No parking in the Night.
7. Zone 4 permit vehicles parking only between 6 PM to 7 AM and Sun and
holidays.
8. 2 hr parking this side of street.
9. 2 hr parking both side of street.
10. 2 hr parking from this sign onward.
11. Parking at 6PM allowed can go past 6 PM for 2 hrs.
12. Parking once a day only.
13. Zone permits vehicles parking only after hrs but not on sun and
holidays.
14. Zone permit sign maynot be related to parking.
15. 2 hours limit parking between 7am and 6pm on days except Sunday and
Holiday.  Above has exception by Zone 4 permit means Zone 4 permit could
park at anytime
16. Board number 2: hour parking
17. Is the #2 the sign ID or does it indicate 2 hours?
18. Can we park during other ours or only 7 AM – 6 PM
19. Where is the sign?
20. Does it mean I can park from 6 AM – 7 PM?
21. Hol?  What qualifies as a holiday?
22. Does this apply to bikes?
23. Except sun/holiday means on Sunday and holidays – no parking at all
24. On sunday/holiday you can park all day
25. On sunday/holiday the 2 hour limit is lifted, but parking is only
allowed from 7 AM to 6 PM.
26. Zone 4 permit means you can park all the time.
27. Zone 4 permit means you can park 7 AM – 6 PM.
28. Except Zone 4 permit means you can’t park at all if you have a zone
4 permit.
29. Except Sun/Holiday: means only those with a zone 4 permit can park
on sun/holiday.
30. Could be interpreted as 1 hour parking.  The #2 could be something
else, i.e. street number, parking spot.
31. Except sun-holiday: starts on sunday, ends on a holiday.
32. What is a zone 4 permit?  Do I automatically get one?
33. Does that mean I can park long on sunday-holiday?
34.  Maximum of 2 hour parking allowed between 7 AM and 6 PM except
sunday or holiday.
35. If you have zone 4 permit pass you can park the car anytime.
36. Within this zone, a maximum of 4 vehicles are permitted to park.
37. The #2 indicates it is a second sign that indicates “hour parking”
zone between 7 AM and 6 PM except on sundays, holidays.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, January 8th, 2008 at 5:02 PM and is filed under Testing. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.