Walking the Talk

Presented at https://www.onlinetestconf.com/program-spring-otc-2020/ Sometimes you’re asked to start testing in a context that is not ideal: you’ve only just joined the project, the test environment is broken, the product is migrating to a new stack, the developer has left, no-one seems quite sure what’s being done or why, and there is not much time. Knowing where to begin and what to focus on can be difficult and so in this talk I’ll describe how I try to meet that challenge. I’ll share a definition of testing which helps me to navigate uncertainty across contexts and decide on a starting point. I’ll catalogue tools that I use regularly such as conversation, modelling, and drawing; the rule of three, heuristics, and background knowledge; mission-setting, hypothesis generation, and comparison. I’ll show how they’ve helped me in my testing, and how I iterate over different approaches regularly to focus my testing. The takeaways from this talk will be a distillation of hard-won, hands-on experience that has given me * an expansive, iterative view of testing * a comprehensive catalogue of testing tools * the confidence to start testing anything from anywhere

How to Test Anything

We Don't Know?

People problems

Testers are said to be advocates for the customer, but when do most testers come face to face with a real-life customer? I don’t mean internal stakeholders, but the people at the sharp end of things, the ones actually using the software. Rarely, I find. Which is why it can be a SHOCK! to be asked to participate in a customer support call. It’s an unusual situation, there’s pressure, the customer is watching, something needs fixing, and there’s a deadline ... of yesterday. Gulp. But don’t worry! You’re on the call because a colleague values your input. Perhaps you’re great at analysis, or lateral thinking, or problem-solving. Maybe you have deep knowledge of your product, or the whole ecosystem, or the historical angle. You could be there for questions, or answers, or honesty when you don’t have either. These kinds of tools from your testing toolbox are valuable on support calls and in this talk I’ll say how and why. I’ll also give an intro to customer support, talk about how to prepare for calls, what to do during and after them, and - importantly - what you can take away personally, for your product, and for your team. From SoftTest 2018, http://softtest.ie/wp-content/uploads/2018/08/SoftTest_Programme_2018_20180829.pdf

When Support Calls

Testing vs Chicken

Elisabeth Hendrickson’s book, Explore It!, contains this definition: “Tested = Checked + Explored”. When I read it, I was fascinated. “What does that mean?”, I asked myself, “what does it /really/ mean?” This talk described the journey I undertook to understand it, and other definitions of testing that I found along the way, and then to come up with a new definition that filled the gaps I saw in the others, without losing the aspects of them that I felt were valid and useful. Essentially, I formalised what testing is for me. And, now that I have my definition, I can ask myself in any given situation whether my actions are consistent with the way I believe I want to behave.

James thomas

There is a perceived tension between theory and practice, and between theorists and practitioners. In this talk, we will propose and illustrate using a practical example that practice generates data and theory is the data which we care about. Rather than focusing on theory over practice or practice over theory, a choice of theory, practice, or both is driven by the data needed for a particular task and contextual factors.

Theoreticus Prime vs Praktikertron

Slides from my talk at CEWT #3, http://qahiccupps.blogspot.co.uk/2016/11/testing-all-way-down-and-other.html The idea that testing is or can be a recursive activity - or even fractal - has some currency. In that view, a test or experiment generates some data, which suggests new experiments, which generate some data, which suggest new experiments and so on. The kinds of activities being done at each stage will be self-similar and testing is used as a kind of microscope to focus in on some aspect of the system under test. Testing all the way down. In this talk, I'll instead view testing as a number of different instruments that can be used in an arbitrary number of dimensions. Further, I'll suggest that testing can be applied not only to a system, but to descriptions of that system, to models of that system, to abstractions of that system, to a system which is testing that system, and to a system which is testing the system which is testing that system. And so on. It's testing all the way round. I'll finish by proposing a definition of testing that I think might capture this wide applicability.

Testing All the Way Down, and Other Directions

What is What is Professional Testing?

I consider whether we as testers can be too closed-minded in our attitudes, whether there are schools of thought or approaches that, even if we care deeply about context, we are very unlikely even to consider and perhaps that we sometimes favour our reputation over giving ourselves the chance to do the best job that we can. From CEWT#2, http://cewtblog.blogspot.co.uk/2016/02/cewt-2-abstracts.html

Bug-Free Software? Go For It!

My presentation from EuroSTAR 2015: Your testing is a joke. Or, rather, some parts of some of the testing done by some people reading this will be somewhat analogous to some subset of what some people would accept as jokes. Sometimes. Language can be tricky like that. And that’s one of the things that makes it such a productive tool for jokes, and such a flawed tool for specification. Edward de Bono, in his Lateral Thinking books, makes a strong connection between humour and creativity. Creativity is a key to testing, but jokes? Well, the punchline for a joke could be a violation of some expectation, the exposure of some ambiguity, an observation that no one else has made, or just making a surprising connection. Jokes can make you think and then laugh. But they don’t always work. Does that sound familiar? At Linguamatics we have a weekly caption competition. I wondered what my process for creating entries was and as I spent more time thinking about it, I started to notice parallels with the way that I think about how I test. For instance, I might take each of the key entities in the picture and “factor” them – generate a list of features, related concepts, synonyms and so on. In testing I might then look for overlapping factors for potentially interesting test ideas, in the quest for a caption I might try to use the same approach to find an ambiguity and hence a joke. In this talk I’ll take a genuine joke-making process and de-construct it to make comparisons between aspects of joking and concepts from testing such as the difference between a fault and a failure, oracles, heuristics, factoring, modelling testing as the exploration of a space of possibilities, stopping strategies, bug advocacy and the possibility that a bug, today, in this context might not be one tomorrow or in another. Yes, there will be some jokes in the session. And I’ll try explain why the groans you’ll hear are a good sign too.

Your Testing is a Joke

My talk delivered at the UK Test Management Forum on 2015-07-29. http://uktmf.com/?q=node/5283 As a test manager I don't test as much as I'd like to so I try to find ways to stay loose and ready for those occasions where I get the chance. In this talk I'll describe one activity based on joking that I think can fit the bill. How? Well, the punchline for a joke could be a violation of some expectation, the exposure of some ambiguity, an observation that no one else has made, or just making a surprising connection. Jokes can make you think and then laugh. But they don't always work. Does that sound familiar? It started with the weekly caption competition at Linguamatics where I noticed parallels in my approach to it and testing. For instance, I might take each of the key entities in the picture and "factor" them - generate a list of features, related concepts, synonyms and so on. In testing I might then look for overlapping factors for potentially interesting test ideas, in the quest for a caption I might try to use the same approach to find an ambiguity and hence a joke. Doing this, I've found analogies between joking and concepts from testing such as oracles, heuristics, factoring, stopping strategies, bug advocacy and the possibility that a bug, today, in this context might not be one tomorrow or in another. I'm interested to find out from the audience what things they "just do" that they feel helps them.

You're Having a Laugh

It's Like That

ScyllaDB has the potential to deliver impressive performance and scalability. The better you understand how it works, the more you can squeeze out of it. But before you squeeze, make sure you know what to monitor! Watch our experienced Postgres developer work through monitoring and performance strategies that help him understand what mistakes he’s made moving to NoSQL. And learn with him as our database performance expert offers friendly guidance on how to use monitoring and performance tuning to get his sample Rust application on the right track. This webinar focuses on using monitoring and performance tuning to discover and correct mistakes that commonly occur when developers move from SQL to NoSQL. For example: - Common issues getting up and running with the monitoring stack - Using the CQL optimizations dashboard - Common issues causing high latency in a node - Common issues causing replica imbalance - What a healthy system looks like in terms of memory - Key metrics to keep an eye on This isn’t “Death-by-Powerpoint.” We’ll walk through problems encountered while migrating a real application from Postgres to ScyllaDB – and try to fix them live as well.

More from James Thomas (14)

Exploring with Automation

How to Test Anything

We Don't Know?

People problems

When Support Calls

Testing vs Chicken

James thomas

Theoreticus Prime vs Praktikertron

Testing All the Way Down, and Other Directions

What is What is Professional Testing?

Bug-Free Software? Go For It!

Your Testing is a Joke

You're Having a Laugh

It's Like That

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