1.
Today’s webinar is presented by Graham Thomas and he will
discuss 10 Great but now Overlooked Tools
Welcome to the EuroSTAR May
Webinar Series
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This webinar is due to start at 2pm. Make sure you stick around at the end for the
Q&A session and continue the conversation with the speaker on Twitter after the
show!
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2.
10 Great but now Overlooked Tools
Graham Thomas, Independent Software Testing Consultant, UK
“I wrote my first computer program at college in 1978. Started working in IT in the early 1980s as a
programmer, and discovered software testing in the early 1990s since when I have not looked back. I have formal
qualifications in programming, analysis and design, project management and software testing.
I have worked for a large consultancy, several smaller management consultancies, and also for a systems house, as
well as various end users. I have wide ranging experience of IT, development and software testing, covering the
public sector, retail, finance, banking insurance and treasury.
Currently I work as either a program test manager or implementing testing change. Prior to this I worked as a test
manager.
I am frequent and popular speaker at testing seminars and conferences around the world. I won the 2006 BCS
SIGiST Best Presentation award, and have given time to conference programme committees, presentation review
panels, and testing award deliberations.”
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3.
Join the conversation on Twitter
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Continue the conversation with the speaker on Twitter after the show!
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4.
Graham Thomas
Independent Software Testing Consultant
10 Great but now Overlooked Tools
Webinar
2:00pm
28th May 2013
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5.
Background
On the coach back from the EuroSTAR Gala Dinner in
2011:
 Don‟t do all that Stuff I said 5 years ago
 Do this now
But, but, but . . . .
As we were talking I realised how many simple and
effective tools I no longer used, because they had either
become overlooked or we don‟t use them because they
are redundant.
I wondered if these tools were worth looking at
again – starting with my flowcharting template; I
realised it is a great tool which I have overlooked for
too long.
So let‟s set the record straight, build a list of overlooked
tools, put it on a Mind Map, and share it with the
community afterwards, or even as we do it?
And if there are tools we have forgotten, then surely
there are tools we should forget! I wonder what they
might be?
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6.
At the EuroSTAR Conference
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I first made this presentation at EuroSTAR 2012 in Amsterdam.
The conference theme was „Innovation and Renovation‟.
For Renovation I was very clearly talking about tools that we
had overlooked and could maybe use again.
For Innovation I challenged myself to deliver the
presentation, which also included two mind-mapping
sessions, using a Raspberry PI.
A what?
The Raspberry Pi is a $35 credit card sized computer that runs
a version of Linux. http://www.raspberrypi.org/
This was not easy but on the day it looked seamless.
Unfortunately we can‟t use the Raspberry Pi today . . . . . . .

7.
 Introduction
 A general moan
 Tools we have
forgotten
 Tools we should
forget
 Summary
 Questions
Agenda for the Session

8.
A General Moan
It is an odd subject, overlooked tools. It sort of lends itself to a
good old blast of Nostalgia. Things were better in my day, back
when it was hard.
And now it is all too easy, etc. etc. etc.
Well, I am not going to moan in that way.
I think I am more productive than I have ever been in the
workplace.
Things that were really hard 5, 10, 20, plus years ago are really
easy now.
The level of platform integration we have today is frightening.
I have cloud storage (Dropbox) on my phone.
But yet, with all of this obvious advance I still see people
struggling with the basics, which is worrying that in our industry
we still haven‟t put this in place yet.
Obviously we have a way to go to mature.
But for now lets look at some tools that have fallen into disuse
and may be ripe for resurrection!
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9.
My list of Tools we have forgotten
1. Flowcharts
2. Prototypes
3. Project Plans
4. Mind Maps
5. Tools we already have at our disposal like ....
(I will suggest some)
6. Aptitude Tests
7. Hexadecimal Calculators
8. Desk Checking
9. Data Dictionaries
10. Workbenches
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10.
Flowcharts
Have you ever seen one?
Ever used one?
Who has ever drawn a
flowchart?
They are making a comeback
o In a User Manual to outline
support process
It is so easy to do
o Pencil
o Template
oter>
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11.
Flowcharts
Flowcharting
o Flow
o Process
o Logic
o Dry run
o Write code from
o Easily understood
o But easy to make mistakes!
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12.
Flowcharts 2.0
JSP - Structure Diagram
o Elegant, but not as easy
o Still make mistakes
o Much harder when multiple
processes
o Designed for file processing
o But I think led to the demise of
flowcharts
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13.
Flowcharts vs JSP
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14.
Flowcharts
As it says in the advert – “Still
Working”.
Yes, surprising as it may
seem, flowcharts still work.
In fact remarkably
well, considering they teach the
basics of logic, which one would
think was essential for most forms
of programming.
And they are pictorial, easy to
draw, after learning only a few
simple rules
AM I A Horse?
A helpful Flowchart
Start
How
many legs do
you have
?
Are
you a
Horse?
Stop
Can
you read and
write?
YesNo
Two Four
Yes No
Really?
Yes
No
You are
NOT
a horse!
Maybe
Liar you
are reading
this!
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15.
Prototypes
Remember when it took so long to build a
system that your steakholders wanted a look
before you did too much damage.
Of course, not everybody produced prototypes, but
what a useful tool they were.
I think that one of the real advantages they
gave, apart from design validation and
processing flow visualisation, was that you
could do early usability testing before you had
even cut any code.
I suspect that nowadays we are rushing so fast to
cut working code that examining in depth how the
system is going to be used just looks like a luxury.
And with so many apps now being Banged
Out™ as disposable commodities for phones, I
think we are further away than ever from
considering usability, and the other things that
we used to do with prototypes.
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3 basic types of Prototype
o Hollywood Set
o Functional but discarded so no bells
and whistles
o Functional basis for new system

16.
Project Plans
When did these get abolished? I know
that engineers, who do like engineering
stuff, kinda still, like, use them!
And I don‟t mean plans in Excel, or worse still
PowerPoint.
I mean proper plans, with
scheduling, dependencies, effort and
resourcing.
Surely a skill that is even more in need
judging by IT‟s continued inability to deliver
anywhere near; on time, to budget or of the
desirous quality.
I was taught, decades ago in college, that
the US Military, fed up with how their
projects always went out of
control, invented the CPM (Critical Path
Method).
So why do we not use this 50+ year old tool
set? “Puzzles me greatly this does” (as
Yoda would say).
Gantt
Dependency Network
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17.
Mind Maps
You might think that I do nothing
else!
Or that Mind Maps are really popular and
are used all the time.
Well, (in my experience) they aren‟t.
I have attended too many
workshops, brain storming (can we say
this anymore) sessions, or creativity
meetings, where one of the primary tools
isn‟t used.
Not only isn‟t used, but isn‟t even
known about!
I use FreeMind, because it is, er, ….. Free!
Mappa Mundi
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18.
How to Mind Map
1. Start at the
centre of the page
2. Don‟t be serious
3. Free associate
4. Think as fast as
you can
5. There are no
boundaries
6. Don‟t judge too
fast
7. Go, go, go .....
8. Add relationships
and connections
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19.
Stuff that is already there
For people who can remember IT before we
all had a terminal on our desk, a personal
computer, a laptop, a phone with more
processing capacity and storage than
mainframe computers I have
used, or even a swishy, wishy, tablet, then
it may come as a surprise to know that it
wasn‟t always so, and some of the simplest
tools, like the Snipping Tool in Windows
7, would seem like science fiction only a
few short decades ago.
And there are so many more tools that just
aid productivity.
I wasted my best years doing these things
manually.
Most of these tools are free, and already
there, we don‟t use them, possibly because
we don‟t know about them!
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20.
Aptitude Tests
When I started in IT I had to sit an aptitude
test, to show that I had some reasoning and
logical thinking capability, before an employer
would invest hugely in training me, and then
letting me loose on their vastly expensive
computer systems.
Why has the industry stopped doing this? Was this
never a good thing? Mind you looking at some of the
people who did pass the aptitude tests, you did have
to wonder.
But to not do it at all surely is crazy?
And I don‟t mean the feeble attempts at Test
Certification that we currently have. They in no way
match up to the logic and reasoning tests that were
being used only 30 years ago.
Where is the Software Testing - Reasoning and
Logical Thinking - Aptitude Test eh?
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21.
Hexadecimal Calculators
For my first 15 years in IT I needed a
Hexadecimal Calculator.
I always seemed to have to convert from Binary
to Hex or Decimal. Even Octal. But I don‟t
anymore.
I had a great calculator, still do actually; It
was Solar Powered, worked under
fluorescent light and had 10 digits.
Yes, Ten.
But I just don‟t need one anymore. Is that
because Software Testing isn‟t that difficult?
Isn‟t computer sciency?
What has gone wrong?
It was good to feel like a nerd.
Like you had a special skill.
I now have an app, on my not so Smart
Phone for this, but it doesn‟t feel the
same, and I hardly ever need to use it.
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22.
Desk Checking
It may come as no surprise to discover that
when I started my programming career, the
team I worked in had one terminal between
6 people!
You had to book a slot to use it.
Time was too valuable to key in program
code.
That had to be sent away and printed onto cards.
Because processing time was so valuable we
used to do Desk Checking.
Because it was cheaper in machine resource to
check your code visibly before running, than to
run it, find you had a failure, crash the
machine, print out a dump, etc. etc.
This isn‟t one of those „it was better in my
day‟ tales though, because desk checking
was a valuable debugging tool.
We have the mental capacity to do these
things, and this was before interactive debugging.
I agree that the landscape is far more
complex today, but I think some of the core
desk checking and debugging thinking skills
have been lost.
There is no penalty for mistakes.
In fact it is becoming quicker to make
mistakes and then fix them than to avoid
making them in the first place.
(A whole development approach is predicated on
this - Testing in Production)
6 legs
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23.
Data Dictionaries & Workbenches
I am an ICL man. VME was the best operating
system ever!
You could just log on to a mainframe and start doing stuff.
Really powerful stuff. Long before UNIX. Something which
IBM never allowed on their mainframes.
And with VME you got a Data Dictionary, that could
build TP (Transaction Processing) Services, could
define IDMSX (relational) Databases, and if you had
the right utilities, could generate application code
for TP and Batch, that just worked!
The only testing you needed to do was to ensure that you
had the requirements and design right.
There was no need for constructional, i.e. Unit or
System Testing, at all.
But somehow that all seemed to go out of fashion.
Yet, 20+ years later you see people struggling with
problems that IT has already produced working
solutions for, but has in the intervening years
somehow; forgotten, unlearnt, or discarded as
inferior.
I wonder why?
ICL 2966
Raspberry Pi
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24.
Stuff we could should do away with
My Z List
• Plans in Excel or PowerPoint
• Good Today Bad Tomorrow
• The I have seen the light speech
• Nostalgia
• Lists
• Etc.
• Etc.
oter>
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25.
For Example
PROJECT PLANS
People just don‟t know about logic and dependencies in
project planning
How to create a Critical Path Network in MSP
People just create Gantt charts
And they just don‟t know about dependencies
I was asked recently how to display the dependency
network in MSP
Then I was asked how long that had been in MSP
“Oh I don’t know, 20 years or so, ever since the
beginning”
It shows that people don‟t know and this lack of basic
knowledge has led to bad practices, such as planning in
Excel or worse PowerPoint.
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26.
Good Today - Bad Tomorrow
The experts that turn up at conferences
and say don‟t do that do this.
 Almost ridiculing what you are
doing
 Making you feel embarrassed
 Small
 Insignificant
 So You promise to do what they tell
you
Only you realise that 5 years ago it was
the very same expert who told you to do
all of these „bad‟ things that you are doing
now!
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27.
Summary
However, here is some technology that we
shouldn‟t resurrect!
That was 'Great' but what does it mean for
me?
 I hope that this session has been
useful and will help you to look
again at tools and techniques that
you may no longer use but may
still be beneficial.
 And I hope that you will also
review some of the tools and
techniques that you are using and
ask if they really are the
best, most efficient and effective
ways of getting the job done.
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28.
Thank You for Listening
Graham Thomas
Independent Software
Testing Consultant
graham@badgerscroft.com
www.badgerscroft.com
@GrahamNThomas
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