Stories help us learn. They can be fun or scary, exciting or relaxing. People worldwide tell and listen to stories. We access them through books, film, TV, and computers. But direct, face-to-face storytelling is still a powerful experience. When Isabel Evans was young, there was a program on the radio called Listen with Mother. For fifteen minutes, mothers and children across the land would sit and listen to a story. Join Isabel and become your younger child, bring your testing parent, and listen to her stories. In fifteen-minute sections, Isabel recounts stories drawn from myths, legends, and fairy tales, like those Scheherazade told during 1001 Nights to provide the King, and you, with pleasure, entertainment, and lessons for life. All of Isabel’s stories have lessons that relate to the conference and to your testing work. Come and listen, be delighted, surprised, and perhaps shocked—but always entertained and educated. Learn new ways to interpret your work situation and take home old wisdoms.

1. W13
Getting Your Message Across
10/18/2017 3:00:00 PM
Story Time for Testers
Presented by:
Isabel Evans
Independent Consultant
Brought to you by:
350 Corporate Way, Suite 400, Orange Park, FL 32073
888-­‐268-­‐8770 ·∙ 904-­‐278-­‐0524 - info@techwell.com - https://www.techwell.com/

2. Isabel Evans
Independent Consultant
Independent quality and testing consultant Isabel Evans has more than thirty
years of IT experience in quality management and testing in the financial,
communications, and software sectors. Her quality management work focuses on
encouraging IT teams and customers to work together via flexible processes
designed and tailored by the teams that use them. Isabel authored Achieving
Software Quality Through Teamwork and chapters in Agile Testing: How to
Succeed in an eXtreme Testing Environment; The Testing Practitioner; and
Foundations of Software Testing. A popular speaker at software conferences
worldwide, Isabel is a Chartered IT Professional and Fellow of the British
Computer Society, and has been a member of software industry improvement
working groups.

3. Be happy - do good - leave the world a better place than you found it
Isabel
Evans
Story Time for Testers
Isabel Evans fbcs citp
ie@isabelevans.uk
www.isabelevans.uk

4. Be happy - do good - leave the world a better place than you found it
Isabel
Evans
I’m going to tell you some stories

5. Be happy - do good - leave the world a better place than you found it
Isabel
Evans
Brevity is good…
How much I desire!
Inside my little satchel,
the moon, and flowers!
Basho

6. Be happy - do good - leave the world a better place than you found it
Isabel
Evans
Computer Haiku
Chaos reigns within.
Reflect, repent, and reboot.
Order shall return.
Yesterday it worked.
Today it is not working.
Windows is like that.
A crash reduces
Your expensive computer
To a simple stone.
Out of memory.
We wish to hold the whole sky,
But we never will.

7. Be happy - do good - leave the world a better place than you found it
Isabel
Evans
Testing Haiku…?
Simple tests are passing
But important tests failed!
Fix, test, then release.
Environment down?
Another day wasted when
We could have tested.
Explore and test the system.
Calm mind, systematic work,
Tell good and bad news.
Yesterday it worked.
Today it is not working.
Configuration error?

8. Be happy - do good - leave the world a better place than you found it
Isabel
Evans
Now you…

9. Be happy - do good - leave the world a better place than you found it
Isabel
Evans
Sonnet
• A dialectical construct which allows the poet to examine the nature and
ramifications of two usually contrastive ideas, emotions,
states of mind, beliefs, actions, events, images, etc., by juxtaposing the
two against each other, and possibly resolving or revealing
the tensionscreated and operative between the two.
• The English sonnet has the simplest and most flexible pattern of all
sonnets, consisting of 3 quatrains of alternating rhyme and a couplet:
a b a b
c d c d
e f e f
g ghttp://www.sonnets.org/basicforms.htm

10. Be happy - do good - leave the world a better place than you found it
Isabel
Evans
Sonnets XLIX (Shakespeare)
Against that time, if ever that time come,
When I shall see thee frown on my defects,
When as thy love hath cast his utmost sum,
Call’d to that audit by advis’d respects;
Against that time when thou shall strangely pass,
And scarcely greet me with that sun, thine eye,
When love, converted from the thing it was,
Shall reasons find of settled gravity;
Against that time do I ensconce me here
Within the knowledge of mine own desert,
And this my hand against myself uprear,
To guard the lawful reasons on thy part:
To leave poor me thou hast the strength of laws
Since why to love I can allege no cause
A
B
A
B
C
D
C
D
E
F
E
F
G
G

11. Be happy - do good - leave the world a better place than you found it
Isabel
Evans
Sonnets 1 – fill the gaps…
Against that time, if ever that time come,
When I shall I see thee frown on my defects,
When as thy love hath cast his utmost sum,
Call’d to that audit by advis’d respects;
Against that time when thou shall strangely pass,
And scarcely greet me with that sun, thine eye,
When love, converted from the thing it was,
Shall reasons find of settled gravity;
Against that time do I ensconce me here
Within the knowledge of mine own desert,
And this my hand against myself uprear,
To guard the lawful reasons on thy part:
To leave poor me thou hast the strength of laws
Since why to love I can allege no cause.
A
B
A
B
C
D
C
D
E
F
E
F
G
G

12. Be happy - do good - leave the world a better place than you found it
Isabel
Evans
Sonnets 1 – fill the gaps…
Against that time, if ever that time come,
When I shall I see some acceptance of my defects,
When as thy code doth work, and calcs do sum
Call’d to that audit by QA and a fix ;
Against that time when tests shall strangely pass,
And scarce delay the team’s progress
When data, converted from the thing it was,
Shall reasons find to delight and not depress;
Against that time do I continue work
Within the knowledge of my teammates ire,
And this my report against myself do make,
To ward off the manager’s awful mood so dire:
To leave quality poor thou hast the choice of laws
Since now to bugs I can allege no cause.
A
B
A
B
C
D
C
D
E
F
E
F
G
G

13. Be happy - do good - leave the world a better place than you found it
Isabel
Evans
Now you…

14. Be happy - do good - leave the world a better place than you found it
Isabel
Evans
Story Time for Testers
Isabel Evans fbcs citp
ie@isabelevans.uk
www.isabelevans.uk