Adam White

So here’s the thing. I’m on vacation for a month. My boss told me to disconnect from work completely – no emails, no blackberry, no nothing. So I did. I’ve been trying not chat with team members on msn. etc, etc, etc. And I’ve been successful at that (for the most part).

I failed at one thing though. I can’t disconnect from testing. It’s in my blood. It’s like a drug. I crave it. I get a rush when I’m learning, when I get in that tester mindset, and I’m interact with intellectually stimulating people.  People who think differently and don’t follow the herd.  Those who say wait a minute let’s look at what’s going on here. Testing is so much a part of what I do and what I’m so passionate about.

Ok Boss I can disconnect from day to day project demands and release schedules – Fine. But disconnect from testing? Forget it!! I can’t. Even with our new house I’m being a tester all the time if you take Weinberg’s definition “A tester is someone who knows things can be different”. House ownership has definitely taught me that things can be different.

Here are some examples of how I can’t get away from testing and i’m learning how things can be different.

I spent most of yesterday reading “The Gift of Time”. Then I spent some time thinking about James Bach’s

recent post on Quality is Dead. Do I agree with him or not? At first yes – but then no.  Still deciding. I can argue it either way. Maybe there is a blog post there for me.

Last night I had dinner with Rob Sabourin who is in town teaching his course for a client. If you ever need someone to get you pumped about testing just give Rob a shout! Having dinner with Rob is just so damn interesting. I know the conversation is interesting and valuable when I’ve started taking notes on the table. It’s even more interesting when I tear that paper off and bring it home with me for later reference.  Who else do you know of that can link software testing to Dr. Seuss. Who else can stand up on a stage and do a presentation called “What baseball taught me about software testing” or “What the the looney tunes taught me about software testing”. Rob can! He inspired me to write about Curious George as a tester. I got rejected by a magazine so I gave up on it.  I’m going to dust that piece off and put it on my blog.

Last year I was telling Rob about the link between my training at second city improv and testing. He told me I should write about it – which I did. I wrote up some thoughts but my inner critic got in my way and I didn’t put any more effort into it. I think it’s time to kick that critic in the ass – thanks Rob!

The energy Rob brings to the testing community is great. I’ve had the priviledge of attending his JIT (Just in Time testing) course as an auditor and also to bring him in to my company to do work on visual modeling. Great stuff. If you want to give your testers a kick of energy – have them do visual modeling with Rob. I promise they won’t look at things the same way afterwards.  My team definitely did not.

I found Michele Smith’s blog  from a link on James’ site. I liked what I saw so I read her recent posts. I found a link to pre-order Secrets of a Buccaneer Scholar, James’ new book from Amazon.  So I put that in my basket. Thanks Michele!

From her site I also found Michael Bolton ‘s article/presentation called “T he Two Futures Of Software Testing“.  I spent the whole morning devouring it, thinking about what he is saying.  I know Michael is at Novell this week at their Quality Summit 2009 and teaching RST afterwards. I hope it’s going well for him. 

I’ve been dusting off my testing skills with the help of Rypple and TinEye.

I’m having lunch tomorrow with a bunch of testers in Toronto. I love these conversations!!!

I’m so pumped about testing or should I say knowing things can be different. I often get this way when I’m at conferences where I can think about testing without day to day project demands.  I’ve got the better part of a whole month left to work on my testing skills! I feel like I am in a very fortunate place

The purpose of this entire exercise is to show how I would apply the heuristic test strategy model developed by James Bach

What follows in the post is the notes from my first testing session intended to show show my thought process during my exploration.

*Warning – I’m stepping out on a limb here. I’m putting my work out there for review. Keep in mind they are my notes and may not make sense to you. They aren’t edited for spelling mistakes, grammar or anything else. The notes were taking as a stream of consciousness while I was testing.

If you want to know more about session based testing check out the this write up

To accompany my notes I have a 60 minute video taken with BB Test assistant. I also have a few screenshots that I took. I will try to find a way to post these so that i’m mindful of bandwidth constraints.

# Charter: Explore Rypple functionality

# Tester: Adam K White

# Length: Normal

# Charter vs opportunity
100% charter

# Set-up
0

# Notes
Clicked link in email for account activation. Typed in a 52 character password. After putting in my password again to verify I was asked to invite contacts I was prompted with a page that asked me to watch a video to get started. It showed import contacts on this page as well. I would think import contacts should have been on the invite page for those who are familar with the functionality.

The main functionality seeems to be
- Get feedback
- Review feedback
- Give Feedback
- My Network

In the top frame we have
- Welcome, Adam
- Help
- Give Us feedback
- Logout

I will explore the functionalities within the get feedback area.

Get feedback has 3 sections

Section 1
What is your question?

Max Characters appear to be 140. The training video said 100. This is inconsistent. I would imagine they found that 100 characters is not enough. The text box that appears to allow 2 lines of text to accomodate 140 characters. I would assume 70 characters per line. Will test later.

There is an icon of lightbulb below the “What is your question text box” with a + sign at the bottom right of it. A mouse over shows a tool top of suggested questions. Click the button expands a list of canned questions.

Section 2
What is your question about?

Text box has the following text
<Select up to 3 attibutes, seperated by a comma. E.g. leadership, negotiating, communication>

There is a similar light bulb icon which upon clicking reveals key words such as
leadership, integrity, presentation, attitude, communication, more attributes

Clicking more attibutes reveals
delegation, vision, strategy, listening, reliability less attributes

Noticed the the L in Less attibutes in capitilized. Problem? Don’t remember if the m in more attributes is capitalized. Clicking less attributes confirms that it is. Should it be? Something says to me that is should be. It’s consistent within itself but it violates something else. Will think about it.

No character max displayed
Section 3

How do you want to ask?

Two radio buttons
- Ask advisers through email
- Get a unique URL

There are two blue icons that seem to indicate information.

Just noticed them in the other sections as well.

Clicking gives a tooltip/fly out of information.

Text box is bigger than previous two. Appears to be 3 lines. No character max displayed

Can createa group from these advisors as well. Interesting functionality. I wonder how many people can be in a group of advisers.

—–

At the bottom of the 3 main sections there is a personalize your request, preview and create feedback request.
Personalize your request
- Shows a 3 line text box. Max appears to be 440 characters

Below the text box there is an arrow that reminds me of the undo arro in word or something similar to a back button in a browser. Mouse over shows a fly out saying “Reset personal message”. Seems to fit my expectations.

Preview
- Click preview says that need to enter at least one attribute. Thought this was strange. I expected it to ask me to enter a question first. Scrolling up I found that I had a question in there.

Removed question and clicked preview. Program prompted me to type a question. That meets my expecations.
Going to sumbit a question now.

Typed question “How would you test this program?”

Attributes “testing, listening, delegation”

I wonder if there is character max on the attributes – test for later

Unchecked rate these attributes

Started typing the emails of people i added earlier during invite session. They show up in a drop down while typing. Meets my expecations. If they didn’t show up I’d be disappointed.

Typed a personal message “I’d like your help in exploring this program. I’m testing it out for fun – not for profit. ”

Click Preview Shows a dialog. First line is a red circle with a white exclamation point in it. Text to the right of it says “Heads up. You’re one of two people being asked”

That’s odd – since I didn’t typ in my own email. Investigate later

Sumbitted my question. Dialog shows submitting and then success I think. Don’t rememeber and wasn’t taking a video.

Final page shows the date, my question, advisers asked, attributes, labels.

Not sure what this label business is about – investigate later.

Drop down box with “select action” is visible. text in box says add advisors, close request, send reminder.

There is a button called share feedback – will investigate later

There is a page divider and below it shows

No responses so far with links Download CSV, Expand All, Collapse all. Then button with Share feedback and back to listing.

These buttons seem to be duplicates of the ones from the top of the frame. Might make more sense once I’ve asked more questions and gotten feedback.

Going to stop this session now, clean up my notes and organize my findings

While typing up notes I noticed that I’m now in the review my feedback section.
# Issues/Things to follow up on
- Not being given the option to import contact right away after activating. I might have missed it. I have no way to reset my account to “new”. As a tester this would a useful tool to have. Often times I want to set my account back to a known state. Unfortunetly this doesn’t always work properly either.

Click Preview shows red circle with a white exclamation point in it. Text to the right of it says “Heads up. You’re one of two people being asked”. I wasn’t one of the two people being asked


# Test ideas
- Test for max characters in text boxes
- Research share feedback functionality
- Research labels under review my feedback.
- Explore download CSV functionality
- Explore Expand all and collapse all
- Create a workflow diagram of all the dialogs and their functionality.
- Find a way to do some automatic data input and exercise the workflow.

From my test ideas I have a set of new charters to explore. It took me roughly 60 minutes to get this basic list of ideas. From there there are a few different directions I can take. I can discuss the issues I found and I could prioritize my test ideas with them. Before I run off and operate the product more I can also jump off on a different thread. Stay tuned….

I did some exploring on their site and liked their premise “Get fast, honest, feedback from people you trust” 3 easy steps 1) Ask a question of people you trust  2) Get honest, private feedback 3) Use their feedback to improve. Sounds easy enough. I noticed that they are in beta so I thought I would sign up and try their product out.

I got a note saying it would be a few days before my account was set up. I sent them a note stating that I’d like to test their product for two reasons. I’m a Director of Software Testing who would like to get back in touch with hands on testing during vacation and secondly I really like the idea behind the product since I’m a Director of Testing and enjoy feedback. I got my activation within about an hour Sometimes it pays to ask.

I’ve been watching James Bach and Michael Bolton’s blog threads on their testing of IMVU. They have uncovered some things I find very interesting. Most of the items pointed out in IMVUs software turned out to be not important by IMVU’s standards and their impression of what end users want (and I got the impression that it wasn’t important to IMVU as a business either).

One thing I would like to see James and Michael blog about is how they could provide information to IMVU that was useful and important to them. What is that IMVU actually cares about in regards to its software? How does one go about discovering this information?

I decided I could demonstrate my process for discovering this type of information. I’ve been heavily influenced by James and Michael throughout my career and this seems like a great way to showcase those learnings applied to products most people can access.

What I will be posting over the next few days is my interpretation of the heuristic test strategy model and the principles of Rapid Software Testing applied to two applications I have been exploring. The first one is called TinEye from Idee and the second one is a product called Rypple 

I’m still forming notes – so stay tuned for my findings.

P.S – Thanks to those who wrote to give me a kick in the butt to remind me to write

Some people have asked me about my last two posts -Visiting Pacific Mall and Hot stone massage. I will admit they didn’t really fit in with the theme of the blog which has been 99% about testing or things related to testing.

To clarify – I was exploring the idea of documenting new experiences I had. As you can see the documentation of new experiences didn’t go very far. Or you might come to the conclusion that I have a boring life. I’m going to choose the former.

I’m going to make a commitment to write a blurb once a week – not necessarily focused on testing. This might make this a more interesting place for some of you. I hope that it brings added value for you.

I don’t know why I haven’t done this before. Hot stone massages are awesome!!! They work stones into a normal massage. It is amazing!

We had done relaxation massages with RMTs at this spot before. They have e room with dividers that they open up so the couple can see each other. It’s a great way to spend “quality time” with your significant other. There were at least 4 other couples there on Sunday.

My massage therapist also happened to be a reflexologist. When working on my shoulders which were very tight, she asked “Do you grind your teeth?” I responded that I clinch my jaw when I’m sleeping. She then proceeded to massage my jaw and scalp. My shoulder muscles then relaxed. It was amazing – I’ve never experienced something like that.

We were so relaxed afterwards that we both felt stoned. I wasn’t sure that I should drive because my reaction time was significantly slower. It’s amazing how you can go into somethign with a certain energy and come out feeling like a totally different person.

If you are interested in were we went check out Novo Spa in Yorkville. This area of town is generally known for it’s “upscale” (read: snotty) persona. There is none of that here – service is great and relaxing!

Neetu is in the market for new glasses. A friend gave her the idea that we should go to Pacific Mall to buy them. We (Neetu) decided to make the trek up the DVP to get “cheap glasses”. It was the first time either of us had been to this particular mall. It was a new experience. 

The Pacific Mall experience starts in the parking lot.  There are very few, if any, empty parking spaces. The only option is to sit in a row and wait for someone to leave.  This idea wasn’t that cool with me so I kept driving around looking for a spot. This isn’t such a bright idea since there is so much traffic – vehicle and pedestrian. In my frustration of driving around this huge freakin’ parking lot I went down a row that was a dead end.  As I turned around someone happened to be leaving so I slipped in their spot but not before someone from the other direction tried (and failed) to get in the spot.

The entrance of the mall is home to a variety of smells – some good and not so good. The first visual thing we noticed is the size of the stores. There are so many stores in such tight quarters. Most stores are no bigger than our bedroom. It’s an experience just walking down the aisle where you’ll find clothing stores next to food stores selling squid and other “exotic” munchies, next to stores selling bootleg DVDs.

It was quite easy to find the store we were looking for – Optic Zone – by following the “street signs”. The other sign was the 50% sale. People were packed in like sardines. One salesperson started showing Neetu  frames – the pile must have grown 30 deep at one point.  After picking out the top 3 we got it down to the pair that she would go with. I mentioned that one of the reasons that the frames are so cheap is that they are knock-offs. She didn’t agree so that proves they aren’t knock offs. I’ve learned that part quickly enough after getting married .  

While shopping around we got hungry. When in a place you aren’t used to and given a wide range of choices what do you do? Go to the place with the biggest line up right? Well The Golden Regency had the biggest line-up so we figured it must be good. Well – the “Line equls good” heuristic is just that and heuristics are fallable. This being our first experience with an “authentic” Chinese food place we were pretty excited.

The person who seated us gave us 3 pieces of paper and a pencil and then walked away. Apparantley we are supposed to do something with this. The papers appeared to have checkboxes. Hey – I’ve played this game before! Finally someone comes over to the table to bring us green tea. We start to verbally tell her what we want. I guess this isn’t a good thing. She reluctantly picks up the card and starts to draw pictures on it.  Nobody ever picked up the paper but food got delivered to our table.

We ordered spring rolls, hot and sour soup, chicken fried rice, and beef noodles.  We were expecting very tasty and vibrant dishes. What we got was a sub-par meal. $40 and a huge disappointment later we were still hungry. It was neccessary to take the rest of the food so we didn’t “offend them”. We took the box to go but promptly dumped it in the first garbage can.

As we shopped around some more we found the heritage part of the mall. Really neat stuff in that area. Samurai swords, beautiful paintings, and some other speciality type stores. We wound up buying a gift for someone for Christmas. All-round amazing part of the mall. This is also where the food court is. I think we would have had better luck getting something quick from here.

As we walked through the heritage area a terrific smell kept hitting us. We couldn’t place it until we took one turn and found 3 Asian women in front of griddles. Turns out what we smelled was egg waffle. We bought one and scarfed it down. It was delicious!!!

As we left the mall the sweet smell of moth balls hit us in the face. Hoards of people were standing just outside the door. Part of me wondered – are they trying to get away from the moth balls?

Jazz music at the Diesel Playhouse? That’s an odd venue. I didn’t expect to see jazz there. When I first saw the advertisement in the Globe and Mail I thought it sounded interesting but I didn’t have high hopes. I was worried that Happy Fingers – A Tribute to the Piano would be $20 wasted. I was so pleasantly surprised by what I saw and heard that we went back for the 3rd show of the 4 part series.  You definitely don’t want to miss the 4th and final show on Sunday April 13 at 2:00 p.m..

Happy Fingers is hosted by Jamyz Bee from Jazz.FM91 and sponsored by Remenyi house of music who provided the pianos as well as Wild Horse Canyon who supplied the wines. It’s great to see a new generation of jazz lovers taking in such a wonderful line up of musicians. At the first show the under 30 crowd was non-existent but at the third show there were definitely a lot more young faces in the crowd.

The show begins with 4 or 5 performers doing 10 minute sets of their own music or their interpretations of other people’s songs. During the sets I found a few of the songs hard to follow. There didn’t see to be a rhythm I could tap my finger to. It must be my immature jazz palette. The interpretations of the songs can bring on really strong – Happy, Sad, Excited. Joe Sealy played a song that he had written for his mother. My fiance was so touched by the story he told and the song that tears started to stream down her cheeks. Robert Scott was another performer who told a few great stories before starting to play. It made me feel like I was getting to the know the artist a little bit better.

Diesel playhouse provides a great way to get up close and personal with the musicians.  During intermission patrons and musicians congregate in the hall, near the bar of course. By watching the musicians interact with the guests I got the sense that there was a “jazz crowd”. A group of people that know everyone in the jazz scene. I overheard stories of people who had travelled from the coasts of Canada to come see the show.  It was really great to see and hear. Have the musicians around made it feel like a intimate and private event. After the intermission improvisation starts. I wasn’t sure what to expect. Improv and piano? I thought improv was only for second city.

I’m not a jazz pro but I do know a thing or two about improv. The duets are an amazing display of improvisation applied to jazz piano. At the first Happy Fingers show John Sherwood and Thompson Egbo Egbo were the first to take the stage. What energy! What passion! They were definitely in tune with each other. They made strong eye contact through the whole set. A piece of wisdom I learned at the Second City about making successful improv scenes. They were definitely in the zone to the point that they switched pianos in the middle. The song never missed a beat. It was fun to watch their intensity and how they would watch each other all the while figuring out where to go next just by listening and watching. It was a great showing of giving and taking focus.

At The Second City you practice giving and taking focus through specifically designed exercises. Another improv key is to Yes And offers. This essentially means don’t block your partner. When they say “you have big tooth brush” you go with the tooth brush and don’t change it to “Well it’s actually a toothpick” I could see Yes And happening between the piano players. Even more interesting I could hear it when an offer was strong and someone applied the “Yes And” theory and then took the sound to a whole new level.  At the end of the show all the musicians went out to sign autographs and talk more with patrons. I had a chance to talk with John Sherwood about his duet. “Listening is key – you have to pay attention to what your partner is doing. If you stop listening they you both look bad”. That’s another lesson you learn in second city improv; you exist to make your partner look good. John also commented that “The scaffolding is already there – you know the chords – C minor, G, A -. All the work has been done for us before. We are just putting up new dry wall.”

Getting to talk to the musician after the show really showed their uniqueness. Everything about them is unique. The way they enter the stage, what they say before they start performing, how they bow after their set. Even the way they let you know song is done. Some put their hands down, some look to the crowd. The variety of movements, gestures and facial expressions made me wonder what they are thinking about when they are playing. Sometimes their faces looked as if they were in pain with every key they played.  Other times it looked like they were on top of the world.

I would highly recommend taking in the last show coming up on April 13. It is an awesome way to spend a cold winter sunday afternoon. My fiance and I left feeling relaxed, mellow and energized all at the same time. It’s a great first date spot or just something fun and different to do. The price is right at $20 a ticket.

“Official” Advertisement

April 13 2pm
Diesel Playhouse / 56 Blue Jays Way 416.971.5656
HAPPY FINGERS: A TRIBUTE TO THE PIANO ($20)
 
It’s the birthday of Happy Fingers host/creator Jaymz Bee, this piano tribute will also feature special guest vocalists such as Lyne Tremblay, Sonya Cote and Sophia Perlman. Six piano greats are featured: Adam Makowicz, Adrean Farrugia, David Restivo, Waylen Miki, Elizabeth Shepherd and Robert Scott will perform on a Steinway grand piano (courtesy of Remenyi House of Music).
Tickets are $20 at the door or in advance, but why risk it? GET YOUR TICKETS NOW: dieselplayhouse.com or toll free 1.877.971.5656 

 Links
www.egbo.ca
www.johnsherwood.ca
www.dieselplayhouse.com
www.jazz.fm
www.remenyi.com
www.wildhorsewinery.com
www.timelymanor.ca

Warning – 3/4 finished thought.

In the event of an unknown or unexpected system behavior in the software world – the test plan documents mean nothing.

When we develop our testing strategy we do two things – outline what we WILL  test AND what we are NOT going to test. The latter is always one of the hardest to figure out, explain and do effectively.  A close relationship with development is required. Trust from both sides is crucial. Expert knowledge of the system and how changes affect it is required. 95% of the time this process works but other times it backfires. It is usually the unknowns that screw us.

For project X a lead tester wrote a test plan document to satisfy project stakeholders. The document brought up lots of good questions and discussion. The one section that got a fair amount of discussion was the “Not going to test” section. We explicitly stated that PERFFORMANCE would NOT be TESTED. We would eyeball the performance (web based UI connected to our 4 year old core server technology) and not provide a formal analysis of request/response times. Why take this approach? We had done load testing with a shipping release build 1 month prior. We got benchmarks, provided this info to development and discussed the risks. Everything looked good. There was no reason for any of us to suspect performance problems.  Everyone agreed “There should be no reason we would have performance problems”. All project stakeholders “signed off” on the test plan. 

What do you think the single biggest problem found while testing?

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I mentioned that I would post more about the acquisition of PlateSpin by Novell. I’ve been delayed in doing tihs because there isn’t that much to report. We are being told that it’s business as usual and that’s what it’s turning out to be. Novell hasn’t had a strong presence in the development area – although this isn’t true for other areas like sales and professional services (from what I can see). There hasn’t been any fall-out or mass exodus of employees. 

I’ve heard people talk about acquisitions like the exodus is the “norm” either because it’s a technology acquisition and the acquirer doesn’t keep the employees or because they are scared that will happen. There have been little rumors going around about this person or that person leaving but nothing can directly link to the acquisition.

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